Hello everyone and welcome to our lesson on writing a descriptive paragraph.

I'm Miss Sutherland and I'll be teaching you today.

Our learning outcome for today is to be able to write an interesting, consistent, and technically accurate descriptive dystopian paragraph.

And our keywords for today are: edit, if you edit your work, you change parts of it; enhance, if you enhance your work, you improve the quality of it; and derelict, a derelict building is in very bad condition due to neglect.

Now in today's lesson, we're going to start off by looking at the success criteria for descriptive writing.

And then, we are going to write our descriptive paragraph.

Next, we're going to be editing and enhancing our work.

So let's start off by looking at what makes a successful dystopian descriptive paragraph.

Here is the success criteria for writing a dystopian descriptive paragraph.

Firstly, a carefully selected tone.

For example, you might choose a tone of oppression.

You also want vocabulary to match the tone.

So remember, that could be words that reflect cruelty or oppression.

You also want a variety of sentence types, so simple, compound, and complex sentences.

You also want a variety of sentence forms, so declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences.

You'll want accurately punctuated sentences and you'll also want to use sophisticated punctuation such as a semicolon, a dash, or a colon.

Let's take a look at where the success criteria has been applied in the model.

It was a cold November morning and the clouds scowl down upon the derelict city.

The building tops were suffocated by the unrelenting smog as if tormented with the weight of their malevolent history.

The taunting clouds began to weep a brutal, unforgiving rain which stung the bare arms of the citizens below.

Cameras preyed upon them as they shivered in the damp of the city.

Their faces were etched with pain; their lungs were choked with toxic air.

They trudged onwards through the dark and desolate landscape, surrounded by callous orders on posters that dominated every wall.

"We are watching you!" read one.

Everyday they thought the same thing: had we never been free? I want you to pause the video and discuss where you can see the success criteria being applied.

Off you go.

Let's go through together where we see the success criteria being applied.

Firstly, this answer has vocabulary to match the tone.

So it's got the word scowled, suffocated, unrelenting, malevolent, brutal, et cetera.

And all of those words create an oppressive tone.

Next, we can see the range of sentence types.

It was a cold November morning and the cloud scowled down upon the derelict city is a compound sentence.

Whilst the taunting clouds began to weep, a brutal unforgiving rain which stung the bare arms at the citizens below is a complex sentence.

This answer also uses a range of sentence forms. For example, there's a declarative sentence.

The cameras preyed down upon them as they shivered in the damp of the city.

And there's also an exclamatory sentence.

We are watching you! And an interrogative sentence: had we never been free? This answer also uses sophisticated punctuation.

It uses a semicolon in the sentence their faces were etched with pain; their lungs were choked with toxic air.

And it uses a colon in the sentence everyday they thought the same thing: had we never been free? So hopefully, you can use this model and your knowledge of how it applies the success criteria to write your very own successful dystopian description later on.

A key part of a dystopian description is? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done if you said a key part of a dystopian description is carefully selected vocabulary to match tone.

We don't need ambitious synonyms for every word of our description because it can make the meaning of our writing less clear for the reader.

And we also don't need loads of complex sentences in our writing because that will make the pace and tone of the writing very monotonous for the reader.

We do need carefully selected vocabulary to match the tone so that the readers get a good sense of the place that we want to describe and the genre that we want to describe.

Well done if you said that.

I now want you to write the opening to your dystopian story using the image as a starting point.

Remember the success criteria that we talked about earlier.

You will need all of those six things in your work.

Pause the video and have a go at this task, good luck.

Very well done on that task, everyone.

I now want you to reread your work.

Identify where you have met the following: Where have you ensured you have a carefully selected tone? Where have you chosen vocabulary to match that tone? Where have you got a variety of sentence types? Label your simple compound and complex sentences.

Where have you got a variety of sentence forms? Label your declarative, interrogative, and exclamatory sentences.

Where have you got accurately punctuated sentences that's using full stops, commas, question marks, exclamation marks correctly? And where have you got your sophisticated punctuation, your dashes, your semicolons, and your colons? Pause the video and self-assess your work.

Now don't worry if you've missed anything 'cause we're going to go through how to edit and enhance our work now.

So how do we edit and enhance our work? I want you to start off by thinking about this question.

How often do you check your work after writing? Pause the video and have a think.

Let's look at what maybe some of you have said.

Some of you may feel like Laura and never see a point in checking your work.

Some of you may feel like Izzy and sometimes you check your work, but you barely have enough time to change anything.

And others may like Isaac who always leave enough time to correct mistakes and enhance certain elements.

Getting into the habit of leaving at least 10 minutes to check your work and edit it is a great way to enhance your writing.

And that's something we all want to do to be able to make our readers impressed with us.

So let's look at how we can check and edit certain things.

We're going to start off by looking at how we can check our spellings.

We can spot some incorrect spellings immediately as perhaps we were rushing and we know how to spell it and all we need to do is quickly correct it after rereading.

So for example, vibrant and rubble.

There's some really tiny errors there.

We need to add an R of vibrant and a B to rubble.

However, with other spellings such as unfamiliar words that we're using for the first time, more tricky complex words, we may need to use a dictionary or ask a friend or a teacher how to spell it.

That might be, for example, the word emaciated.

So that's how then I corrected all my spellings.

How can we revise our vocabulary choices? Well, what we need to do is we need to reread and we need to look for words that don't quite fit the tone.

So for example here the word smelly, the word quiet, and the word beady.

They're not quite powerful enough in creating the bleak tone that I was going for here.

So I need to change them.

How can I change the word smelly to better fit a bleak atmosphere? How can I change the word quiet to better fit a bleak atmosphere? And how can I change the word beady to better fit a dystopian surveillance system? So I think that the word toxic fits better 'cause it implies the fumes are harmful in some way.

I'm changing quiet to desolate because desolate implies some sense of loneliness, some sense of destruction, typical dystopian genre.

And lastly, I'm changing the words beady to penetrating because this is a more forceful word that I think better reflects a dystopian surveillance system that has complete control over the citizens.

Next, we're going to look at how we enhance our punctuation and sentence type.

What we can do is we can look at missed opportunities.

So for example here, we've used commas.

I want you to think about what sophisticated punctuation could have been used here instead.

Pause the video and have a think.

Remember, we learned that dashes can be used to insert an extra piece of information within a sentence.

So instead of using commas in the sentence Donna - an emaciated, hunched woman - peered out of the window of the skyscraper in which she worked, we could use dashes instead to show the reader we have a grasp over really complex punctuation.

Now let's look at this sentence.

Graffiti sprawled over it now which was bold, unruly, and defiant.

I want you to discuss which piece of sophisticated punctuation we learned that can work to reveal something.

Pause the video and have a think.

Remember, we learned that colons can reveal information and they make the writing more concise and the revelation more impactful.

Look how the sentence now changes.

It now says Graffiti sprawled over it: bold, unruly, defiant.

The colon almost shocks the reader instead of the clunky which was.

When editing and enhancing, what can you do if you have used a word for the first time and are unsure on the spelling? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done if you said we can look a word up in the dictionary if we are unsure how to spell it because we are using it for the first time.

We shouldn't guess the spelling 'cause that leaves room for error.

And when we're editing and enhancing our work, we are trying to make it error-proof.

We're trying to produce the final result.

And we also wouldn't leave it how it is for the same reason.

Imagine our work was being published, we wouldn't want to leave any errors in it.

That's how we should treat the editing and enhancing process.

It's as if we are editing and enhancing in order to be published.

What is the first step in editing and enhancing your vocabulary choice? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done if you said the first step in editing and enhancing our vocabulary choice is to circle words that do not match the tone completely.

We do not need to change your boring words to sophisticated ones because that is going to obscure the meaning of our work.

And it might end up confusing the reader because you may have said something that you didn't mean.

And we also cannot enhance our vocabulary by changing the full stops to exclamation marks because that does not affect our vocabulary, that affects our punctuation.

You can add a colon to enhance your work when you have? Pause the video and have a think.

Well done if you said you can add a colon to enhance your work when you have a list of things to be revealed.

We don't use colons to join up two related clauses.

That is a semicolon's job and we don't use colons when we have too many full stops because a colon does not act as a full stop.

It doesn't have the same effect.

I now want you to reread your work again.

This time we are going to be reading for the purpose of editing and enhancing.

So when you are rereading, you need to be looking for your spelling and punctuation errors, any vocabulary that doesn't match your tone, and some missed opportunities that you can now take to use a dash, semicolon, or colon.

Pause the video and edit and enhance your work.

Let's now reflect on how we did with this writing task.

Consider all the corrections that you made to your work.

What do you think you did particularly well in this writing task? And what common errors did you make? How can you improve on this for your next writing task? Be sure to use the success criteria to guide your judgments.

So essentially, give yourself a what went well from the success criteria and something you can do better next time, again, from the success criteria.

Have a go at writing down what you did well and a target for your next writing task.

Pause the video and do that.

Excellent job, everybody.

Brilliant writing today.

Here's what we've learned.

An effective description should include a variety of sentence types and forms. Checking and editing your work includes checking all of your spellings and that your basic punctuation is accurate.

Enhancing your work includes adding sophisticated punctuation and changing your sentence types.

And you should also leave enough time after finishing your writing to edit and enhance your work.

You've worked really hard in today's lesson, great job.