Lesson video

Hi everyone.

My name is Mr. (indistinct) and I'm really looking forward to working with you today.

We're gonna be looking at drafting our first pieces of descriptive writing for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".

You've already planned this and the really important thing to remember with drafting, is it's an opportunity for you to get your ideas down, but also crucially, it's an opportunity for you to edit those ideas, see how they come out in reality after you've planned and poured so much energy into them.

And actually think about, "Is this how you really wanna execute things?" They say all writing is good drafting.

And really, I think it's such an incredible skill that you are gonna be experiencing today.

If you can nail this now, it's really gonna hold you in good stead for later down the line.

Let's dive in.

So as ever, we have our outcome.

Today, we are going to be drafting a piece of descriptive writing and then going back over it and revising it.

(clicks) Let's start with our keywords.

We've got the word draught.

It's a noun and it is the first version of a piece of writing.

We also have the mood of a piece of work.

That is the emotional response that a writer wants to give the reader.

We then have the verb revise.

That's where you look at, or consider a piece of writing again to correct or improve it.

Often, as part of good writing, it helps to have your reader or even you as the writer, visualise what's happening in a scene, or what you want to convey.

If you visualise something, that means to form a picture of someone with something in your mind.

And finally, we have our final verb evoke.

This means to bring or recall a feeling, memory or image to the conscious mind.

It's one of the hardest skills to be able to evoke a particular feeling within a piece of writing.

We notice it all the time when we see good writing ourselves, when we read things that move us.

And hopefully, your pieces of writing will do that as well.

(clicks) So we are going to start off by drafting our first paragraph.

So we're gonna draught our piece of descriptive writing, based on an image of a moment in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".

"The image depicts the moment that Alice arrives at the King and Queen of Heart's court and she engages in a game of croquet where the mallet is a flamingo, the balls are hedgehogs and the hoops are playing cards." You can see the image on the right-hand side of the screen.

I'm gonna ask you to pause it for yourself and you may want to have a printout of this image, you may want to just get a mind map down, you may want to talk to the person next to you if you're working with someone, what are your first impressions of the image? Where is your eye drawn to? What are you most interested in? Pause the video and we'll, afterwards, have a look at what we could think about.

Some really interesting ideas, people looking at the foreground, people looking at the sort of like spate of red right at the foreground of the picture, which then sort of like even bleeds into the mid ground.

There's also that camp towards the back and the towers behind.

Let's have a look at what some of our Oak students said.

Lucas said, "The hedgehog catches my eye first.

The idea of it walking on its hind legs is quite intriguing, yet disconcerting!" Lucas is talking about what he can see, just on the left-hand side of the image, sort of early-mid ground.

And there is something a little bit troubling about a hedgehog walking on its hind legs.

It's definitely evocative and it reminds us that "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" are complicated and things don't meet our expectations.

They don't act exactly as we would normally expect them to.

(clicks) One method of describing an image, is to follow this step-by-step process.

(clicks) We start off by creating a mind map around the image that picks out all of the details that draw your attention.

It's similar to what I asked you to do before you paused the video on the last slide.

Getting down all of your ideas, just picking out anything that you think is of interest.

You then choose three details from the image that will serve as focal points for your paragraph.

So these will be three things that you think are really interesting that deserve the most attention.

You then zoom in on those focal points and write down any words or ideas that come to mind.

So you're developing those initial focal points.

They act almost as the kernel and you explode from there.

Those three kernels, which you've exploded, would form your individual paragraphs.

And you decide on the mood of each of those paragraphs, what kind of feeling you want to evoke in your reader.

You would then write your description of the image, using linguistic devices, so for example, similes, metaphors, semantic fields, a range of interesting adjectives and adverbs or verbs.

Sentence structures, remembering our simple, compound and complex and vocabulary to evoke the mood and allow the reader to visualise the image.

So we're just gonna have a quick check for understanding here.

As you can see, I've got the five steps that I've just gone through, but I'm missing the fourth one.

Pause the video and see if you can add in the missing step to describe an image.

Really well done, everyone.

I'm so pleased to see so many of you going back to your notes, checking your work.

It's gonna make you really impressive learners in the future and it's definitely gonna ensure your success within this lesson and scheme.

So as you remember, number four is deciding on the general mood of each of those paragraphs.

If there's any notes that you need, pause the video now, get those notes down.

Because they're gonna be really helpful.

So we're gonna start with our first task.

We're gonna have our practise.

You are gonna draught your first descriptive paragraph of this image.

When you're doing that, you need to remember to zoom in on your focal point and describe it in detail to the reader.

And to use vocabulary choices, linguistic devices and sentence structures to evoke a particular mood to the reader and allow them to visualise the image.

Maybe you'll be like Lucas, maybe you'll want to talk about the disconcerting, but interesting idea that this hedgehog moves on its hind legs.

Maybe we sort of trace the movements of the hedgehog across the scene.

Potentially, you wanna have a look at that foreground, those red flowers that are almost hearts or diamonds, or sort of mixture of shapes that we have right in the foreground.

Maybe you are drawn to the central figure.

Whatever it is, you choose and you choose what mood you want to create, using those vocabulary choices to create that mood.

Pause the video, independently, have a go.

Some lovely work there, everyone.

Let's have a look at and see how we can develop it.

(clicks) So we're gonna peer-assess our first descriptive paragraph of this image.

As you are looking at your partner's work, can you identify which detail of the image was being focused on? Identify which mood the writer was trying to evoke.

Identify linguistic devices and vocabulary choices, which were designed to help the reader visualise the image.

If you don't have a partner, if you're working alone, that's absolutely fine.

You can still do this task in a different colour pen on your own work, still using those three questions to guide you.

You should all pause the video now and have an opportunity to do this really good moment of feedback.

Some lovely stuff there, everyone.

And what I was so pleased to see, was the fact that so many of you were doing that in a different colour pen, so you could track your ideas and reflect on how you were improving.

Great work.

Now that we've drafted our first paragraph, we're gonna get into the really hard nuts and bolts of revising our first paragraph.

This is really exciting.

And I think that this is gonna make your great initial ideas, even better.

So it's time to look back over your work and revise it.

The process of revising is where we look at, or consider again a piece of writing in order to correct or improve it.

Writers do this all the time, by the way.

Often, they'll write a piece of work.

They'll continue that, their narratives, their novels.

And they'll come back to it, days, weeks, months later and they'll realise something's not quite right and they'll have to edit it.

Revising is a natural process of writing.

It's critical to the work.

So with that being said, why do you think it's important to go back over your work and revise it? What specifically are you gonna find in your work when you do that? Pause the video now and either take some notes for yourself, or talk to the person next to you or talk in your class.

How does revising improve our work? Really great ideas.

Let's see if what you said, matched what the Oak students said.

Laura pointed out that revising is important, because it allows us to go back over our work and correct any mistakes in order to perfect it.

Laura's totally right there.

We all make mistakes when we write.

Sometimes, it's a comma splice in a sentence that doesn't need it, or potentially, we've just misspelt a word.

But sometimes, we're making really big errors around the sort of imagery we're using, or we're confusing the mood of our work.

It's really hard to be able to know that if we don't revise our work actively.

Izzy on the other hand, says that allows us to reflect on whether we've made the best choices in our writing in order to achieve our purpose.

I really love Izzy's idea here and I heard some of you say this.

Because actually, that purpose is really important.

What are you trying to achieve? If you are trying to entertain your readers and trying to make them laugh, you're gonna use quite different language to if you were trying to scare them, or if you were trying to shock them.

We need to make sure that we're making the best choices for our pieces of work.

So why do you think people can sometimes be resistant to the revising process? We know why it's important, but why do so many people hate it? Even the writers that I was talking about, who I said would go back to their pieces of work, weeks, months afterwards, a lot of them have talked about how they hated having to do it, how they loathed the process.

Pause the video now and think about your own experience of writing.

Why have you not enjoyed the revision process? Pause the video, have that discussion, or take some notes for yourself and then we'll come back and discuss.

It's really hard to be honest in these discussions and I'm so pleased that so many of you are.

It's totally fine to say that you don't enjoy revising.

But I'm gonna say, "You don't enjoy revising yet." It is so fun to go back and think about our work when we feel like we've got a really good idea around it.

Let's see what some of our Oak students said.

Lucas pointed out that "People may be worried about finding their mistakes.

But mistakes are part of the writing process!" And Lucas is so right.

We want to take a growth mindset here.

We don't wanna just think that the first piece is the best piece.

Sometimes, it's not.

Sometimes, we have to challenge ourselves to really reflect and think carefully about what we've produced.

Alex says, "It can be quite upsetting to realise that an idea we were really passionate about doesn't work in the context of the particular piece of writing.

You can always save it for another time though." And Alex is totally right there.

It's always so interesting when I talk to my friends, who are writers and they mention how a piece of work that they had, or an idea that they initially had for their work, just doesn't turn out the way they thought it would.

Because they've made other choices down the line that just doesn't allow that initial idea to make sense.

That's absolutely fine.

It means that we've got a new idea, maybe a better idea and that can be really exciting too.

So now that we've covered why people may be resistant to the revision process, but actually what there's to learn from it and actually why it's so important in the first place, we need to think about the two aspects of revising.

There's editing and rewriting.

Editing and proofreading is the process of making technical corrections to a piece of writing.

It includes addressing errors in capitalization, punctuation and grammar, or a lack of clarity in syntax.

Rewriting on the other hand is the process of rewriting sentences, adding, dropping or reframing ideas and choosing more precise words.

This is something that I feel really passionate about.

All good writing is rewriting.

It's reworking ideas until we're really happy with them.

It takes time, but it's really worth it when we have our final pieces.

So we're gonna have a check for understanding here.

True or false? "If I go back and correct all the possessive apostrophes in my work, then I've rewritten it." Pause the video, work out.

Is that true, is that false? I could see people going back to their notes.

I could see people having a really good, hard think and I'm really pleased to see that so many people said it was false.

You are absolutely right.

This is not rewriting.

But why isn't it? Look at our two justifications.

Which one is correct? Is it option A, rewriting is the process of making technical corrections? Or B, rewriting is the process of reframing ideas and choosing more precise words? Pause the video now and select your option.

When you're ready, hit play.

Really good work, everyone.

I'm so pleased to see that so many of you went for B.

Rewriting is the process of reframing ideas and choosing more precise words.

Remember, that process of making technical corrections, like correcting all your possessive apostrophes, which I have to do all the time when I write, is editing.

It's really important to edit, but it's also really important to re-process our ideas and choose more precise words as part of rewriting.

So for this part of the lesson, we're going to have a go at rewriting the draught of our first paragraph.

Specifically, we're going to focus on rewriting the draught to include a variety of sentence starters.

Why do you think we have to have a variety of sentence starters as part of our descriptive writing? You'll remember that actually during your writing task in the previous part, I asked you to focus really carefully on vocabulary choices and linguistic devices.

Why do you think actually though we need to make sure we have a variety of sentence styles as part of our work? Pause the video, discuss with your partner, maybe take some notes.

And when you're ready, play.

So what do we think? There's lots of reasons for why we would want a variety of sentence starters within our writing.

Hopefully, it means our writing is more varied, it's less boring and it also means that we're able to explore different ideas.

Another reason is because actually, it's incredibly important, because it sets the tone of the sentence with the reader.

Having a variety of sentence starters allows you to influence the pace, emphasis and the cohesion of the sentence.

When we're talking about the cohesion of the sentence, we're talking about sort of like collective impact of the sentence, how the whole sentence comes together to have an effect on our reader.

One way to start a sentence is with an adjective.

An adjective is a word that describes a noun, such as beautiful.

Starting with an adjective can be an effective way of getting the reader to focus in on a particular detail.

For example, "Alice sat down at the table with a broken teacup in her hand." That is a fairly normal, ordinary sentence.

But after revising it and shifting my adjective to the start of the text or the start of the sentence, I've got "Broken teacup in hand, Alice sat down at the table." Think about the mood that's been created in that second line, "Broken teacup in hand, Alice sat down at the table." Alice sounds a lot more defeated there.

She sounds like because her teacup has broken, in a way, so has she.

She's become tired because of it.

So let's just check for understanding here again.

Which of the following sentences starts with an adjective? Option A, "Swaying in the wind, the flowers looked as if they were dancing." Option B, "Anxious that she would lose sight of him, Alice hurried after the White Rabbit." Or C, "Perplexingly, the Cheshire Cat began disappearing." Pause the video and select.

Which of A, B and C starts with an adjective? Really good work.

And what I loved was the fact that you were all beginning to explain why A and C were incorrect.

B is the correct answer.

We know that, because anxious is an adjective.

But I'm as interested in why A and C aren't correct.

Well, A has a subordinate clause at the start, as does B.

But really importantly, "Swaying in the wind," well, swaying is actually a verb and it's linked to the flowers.

The flowers will sway.

Then there's also "Perplexingly" in C.

Well, that's an adverb.

So it's not an adjective.

It doesn't describe a noun.

It's describing the action of the Cheshire Cat as being surprising.

So B is our correct answer.

Another way to start our sentence is with a verb.

A verb is a being, doing or having word such as singing.

Starting our sentence with a verb can be an effective way of adding a pace to our writing.

For example, "Alice opened the door and saw miniature chessmen walking around." It's a good sentence, it's fine.

There are some interesting ideas.

But let's see how it changes when we have our verb moved to the start, "Opening the door, Alice saw miniature chessmen walking around." I think it's so much better to have "Opening the door," starting it.

Because suddenly, Alice gets to have that moment of discovery and so do we as the reader.

It's a revelation when she sees the miniature chessmen walking around.

So another check for understanding here.

Which is the following sentences start with a verb? A, "Amazed and slightly baffled, Alice stared at the Caterpillar." B, "Sipping on the drink, Alice found herself growing smaller." Or C, "A moment too late, Alice realised she can no longer reach the key." Pause the video and select A, B or C.

Which starts with a verb? I am so pleased that so many of you realise that A used an adjective at the start, in fact, it used two adjectives.

And so you are able to narrow it between B and C.

I'm really pleased that so many of you also remembered that a verb is a doing word, so it's our action.

And so B is the correct answer there, "Sipping on the drink," the verb is sipping.

Alice is sipping, enjoying her drink and she realises she's growing smaller.

Well done, everyone, really excellent stuff.

You are really getting this.

(clicks) We could also choose to start our sentence with an adverb.

An adverb is a word that modifies or describes a verb, an adjective, another adverb or a whole sentence.

Starting your sentence with an adverb, can help you add extra detail for the reader to visualise the scene.

For example, we could say, "Alice entered the Queen of Heart's castle," Or I could say, "Excitedly, Alice entered the Queen of Heart's castle." I prefer the second option as you may have guessed.

Because yes, it uses an adverb, but it also shows me really how Alice is feeling as she enters the castle.

(clicks) So complete the following sentences.

You need to use the words, verb, adjective and adverb to complete the three sentences.

Pause the video now and choose where verb, adjective and adverb will go in each of these sentences.

Let's have a look, shall we? So starting with an adjective can be an effective way of getting the reader to focus on a particular detail.

While starting with a verb can be an effective way of adding pace to our writing, which means the final sentence is starting with an adverb, can be an effective way of adding more detail to your writing.

If you've got any of those wrong, that's absolutely fine.

We're here to make mistakes, we're here to learn.

Just make sure to get a note of it in a different colour pen.

Pause the video now, make sure you've got those notes, summarising what each of those different sentence starters can do.

And then when you're ready, press play to move on.

Great work, everyone.

Let's continue.

(clicks) So we're going to practise now by looking back over our first paragraph and rewriting it to include a variety of sentence starters.

(clicks) Remember, you can start your sentences with an adjective, a verb or an adverb.

(clicks) I want you to really focus on what you want the reader to feel and what you want them to be able to visualise and the emotion you want them to have.

And then choose which sentence starter enhances this.

Remember, each of those choices, an adjective, a verb and adverb, they have very different impacts.

For example, if you wanna focus on the pace, you are not gonna pick an adverb.

You're gonna pick a verb.

Pause the video now.

And looking back at your first paragraph, rewrite it, so that you are really experimenting with those different sentence starters, so that you can tailor your work to create specific emotions.

Pause the video and have a go.

It is one of the pleasures of being an English teacher that we get to work with such impressive writers.

And I know that I'm working with really incredible writers today.

Well done, everyone.

The fact that you engaged so well in that rewriting task, means that you are going to have written even better pieces than what you initially had done.

Let's take some feedback.

So how did you find the process of rewriting that first paragraph? Pause the video now.

Have a think to yourself how you found it, or if you're sitting with anyone else, maybe chat to them.

How did you find the process? Pause the video, reflect on that.

Really good to hear so many of you being positive about it.

I know, it's hard.

It's really hard when we're looking at something that we've just written and we've poured so much effort into, but hopefully realise, it's made an even better piece of work.

Sam noticed that actually he found that it really helped him focus on exactly what he wanted the reader to feel when they read the description.

Sofia, on the other hand, found it a bit jarring at first.

Because maybe like you, she really liked those draught sentences.

But actually, rewriting them, really helped her focus on how the reader would visualise the scene.

I'm hoping you found the same experience too.

Rewriting is so critical for allowing your readers to really enjoy your work, to really maximise the potential of it.

So let's summarise our work today and our key learning from drafting a piece of descriptive writing on "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Drafting is where we write the first version of a piece of writing.

Revising is where we look at, or consider again a piece of writing in order to correct or improve it.

And we can use a variety of sentence starters such as verbs, adverbs and adjectives.

Because it can influence the pace, emphasis or cohesion of a sentence.

We can vary our sentence starters by using adjectives, verbs or adverbs.

You have done so well today.

You haven't just written an excellent first paragraph.

You've actually written an excellent first paragraph and then improved it.

Your pieces of work are going to be remarkable and you should all be incredibly proud of the progress you've made today.

I'm really looking forward to working with you again.

I hope to see you soon.