Hello there.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

It's fantastic to see you.

My name's Mr. Barnsley, and I am so excited to continue studying Myths, Legends, and Stories That Inspire.

And today we are gonna be getting really creative.

We are gonna be writing our own narratives, our own stories, inspired by some of these fantastic myths and legends.

Now, I'm gonna give you, I'm be sharing with you in today's lesson a five part narrative structure.

So this structure is gonna help us think about how we plan our stories, how we plan our narratives.

As I said, we're gonna do these, we're gonna write stories that are inspired by some of the myths and legends that you've already read.

So it might be useful to have access to some of these, have them in front of you to remind you of those stories when it comes to planning some stories of your own.

Okay, I think it's time for us to get started.

Let's dive in.

So let's have a look at today's outcome.

By the end of today's lesson, you're gonna be able to plan a narrative using a five part structure.

Now here are five key words that we're gonna be looking out for and using in today's lesson.

The first is Yemoja.

In the Yoruba religion, Yemoja was the goddess of creation, water, moon, motherhood, and protection.

And a Mami Wata, well, this was a water spirit or deity, a God, and they were sacred to the West, Central, and Southern Africa.

Reactive means you're responding quickly and unthinkingly to something.

If you're disgruntled, you can be described as being unhappy.

And a flashback is a transition in a story to an earlier time in the life of one or more characters.

Do keep an eye out for all of these key words and see if you can spot them, remember what they mean, and use them in your own work and own discussions today.

So today we're gonna be using the five part narrative structure and we're gonna do that in two parts.

First, gonna make sure we understand what the five part narrative structure is, and then we're gonna do some planning for some creative writing, some narrative writing, using that five part structure.

But we're gonna have to start with making sure we understand what this structure is.

So Alex wants to write a narrative, a story, and he shares his plan with us.

He says, "My main character is gonna be inspired by a West African myth I read about a goddess called Yemoja.

She'll be really important to the story and be a character who helps people.

I will write in paragraphs and I want to include some dialogue and some of the good vocabulary I have learned recently." All right, over to you.

What's successful, what's good about Alex's plan? But is there anything that could be improved? So let's think about the success and things and areas for development in Alex's plan.

You can, if you've got a partner, you can discuss this with them.

If you're working by yourself, you can just think through these two bullet points independently.

Over to you then.

Pause the video, do some thinking, and press Play when you think you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

I heard lots of you saying it was great that Alex was gonna be inspired by one of the myths, one of the legends, one of the inspirational stories that he has heard.

And he is been inspired by this West African myth.

You thought that was great 'cause it'll help him really formulate some ideas that he can be inspired by another story.

But I heard lots of you talking about how Alex was almost planning this, and I think I heard a few of you say something similar to what's on my next slide.

I heard lots of you talking about Alex improving his plan by being more specific about the structure of his narrative.

So a reminder that structure means how the plot, how the story is organised, the sequence in which events occur, and how the writer moves us from the beginning to the middle to the end of their story.

And this is really important because as readers, it's really important that we feel that the story that we're reading has been planned for.

We want to think that there's been some thought in the journey that we are going on.

We don't want to think that these are just random and the writers just written the next idea that comes into their head.

So thinking about structure, particularly a structure of a short piece of narrative writing is really, really important because if we're only writing a short story, a short narrative, we've got less time, we've got less space to develop our characters, we've got less time and less space to develop our plot and our storyline like we would if we were writing a whole novel.

So it's really important we think carefully about our structural choices.

So one way we can do this is rely on the five part narrative structure.

It can be really, really useful in helping us plan our stories.

Now, yes, we can apply this to a full novel, but we can also apply this to a short story.

Let's look at each of these five sections, these five parts of the narrative structure.

So we can always start our narrative with an exposition.

This is where we establish our characters and our setting.

Who is in our story and where is it set? We can also start to introduce some sort of problem or conflict that's going to occur in our story.

The rising action is where our story starts to build towards the climax, characters and plots are developed, we're starting to introduce these potentially interesting or shocking events that might occur, we're really starting to keep our reader intrigued.

The climax of our story is the moment of drama or emotional intensity.

It's often quite short, but it's this moment, this peak that we've been building to and often one or more of our characters' lives might change in some way.

The falling action then is the aftermath, the fallout from the climax, the fallout from this moment of drama or emotional intensity.

And we start to see one or more characters moving towards the resolution to solving anything that might have gone wrong.

And we often finish our text with a resolution, this is how the story ends Now, it's really important that we know it doesn't have to be a happy ending, it doesn't have to be a simple ending, and it doesn't even have to be an ending that feels really conclusive, like everything is done and dusted.

But we should always leave the reader with some sense of finality, like some of the questions that we have introduced to them earlier in our narrative have started to be tied up.

So lots of stories follow this kind of structure.

Let's look at an example.

So let's look at the story of Daedalus and Icarus.

So in the beginning, Daedalus and his son, Icarus, we learn that they need to escape prison.

The rising action sees Daedalus create wings out of wax and feathers.

And he advises his son on how to use them safely and it helps them escape.

In the climax though, we know Icarus doesn't listen to his father and he flies too close to his sun, his wings break down and he plunges into the ocean.

So what's the aftermath to this climax? What's the falling action? Well, we see Daedalus watch his son plunge into the ocean and we know that Icarus dies.

So how is this story resolved? Well, in the resolution we learn hat Daedalus offers his wings to the god, Apollo, and he swears never to try and fly again.

He realises this is a power that shouldn't be given ordinary humans and should be left to the gods.

So you can see this journey builds up to this climax of Icarus' fall and then falls down into this resolution of Daedalus learning a lesson.

Why don't we look at another example from a folk tale from "One Thousand and One Nights"? Let's have a look at how this five part structure could be applied to "The Fishermen and the Jinni".

So in the exposition we meet a poor fisherman who needs to earn money, but could only cast his net out three times a day.

In the rising action, the fisherman ends up releasing a powerful, powerful jinni from a jar that he catches in his net and the jinni threatens to kill him.

The climax, this kind of peak moment, the jinni is tricked into returning back into the jar where the fisherman traps him again.

And in the falling action, we know that the fisherman tells the jinni a story which is intended to teach the jinni kindness.

And then the resolution, the story's end, ends with the jinni learning his lesson and he rewards the fisherman by turning the fish he catches into precious jewels.

Okay, so we've learned about the five part narrative structure and we've applied it to two stories that you might be familiar with.

Now, before we move on, let's check that we've really understood what order these five parts come in.

So which of the following shows the five part narrative structure ordered correctly? Is it A, exposition, rising action, resolution, falling action, climax? Is it B, exposition, rising action, falling action, climax, resolution? Or is it C, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution? Pause video, have a think A, B, or C, and press Play when you think you've got an answer.

Welcome back, really great work if you said C.

Of course we start with the exposition, setting the scene, we rise action, we start to bring in more problems, so we build up to the ultimate climax, seeing it as the top of a triangle.

And then we start, once that climax happened, we fall, we start to tie up these loose ends, and then we resolve the story in some way.

So again, let's check we were paying attention, which aspect of the five part narrative structure is missing.

Exposition, rising action, (pauses) something, falling action, resolution.

What goes in that gap? Pause video, have a think, and press Play when you've got an idea.

Welcome back.

Great work if you said climax.

Well done if you got that right.

Okay, over to you then for our first part, the first task of today's lesson.

Alex starts to re-plan his initial ideas.

So we saw Alex at the beginning, he had a good inspiration for his story, but he wasn't really thinking of its structure.

But now Alex is gonna use the five part narrative structure to improve his plan.

So you can see on the screen that he's got his exposition, remember he's writing his five-part narrative structure based on the story of Yemoja and the Mami Watas.

And his exposition, he says that we're gonna learn that Yemoja is a powerful goddess, but she needs support gathering the souls of enslaved people who die at sea.

He's already thought about his resolution that Yemoja and her Mami Watas are all united in their desire to help ease the passing of those who have been enslaved.

What I need you to do, and you can do this via discussion if you've got a partner or you can just think through this independently, what ideas do you have about the middle three sections of Alex's story? What would you put in the rising action, for example? What would you make the climax of Alex's story? And what would you make, what would you put in the falling action of Alex's story? So if you've got a partner, you can share some ideas, you can be creative, some ideas back and forward.

And remember if you're doing that, you can agree with each other, you can build on each other's, but sometimes you might disagree with each other, you might say, "Actually, I'm not sure that works as a climax." And that's absolutely fine for you to challenge each other's ideas, but just remember to do that in a really respectful way.

And if you're working by yourself, you can either jot down some notes or you can just think through this independently.

All right, pause the video.

Time to think about any other ideas we could add to Alex's plan.

Over to you.

Welcome back, it was great to hear so many creative ideas then, and this is what I love about writing narratives, the creativity that you can bring to it.

All right, Alex had a go at filling in his plan, but unfortunately he's jumbled them all up.

So what I need you to do is match the appropriate subheading from the five part narrative structure on the left, rising action, climax, and falling action, to Alex's ideas on the right.

So pause the video and see if you can match up Alex's ideas to where you think they should fit in the plan.

Remember to press Play when you think you've got the answers.

Welcome back.

Let's see how you did.

So for the rising action, it was it seems sensible that we match this with Alex's idea where he said that Yemoja sees a ship transporting the enslaved and sees a number of bodies thrown overboard.

She decides to transform them into Mami Watas.

The climax could be when the Mami Wata awake, when they become alive.

And then the falling action could be Yemoja telling the Mami Watas what their purpose in life is now they've been transformed into these water deities.

Well done if you've got those right.

I want us, before we move on, I really want us to think about Alex's rising action.

How Yemoja sees a ship transporting the enslaved and sees a number of bodies thrown overboard, she decides to transform them into the Mami Watas.

How does that prepare us for this climax of the story, do you think? Why don't you pause the video, if you've got a partner, discuss, or just think through this question independently.

How does Alex's rising action prepare us for the climax of the story? Pause the video, have a think, and press Play when you think you've got some ideas.

Welcome back.

I think I heard lots of you saying things like, "Actually, this is a very emotive image." These poor people who've already been enslaved and then if they've died in transport, their body's just been thrown into the ocean like with no care.

It really makes us feel as a reader, it could make us feel incredibly sympathetic, empathetic for these people, these lives that have been taken and wasted.

So it really builds up this anticipation for seeing them being given this new purpose being transformed into Mami Watas.

So I think it really like builds up and we're really waiting for this moment where Yemoja turns them into, transforms them into Mami Watas and brings them back to a new sense of life.

Well done if you said something similar.

Okay, we've done some, we've been getting our head round what the five parts narrative structure is, now it's time for us to put it into use and do some planning of our own.

So in this learning cycle, you're gonna plan your own story using the five part narrative structure.

Andeep considers some recent characters that he's read stories about in order to inspire his own story.

Let's be inspired by some of the myths and legends that we have read.

So Andeep reminds us of all the characters from Greek mythology that we could be inspired by.

Andeep also reminds us of the Lady of Shallot, a cursed woman.

He thinks about Yemoja and the Mami Watas from West African mythology.

He thinks about Shahrazad, Shahrayar, and the jinni in the Middle Eastern folktales.

He remembers Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England, who was queen just for nine days.

And he also thinks about some characters from the "Canterbury Tales", particularly the Miller.

Why don't you pause for a moment now and have a think about which characters or stories might inspire you in writing your own narrative.

You could use any of the characters you've seen on screen or potentially some other characters in other myths or legends that you know about.

Why don't you pause the video and if you've got a partner you can share some ideas, go back and forth, otherwise you can just think through this independently.

All right, pause the video, have a think, and press Play when you've got an inspiration for your narrative.

Welcome back.

I heard loads of great ideas there.

Andeep has decided he wants to focus his story on the character of the jinni from "One Thousand and One Nights".

So let's watch how Andeep plans the exposition of his story.

A reminder that the exposition should establish your characters and setting, but also start to introduce some sort of problem or conflict.

So Andeep's gonna start by establishing the jinni is a rebellious and reactive character.

He reacts impulsively, he often doesn't think about things before he does them.

We also learn that he spends time with other disgruntled jinnis, other jinnis who are unhappy with the life that they have.

He's angry about his level of power and status in comparison to other people in the world and he decides he wants to do something about it.

Now, Andeep mentions that he's gonna include a flashback here to a moment when God told him to be content with who he was, but he chooses to ignore that memory, he chooses to ignore God.

Let's have a look at why Andeep's exposition is so successful.

Well, firstly, he makes sure he focuses on establishing the character.

We're gonna learn something about the character in this part of Andeep's story.

But he also introduces this conflict.

This character is angry, he doesn't feel powerful enough, he doesn't feel like he has enough status in the world and he's going to do something about it.

But what I really liked about Andeep's work here is that he also considers some structural details.

He said, "I've learned how to do use flashbacks, so why don't I use one in this piece of writing?" Great work from Andeep there.

This level of detail from Andeep is really appropriate for the task.

It means that when he comes to writing, he's got a plan that's really gonna guide him to writing something that's really interesting.

Okay, let's pause for a moment and think about these two other examples of expeditions, this time they've been focused on the frame story in "One Thousand and One Nights".

So I want you to think about which pupil has created the stronger plan, is it the one on the left or is it the one on the right? You are gonna need to pause the video and read through each of these carefully and then press Play when you think you have selected the most impressive plan.

All right, pause the video, do some thinking, and press Play when you're ready to continue.

Welcome back, I hope you said the second plan here.

This one focuses more on character development, but also on bringing some of those issues, conflicts about facing death, and they've included a flashback, remembering being told stories as a child.

Great job if you picked that plan.

Okay, I am now handing over to you to do some of your own planning.

I would like you to plan a narrative inspired by a character from a story that you have read.

I really want you to use the five part narrative structure to support your planning.

Okay, so think about what's gonna happen in each section.

All right, I know you can do this.

I'm really, really excited to see you bring all of your creativity to the task and be inspired by some of these excellent myths and legends that you may have read.

All right, pause the video, give this a go, and press Play when you think you're done.

Good luck.

Welcome back.

It was great to see you being so creative there.

I hope you're really pleased with the plan that you've created.

Before we finish for today, I do want to take one moment to reflect on the plans that we've created.

So I want us to look over them, review them, and make sure you can answer these questions.

What is your main character like? And what is your setting like? What problem or conflict does your main character face? What is the most dramatic or emotionally intense moment of your story? And how does your resolution give some sense of finality to the reader? All right, pause the video, look again at your plan, and ask yourself these four questions.

Over to you.

Well, that's it, we've reached the end of today's lesson.

Fantastic work, it was great to see you being so creative today.

On the screen, you can see a summary of all the learning that we've covered.

Let's go through this once more together so you can feel really confident before you move on to your next lesson.

We've learned that the structure of a narrative means how the plot is organised, its sequence.

We've learned that readers need to feel that the structure of a story has been planned.

Now, one way to plan a narrative is to rely on the five part narrative structure.

The five part narrative structure divides a story into exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution.

Thank you so much for joining me in today's lesson.

It's been fantastic learning alongside you.

I do hope to see you in one of our lessons again in the future.

All right, bye-bye for now.