Lesson video

Hello, it's Miss Howard here, and welcome to the third lesson on our rhetoric and change unit.

Now for the previous two lessons, you've done a fantastic job listening to Michelle Obama's letter to her younger self, exploring the use of rhetoric within that particular letter, and even carrying out quite a thorough analysis of that letter last lesson.

This lesson, and if you remember last lesson, I asked you to have a think about this.

This lesson, we're going to think about the advice that we would give our younger selves and use Michelle Obama's letter as inspiration to create our own letter using rhetoric to inspire and encourage change.

We're going to think about the different anecdotes that we might want to include within that letter.

And then we're going to have a practise using rhetoric within our writing to give our younger selves some well-needed advice.

So for now, close down any apps or conversations that you might have running in the background or anything to act as a distraction.

You'll need a pen and a piece of paper for today's lesson, find a quiet space where you know that you won't be disturbed or distracted in any way.

And then when you're ready, resume the video, and we'll get started.

So today let's have a look at this concept of a letter to my younger self.

We're going to be looking back over Obama's examples and thinking up our own examples to put together a letter to advise our younger self and think about maybe what we've learned as a result of no longer being as young as we were.

So first of all we'll start by thinking about the structure of a letter and what that should look like.

We'll be taking inspiration from Michelle Obama, as well as other examples as well to really think about how we can implement the use of rhetoric within our letter.

We'll consider what advice might we give to our younger selves when we're putting our letter and writing our letter in full, and then we'll end the lesson with that question.

Why write to our younger self? So just return to your notes when I asked you this question last time, what advice would you give to your younger self? Have a think about the different examples that might come into play here.

It might be your first day at school and you're terrified, and how you managed to combat those fears.

It might be riding a bike for the first time, and how you managed to take your feet off the ground without being too terrified of what might happen.

Before though, what we'll do is just have a little bit of a rhetoric retrieval.

What I've done is I've put together four sentences for you.

I've put the answers right at the bottom here in the green.

What I'd like you to do is pause the video here and have a go at completing the four statements.

How did you get on? So let's have a look.

A short interesting story is called an anecdote.

Anaphora is repeating a word or phrase at the beginning of clauses or sentences.

If you remember, Obama uses that with "you always have been and you always will be." Using emotive language will make the reader feel connected, and direct address creates a personal tone.

So that repeated use of you or your.

So let's think about the structure of our letter.

Structure means an object constructed of several parts.

So the way in which something is put together.

It comes from the Latin struere, which means to build.

So Obama structures her letter chronologically as we looked before with different advice along the way.

So she starts at her University, and arriving at university and feeling different from everybody else.

Later on she touches upon the death of her father, and how challenging she found that, and then later on, she refers to what it was like when her husband, Barack Obama, was in the role of President of the United States and her experiences around that.

So pause the video here, and think of three key memories from your life so far.

You might want to use the examples that I gave you previously, you may already have some from your notes from last lesson or just a few moments ago.

For each of your three memories, I want you to bullet point underneath what happened? so what's the memory? How did you feel? And what advice would have helped at the time if somebody gave it to you? When you're finished up, press play.

So next thing we need to think about, and we touched upon this last time when we were exploring the way that Obama put her letter together, is that with each idea, with each anecdote, with each memory, there's a short interesting story about a person or event that was always threaded through an imperative, a command or instruction that was giving advice or reassurance.

So the balance of these two are very, very important if we're going to create a letter to give ourself advice.

Let's have a look.

"A day will come when those memories are all you have.

"His absence will hit you like a rock.

"It'll cause you to rethink about yourself and your future." Then comes the imperative.

"But don't worry, "you won't have to go through any of this alone." Now some of the emotive language is actually threaded through the green as well as the pink because of the fact that emotive language, particularly if you're talking about something like this, will naturally come out as a result of sharing that experience.

Let's have a look at an anecdote.

"Remember the time you rode your bike outside your old house "for the first time? "You felt like you're weightless! "Noah came to the window to cheer you on, "and you had been so afraid of falling off, "but you did it anyway.

"This just shows how tenacious you are." What a fantastic anecdote.

Now comes the advice.

"Hold on tight to how that felt; "the sensation of being unbreakable "and ready to take over the world.

"Don't forget to use that courage for times "when it can help you overcome even the biggest "of challenges ahead." So it's a really fantastic anecdote.

We get lots of detail in there about somebody coming to the window to cheer you on at the time, you were really afraid, but you felt weightless.

And then you've got the advice after that, "hold on tight to how that felt, "the sensation of being unbreakable." There's two new words there that you might want to hang on to and have a go at including later on in your own letter.

Tenacious is to be persistent or determined.

It's from the Latin tenere, which means to hold.

So it's almost this idea of not letting go of something of not letting go of your dreams, or not letting go of being brave.

Unbreakable is unable to tear apart or destroy if something is unbreakable.

It's from Old English, brecan.

Now notice the morpheme un, at the beginning, which means not.

So not breakable is unbreakable, unable is not able.

You see? See how many times you spot that in other words beginning with un, it's interesting.

Now, pause the video here and have a go at this true or false to see how much you've learned so far.

How did you get on? Advice should include anecdotes to remind ourselves of times we have experienced challenge.

False direct address is descriptive writing.

So what I'd like you to do now is have a go at writing.

So choose one of your anecdotes and write your own short anecdote and advice.

So what happened? How did you feel? And what advice would have helped? Use the bullet points that you wrote before to help you out and get started.

If you're struggling to get started, if you skip back to the slide with the bike on it, that will give you a little bit of a helping hand.

Don't forget to press play when you're done.

Okay, so how does Michelle Obama use language to encourage change? How does she make use of that rhetorical language within her work overall? So let's have a look at our exploration of this from last lesson, and we can use this to inspire ourself.

Make sure that you've got your own write up of your anecdote in front of you, because you might want to make notes to add to it or to change the particular language.

So let's have a look.

The anecdote, "you're at one of the finest universities "in the world.

"You're smiling, and you should be, "you worked hard for this.

"But even now, after you reached your goal, you're still not quite sure if you belong "and can't get one question out of your mind: "'Am I good enough?'" So we have the anecdote to start us off.

And we've also got the advice slightly earlier on, "you should be, you should be smiling, "you worked hard for this." But she also includes this figurative language, this emotive "you reached your goal," as well.

So just have a look at yours and see if there's anything that you want to change or magpie words from this one to make it even more convincing to your younger self.

Let's have a look at another example.

"Your father's final lesson will come far too soon." So again, she opens with that anecdote.

It's quite clear from the first sentence what the anecdote is going to be about, as it should be for all of your anecdotes.

She uses that figurative language to really emphasise how difficult this was for her.

"His absence will hit you like a rock." That's really good use of figurative language of this simile here.

And then we've got the advice to close, "don't worry, "you won't have to go through all of this alone." So have a look at the way that you structured those particular, where's your anecdote, is it very clear from that first sentence of your writing? Where do you make use of emotive language or figurative language to demonstrate how you felt? So if you were afraid? And what advice do you give yourself at the end of that piece of writing? Again, pause the video if you want to change anything, or magpie any words that she uses here.

Let's have a look at the later part of the letter.

So here, she ends up using the anecdote at a later point because she's actually using it almost in the present.

So she says, "hold tight to those values "your parents taught you." So it's almost like her younger self is pulling back from a time of even younger of being taught those values as she was growing up to use them in the present day.

So that's quite clever.

You've also got this repeated use of imperative language, "don't stoop to their level, "hold tight to those values," and you've got really fantastic use of emotive or figurative language to demonstrate how it must have felt to be criticised in the press or criticised by other people, "you'll be attacked, it will feel like it's at risk." So those words, risk, attacked really demonstrate to us how it must have felt being in that challenging position of being in the public eye and having a lot of media attention.

If you want to pause the video here, by all means do, and add any words or change any words to your own anecdotal write up that you've done so far, then by all means do.

Then have a think about, and I want you to keep this in mind, because our next task will be looking at writing a letter up as a whole.

Your final lines.

So I want you to think about what the final lines of advice will be to your younger self.

If you want to, you can pause the video here and have a think about using that anaphora structure that Michelle Obama uses at the end of her letter.

Now, just to remind you, remember anaphora, "you always have been and you always will be." So that repetition at the beginning of the clauses.

You can do that with a series of sentences, it doesn't necessarily have to be a clause and then a clause like this one is.

You always and you always can be, you always something something full stop, you always, so you can have the repetition in that sense.

So let's have a go at a little bit of a true or false and see how you're getting on.

Using words that make us feel a particular emotion is an example of emotive language.

Fantastic.

"One step at a time: you've got this" is an example of what? A, imperative language and direct address or B, emotive language and collective nouns.

A is the correct answer.

"One step at a time, you've got this." The "one step at a time" is telling you "one step at a time," the direct address is "you've got this." So, let's think about how we'd structure our letter.

First, we'd start with a salutation, as Michelle Obama does, doesn't she? She says, "Dear Miche," that use of her nickname to create that personal tone.

So you might want to if you have a particular nickname or a short name that your family use to call you, you might want to use that at the beginning of your letter.

And then we've got these three sections of our letter as a whole.

So our first of all, is our first memory, and how it made you feel.

Don't forget your direct address.

Don't forget your you and yours from the very very beginning to create that personal tone.

Now also, don't forget that our memories are in chronological order if we're going to take our inspiration from Michelle Obama.

So whichever memory is your earliest memory should come first.

Do you remember? Our second section is our second memory, our second anecdote.

Share your second memory, how it made you feel? But what did it teach you along the way? And finally, after your third memory, you've written about that you're third anecdote, what final powerful piece of advice can you give yourself? And that might be where you choose to use your anaphora.

So using your three memories, write a letter to your younger self.

I've given you some sentence starters to inspire you a little bit.

But you can also look back in the video and use the parts from Obama's letter in here, as well as the other parts that I wrote as examples earlier on to help you out.

If you like a challenge, I've put three words from the unit so far that you might like to have a go at including.

So transformation, unbreakable, and tenacious.

Remember that tenacious of being determined? If you'd like an even more fantastic challenge, I'd like you to try and use anaphora within your rhetoric, particularly at the end, just like Michelle Obama.

Pause the video here.

So why might we write to our younger self? Because as we said before with Michelle Obama's letter, our younger self is never going to read this.

So why is it that you'd write a letter to your younger self? Well, I think there's a few reasons why here, and I think this is why it's quite useful.

Because if we think about what Michelle Obama took from the process of writing the letter, she actually found it quite useful to recognise the bits of advice that she picked up and how she changed along the way.

It also helped her to realise how much stronger she was as a result of being faced with all of these challenges, and how incredible, actually, she really was, and she just didn't realise it at the time.

So I think writing to our younger self is actually really important, not only because of the fact that we'll appreciate all the different experiences and recalling all these different memories, but also how much we've learned along the way, and to give ourselves plenty of credit for that, about the person that we've become.

So it might be the fact that once you've written this letter to your younger self today, that in two, three years time, you write another letter for your younger self, for where you are now, and think about how much you've Absolutely fantastic work.

I hope that you are so impressed and inspired by the work that you've put into your letter today and how this exploration of using rhetoric in a completely different way has been really interesting for you.

I'd like you to do two things for me before you finish up today.

The first one is to write down three things that you've learned either across the last three lessons as a whole, or just within this lesson.

The other thing I'd like you to do is to complete your quiz to see how much you've learned.

Next lesson, we're looking at another type letter that uses rhetoric, but of a very, very different kind, and I very much look forward to sharing that with you.

I'll see you again next time.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and the hashtag #LearnwithOak.

I would absolutely adore seeing your letters to your younger selves.