Hello and welcome to today's lesson.

Thank you so much for coming to this lesson.

I'm really looking forward to teaching you today and guiding your learning through this fascinating lesson.

We're going to be looking at a speech by Hillary Clinton and we're going to be looking at how she uses a motif.

And a motif is a fantastically powerful linguistic device employed by writers time and time again.

I really think you're gonna enjoy learning about motifs.

So let's get started.

So by the end of today's lesson, you'll be able to identify and explain how Hillary Clinton uses a motif in her speech about women's rights.

As ever, we are going to begin with the keywords, they are here.

They are motif, global, collective, solidarity and recurring.

Let's look at what they mean in more detail.

Now, a motif, which is really the substance of today's lesson, is a recurring idea or symbol that contributes to the overall meaning of a piece of work.

Something that is global relates to the whole world.

Collective, this is done by people acting as a group.

If you act collectively, you act in a group.

To show solidarity to somebody or something is to act in unity or agreement around a feeling, you can be in solidarity around how people feel or around some actions that you think you need to take.

And there's the word recurring: happening again and again, and we're gonna see that when we come to look at motifs in detail.

Now if you would need a little bit of a minute or two to note down the key words or the definitions, please feel free to pause the video and join us when you are ready.

So let's look at the outline of today's lesson.

There are three learning cycles and we are going to start by reading Hillary Clinton's speech.

We are then gonna go and look at what a motif is.

We're gonna look at it in a short piece of text by Shakespeare before we go on to looking at how Hillary Clinton uses a motif in the speech that you will have read.

So this is what we are going to read.

It's an extract from her 1995 speech to the UN, or the United Nations.

The speech was called "Women's Rights are Human Rights" and the UN is an international organisation focused on issues around things like healthcare and education and conflict.

It was formed after the Second World War in the hope that it could act to make countries more cooperative with each other.

Before we read the whole speech, we're just gonna look at the beginning of it.

This is how the second part of her speech began: "Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility for those who cannot." Now, I've got one simple question for you.

Who does "those", that word "those" refer to? You can pause the video while you discuss that.

So what did you think? Well, Jacob said that he thought that the first "those" refers to people at the conference, the United Nations conference.

And he said that the second "those" are the women who don't have power and who aren't able to be at such a powerful organisation.

And Izzy added that the first "those" might also refer to people like us who are reading her speech because she thinks that Hillary Clinton's view is that everybody should care and help about the situation of women globally.

Really good responses from Jacob and Izzy, and from you too.

Let's move on.

Now you are going to read the extract independently.

You will find it in additional materials and I want you to read from the sentence that begins, "Those of us who have the opportunity to.

." And then I'd like you to pause at the end where it says "our children and our grandchildren." I hope you enjoy reading this speech.

Pause the video while you do, and off you go.

Welcome back.

Really good to watch you reading the extract and noticing the way that you practise your active reading skills underlining keywords, circling things you wanted to kind of have explained or to think more about.

Very good.

Before we move on, we're going to have a quick check for understanding.

So I'm going to put up a series of statements and I want you to tell me which of them are true.

There'll be more than one that is true.

So here we go.

Number one: Women around the world are denied basic rights like education and healthcare solely because they are women.

Two: The speech highlights the historical silence surrounding women's issues and calls for it to be broken.

Three: The speaker argues that discussing women's rights separately from human rights is still acceptable in today's society.

Four: The speech encourages us to donate generously towards causes affecting women's lives.

Five: Creating a world where every woman is treated with respect and dignity is described as a collective effort.

And six: Hillary Clinton talks about the need to make an effort for the generations that come after us.

Now decide which of those statements are true.

You can pause the video while you think.

Is this what you put? One, two, five, and six.

Very good.

Number three is wrong because she's saying it's no longer acceptable.

This has to stop, is what she's saying.

And although she's very, she does cite causes that affect women's lives, she's not really talking about money, she's talking more about awareness and empowerment, not specifically about donating towards charity or causes.

Really well done.

Let's move on.

Now is your opportunity to show your understanding of Hillary Clinton's speech in a little bit more detail.

I want you to write a summary of the speech.

I'm gonna put up some ideas that I think will support you with this: powerful speech, women's rights, global, it's one of our keywords, responsibility, calling for action and solidarity, another of our keywords and better future for our descendants.

So pause the video while you do that and off you go.

Well done and welcome back.

You tackled that activity really well.

I was particularly impressed by the way that you thought long and hard about finding the right words and using the right words for your summary.

'Cause when you are writing a short, concise summary, it's really important that you pick the correct words.

So you might have written something like this: that "in this powerful speech, Hillary Clinton speaks on behalf of women's rights and thinks that it is the responsibility of the more fortunate to get involved.

She calls for action and a global response to the problems facing women.

She finishes by saying that we should show solidarity because our actions will affect our future descendants." So how does your response compare with this paragraph? If you'd like to pause the video and just check over it again and take any ideas or use the vocabulary from here, please feel free.

Rejoin us on the video when you're ready.

So let's look again at our learning today.

So we've read the speech and now we're going to look at what a motif is.

So what is it? Well, it's in literature.

It's a recurring theme, idea, or symbol that contributes to the overall meaning of a work.

You most often find it with symbols and ideas.

The word comes from the Latin word "movere" meaning to move.

So I'd like you to think of a motif as being like a design that appears again and again in a repeating pattern like it's moving across a text.

And why do writers use them? Well, they act as a unifying element.

They weave through the text and they act as a unifying element that helps convey the author's message.

And they carry the author's message because they add depth to a narrative.

Often what they do is they take an ordinary object and give it very significant, symbolic meaning.

So now we're going to look at a motif in practise.

We're gonna look at just three lines from a speech from Shakespeare's play, "Romeo and Juliet", in which Romeo talks about Juliet using a motif.

It's important to understand that he's not talking to her because she doesn't know, in this scene, she doesn't know he's there.

He's looking at her and talking about her.

So this is the first part of this speech.

"But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east and Juliet is the sun.

Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon." Can you spot the motif? What is it? That's right.

He uses a motif of light.

He starts with the word light and then he refers to two light sources, picking up the pattern of light with two different types of light source, the day one and the night one.

We have the sun and the moon.

Now once we've identified the motif, in this case, light, what we need to do as readers is we ask ourselves, why did the writer choose that? Why that particular image of light? Why that particular motif of light? Or we ask ourselves, what impression do we get from the repeated image? Have a think about that.

It's a really interesting question, isn't it? And we might say something like this in response: that the motif of light creates an impression of Juliet's beauty.

Light and sun are essential for life.

So Shakespeare is suggesting that Juliet is a life-giving force.

The sun is rising.

He says "Arise, fair sun," so the sun is rising, which could suggest Romeo's sense of hope as he gazes at Juliet.

Daybreak because it's a new day, a new dawn, a new day, is often a symbol of hope and renewal and new expectations.

So, excellent response to that.

I think what I really impressed me about it is the way that you said more than one thing about the motif.

So you showed that you understood that the meaning of behind a motif can move.

It can move throughout the text.

Really well done.

Let's move on.

Before we go onto the next stage, I'd like us to have a quick check for understanding.

So which of the following is the best definition of a motif in literature? The main character in a story, also known as the protagonist.

A recurring symbol or idea that supports the main message.

C: The central conflict that drives a story forward.

The setting, time and place, in which a story takes place.

Have a think.

Make your choice.

The answer is B.

Well done.

Excellent.

Let's move on.

So now what I'd like you to do is to show your understanding of motifs in a little bit more detail.

I'm gonna put up some sentence fragments and I would like you to combine them into one complex sentence that defines motifs and also explains why they can be effective.

Here are the sentence fragments: and provide the story with symbolic value, recurring ideas or images in literature, act to unify the text, and motifs.

Now when you do this, you need to pay particular attention to the punctuation you're gonna use and make sure that your sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop.

You can pause the video while you do that.

Off you go.

Hello and welcome back.

You did that very well with a great deal of focus.

So there are the sentence fragments and this is what you should have written.

Motifs, recurring ideas or images in literature, act to unify the text and provide the story with symbolic value.

Well done.

That was really good.

Now we're going to move on to the last learning cycle in our lesson.

So, now we are on the last learning cycle.

Now we've read her speech, we've looked at a motif, and now what we're going to do is we're going to bring the two together and understand how Hillary Clinton uses a motif.

Let's read the first part of the extract from her speech.

"Those of us who have the opportunity to be here have the responsibility to speak for those who cannot.

Speaking to you today, I speak for them, just as each of us speaks for women around the world who are denied the chance to go to school, or see a doctor, or own property or have a say about the direction of their lives, simply because they are women." What is the motif she uses? Well done if you said speech and silence.

She says she's there to speak on behalf of those, and see how many times she repeats the word, "speak for those who cannot," "speaking to you today," "I speak for them just as each of us speaks." And then she talks about the women who do not have a say, who are silenced.

So the motif is of speech and silence.

Very well done.

Let's move on.

Let's have a quick check for understanding.

Hillary Clinton uses the motif of speech and silence in her speech.

True.

I knew you'd all get that.

But what I want you to do now is think about why.

Why is she doing it? Or another way of thinking about it is why is it effective to use a motif of speech and silence in this particular speech? Is it A: The motif of speech and silence is effective because she's writing a speech? Or is it B: The motif of speech and silence is effective because she wants to make sure women's voices are heard? You can pause the video while you have a think about that and then make your choice.

It's B.

Yes, she is writing a speech, but actually the whole topic of her speech is about voices and who is heard and whose voices matter.

And she wants to amplify, that's a great word for this sort of speech, make louder the voices of women who are, at the moment, silenced.

Really well done.

Let's move on.

So now we're gonna look at developing explanations.

We're gonna read some more statements taken from that extract that you've been reading and we're gonna see how she uses speech, the motif of speech and silence in these two statements.

Okay.

"It's time to break the silence.

It's time for us to say here, for the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women's rights as separate from human rights because for too long, the history of women has been a history of silence." And she goes on to say, "If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women's rights and women's rights are human rights, once and for all.

Let this conference be our, and the world's call to action.

Let us heed that call." Stirring staff, isn't it? Now, this is what I want you to discuss.

How does she use the motif of speech and silence? What you want to be discussing looking at is how does it change? How does it move across the text? And how is it effective? You can pause the video while you do that.

Off you go.

Welcome back.

That was a fantastic discussion.

I love the way you had such different ideas about what you were reading there about what silence and speech might mean.

I'd like to share with you what the Oak students said.

Jacob said that "by saying we need to break the silence, it suggests that the silence is very strong, almost like a wall." And that's a very powerful image of how hard to break down and how much of a barrier that silence is.

And Izzy says that "the world must hear." She noted that she talks about the world hearing.

She doesn't just want us to hear or the people at the UN to hear.

She wants everyone to hear about the issues.

She doesn't want people to pretend that they don't know what the issues are anymore.

And then this is a really interesting point from Jacob.

He said, "Did you notice," he asked, "that the words for speaking got louder?" Hillary Clinton starts with "say", and that's an ordinary everyday tone of voice.

And Izzy really picked up that idea and ran with it and said, "Yes, and by the end, she uses the word 'call', which is a much louder voice than saying." And she also talks about echoing, which means that the message is repeated.

So there's a number of ways that she strengthens her message, using that motif of speech and silence.

If there's any ideas that you would like to jot down from the Oaks or you have anything more you would like to say in a discussion, now's the time to do that.

You can pause the video while you do that.

Now, before we say goodbye, I'd like us to summarise what you have been learning today.

This is what you've been learning.

A motif is a repeated image or idea within a piece of writing that has symbolic significance.

Motifs give the writer the opportunity to weave thematic ideas and add another layer of meaning.

And they often do that with quite ordinary objects.

Ordinary everyday objects are filled with a symbolic power and meaning.

And Clinton uses the motif of speech and silence.

And that motif suggests that women have been silenced and not been allowed the same freedom and rights of men.

I'd like to say a big thank you to you for your wonderful focus and your hard work.

I really look forward to seeing you in another lesson on writers taking a stand.

Have a fantastic rest of the day and bye for now.