Lesson video

Hello and welcome, I'm Mrs. Bayley, this lesson is about punctuating speech correctly.

For today's lesson, you will need a pen and some paper, you will also need to make sure that your brain is switched on.

Before we begin, just take a moment to ensure that you have removed any potential distractions, such as your mobile phone, you could turn your phone off or put it on silent and away perhaps in a drawer.

Before we start the main tasks, I'm just going to run through what we are going to do in the lesson today.

First of all, we're going to learn about the difference between direct speech and indirect speech.

Then we are going to learn how to punctuate direct speech correctly.

We are then going to correct some errors, this will allow us to test our knowledge of what we have learned.

After that, it is your turn, and what you will do in this section is apply what you've learned about punctuating direct speech by doing a bit of writing.

Finally, you will finish with an exit quiz.

Okay, let's take a little look at the difference between direct speech and indirect speech.

What is direct speech? Direct speech is the reporting of speech by repeating the exact words used by a character or speaker.

For example, she said, "I'm hungry." Notice how the exact words that the character said have been included, I'm hungry.

Indirect speech is when the speech of a character or a speaker is reported, but their exact words are not used.

For example, she said that she was hungry.

We can tell that these are not the exact words used by the character.

If we go back to the previous example, the example of direct speech, we can see that the exact words used by the character, I'm hungry, have been given special punctuation.

We can see that these words have been surrounded by what we call inverted commas.

Now some people call these speech marks, either term is absolutely fine.

I will be calling them inverted commas.

Now let's look again at the indirect speech.

As the writer has written what the character has said in their own words and not used the exact words of the character, no inverted commas have been used.

Okay, let's have a bit of a checkpoint so that you can test your understanding.

Which of the following is an example of direct speech? Is it A, James told me that he doesn't want to watch a horror film.

Or B, Jo said, "I'm busy tonight." Or C, Malik said that he wanted to order pizza.

Which of the following is an example of direct speech? Pause your video and write down the correct answer now.

Absolutely fantastic.

If you selected option B, very well done.

We can see that the character of Jo said the exact words, "I'm busy tonight." She said those exact words.

Notice how these words have been given inverted commas.

Okay, because you did so well, here is another one.

Which of the following is not, not an example of direct speech.

Nadia said, "That's my favourite song." B, Tom said, "I have a dance class at 5 p.

m." C, Raphael said, "I hope it doesn't rain tomorrow." Or D, Sarah said that she doesn't like beans.

Press pause and write down your answer.

Very well done if you wrote down D.

D is not direct speech.

Sara didn't say the exact words she doesn't like beans, and that's why the writer has not used inverted commas.

What an excellent start, very well done.

Okay, let's take a moment to write down a definition.

Can you fill in the gaps? Pause the video and see if you can fill in the gaps with the missing words.

Fantastic, let's take a look.

Direct speech is the reporting of speech by repeating the exact words of a character or a speaker, well done.

Punctuating direct speech.

When we use direct speech, we must make sure that we punctuate it correctly.

I am going to talk you through the different parts now.

Don't worry if you haven't heard some of these terms before, I will talk you through them.

Let's read the sentence first.

Jo said, "I'm busy tonight." The first part, the bit that says Jo said, is what we call a dialogue tag.

The dialogue tag tells us who said it, Jo said.

So Jo said it.

If Jamie said it, the dialogue time would be Jamie said.

So the dialogue tag tells us who said it.

After the dialogue tag comes the comma.

The comma comes after the dialogue tag, and before the open inverted commas.

As I said earlier, some people call these speech marks but we will call them open inverted commas.

So dialogue tag, comma, open inverted commas, what needs to come next? Well the exact words that were said, the direct speech comes next.

I'm busy tonight.

Now watch out for this next bit.

Before we close the inverted commas, we must remember to put a punctuation mark, that's really, really important, so we need a full stop.

You can sometimes put a question mark or an exclamation mark but we're going to explore that in another lesson.

Finally, we finish our sentence with close inverted commas.

Now that was a lot to take in.

We'll just rewind for a moment dialogue tab, comma, open inverted commas, direct speech, full stop, close inverted commas.

I would now like you to have some time to demonstrate what you have learned.

In a moment, I would like you to pause the video.

Then I would like you to write down the sentence, Pat said, "Thank you." And all I would like you to do is to label each of the parts.

So I would like you to an arrow and label where the dialogue tag is for example, then do the same for the comma, and so on.

Pause the video and complete the task now.

Well done, does it look something like this? Dialogue tag, comma, open inverted commas, direct speech, punctuation mark, close inverted commas.

Did you struggle with the last part? Did you have to think twice about the last part? Remembering to put the full stop before the close inverted commas is hard, and when writing sentences many adults get this wrong, but I just want to really kind of draw yourself attention to that, that the punctuation mark comes before the close inverted commas.

Very, very well done, thank you for doing that.

Okay, students, it's time for the next task.

Are you ready and raring to go? In each picture, somebody is saying something.

For each picture you are going to write down who said something followed by what they said.

The first one has been done for you.

Ali said, comma, open inverted commas, the snow is cold, full stop, close inverted commas.

I would like you to pause the video and write down your answers for two and three.

Fantastic work students.

Does your work look like this? Does your punctuation follow the order outlined at the bottom? Dialogue tag, comma, open inverted commas, direct speech, punctuation mark, close inverted commas.

Have a look at this slide and have a look at your work and mark your work.

You may choose to pause the video at this point while you do so.

Okay, it's checkpoint time.

Which of the following has been punctuated correctly? I would like you to pause the video and write down your answer.

Fantastic work students.

It absolutely is option A.

Option A followed all the rules correctly.

Option B broke a rule and option C broke a rule, and let's take a little closer look to see why.

Option B didn't follow this important rule.

When your dialogue tag is positioned at the start of the sentence, you must put a comma after it.

So the rule is that when we start a sentence with a dialogue tag, like Jamie said, or Bella said, we must put a comma after it.

As you can see, option A follows this rule, but option B does not.

Option C did not follow this rule, you must include a punctuation mark before you close your inverted commas.

Take a look.

So with option A we can see there's a punctuation mark before the close inverted commas and we can see by looking at option C here, that it does not follow that rule.

Okay, now it's time for us to correct some errors.

These sentences all contain direct speech, but they have not been punctuated correctly.

Can you correct them? Pause the video and write out the sentences with the correct punctuation now.

Well done students, you are doing so well.

Does your work look like this? Look very closely to check that your commas and full stops are all where they should be.

Pause the video now to mark and correct your work.

We are at the Your turn stage.

This is the final part of the lesson, well done for all your hard work, students.

You are going to write five sentences about five different characters.

You are going to include direct speech in each sentence.

For example, you might write the following, Mr. Perez said comma, open inverted commas, please help me to unload the car, Sophia, full stop, close inverted commas.

Make up a character name and make up what they say, and do that for five different sentences, just remember to apply all of your expert knowledge of how to punctuate speech correctly.

Pause the video and complete that task now.

Fantastic work students, how did it go? Did you remember to include all of the things in this list? A dialogue tag, a comma, open inverted commas, direct speech, punctuation mark, close inverted commas.

Pause the video and mark your work now, remembering to correct any mistakes you have made.

Don't worry about the mistakes, learning from mistakes is the very best way to learn.

Pause the video and mark your work now.

Fantastic, you have worked so very well.

I'm so impressed with your hard work, well done.

Before you do your exit quiz, I just want to say a big thank you.

Thank you for your hard work, and if you are able to, please do take a picture of your work and ask your parent or carer to share it with your teacher so they can see all the fantastic things you've learned today, and if you'd like ask your parent or carer to send a picture of your work to @OakNational on Twitter so that I can see your lovely work too.

Well, thank you very much again for your hard work, and don't forget to complete your exit quiz.