Lesson video

Welcome to today's English lesson.

I'm Mrs. Crompton.

Our focus today, is to look at descriptive writing, and in particular, how to respond to a setting stimulus.

You will need a pen and paper, take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away, and have everything you need to hand.

So, let's begin with really establishing what we mean by descriptive writing.

So, a description will paint a picture of a scene, person or experience in the reader's mind.

It focuses on a moment in time, or a contrast between two points in time.

Most importantly, we're not worrying about generating a whole plot line, while am looking at descriptive writing.

In terms of thinking about, what we want to demonstrate within our writing, we can break that down into three areas.

We need to consider the organisation of our writing, what vocabulary we have selected in order to communicate our ideas, and both of those, come under an overall umbrella of communication, and then we need to think about the technical control.

So let's just dip into these criteria a little bit further.

If you wish you might want to pause, and jot down some of this on your piece of paper, however, it's more for reference that we are going to be working with these three areas, all the way through our learning today.

So, first of all, when we're organising the writing and I actually think this is one of the biggest things that we need to think about.

And sometimes we neglect, we think too much about the words, and we don't actually think about the order and the way that we structure our writing can be really powerful.

If you look at the third point, structure for effect and make deliberate choices, you need to design that writing so that you are communicating with your reader.

You can choose to tell them things at certain points, you've got lots of power.

And we want to do that so that we are engaging and convincing our reader about whatever situation we are describing at the time.

Moving onto vocabulary, we want to make sure that our choices and I've used a word here, are precise, that when we choose a word, it has certain connotations that a reader will get.

And that we have chosen one particular word over another.

And we will look at that a little bit further within today's lesson.

Any linguistic devices that we use thinking about similes or metaphors, again used purposefully, not overused, used just right, and that we are sustaining a certain style and term throughout our piece.

And finally, it goes without saying that we want to have accurate writing in terms of spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

However, what I want to draw out, is the idea that punctuation can be used for effect as well.

So as well as using this punctuation with accuracy, I want to also think about what difference it makes if you put an exclamation mark at the end of that particular sentence, or if you combine a simple sentence with a command, or a colon, or a bracket, or a dash.

And we're going to be thinking about the power of punctuation to communicate meaning.

Okay, let's begin then.

First of all, what I want you to do, and today what you're actually going to be doing is writing lots of little bits to start with, until you staple on your favourite image to work with.

So, this first image, what I would like you to do is to pause the video at this point, and to write down all the ideas that you have got, if you are given the instruction as you are on the screen, to write the description suggested by this image.

I want you to think about the vocabulary, want you to think about anything else from our criteria list that you can address, so maybe you've got a structure in mind, I want you to jot that down on your piece of paper.

Just two minutes I want you to think about it as an initial gut reaction planning exercise.

Soon as you've done that, resume the video.

Now, looking at your piece of paper, you have got some ideas down.

Let's have a look at technique.

This is an interesting technique that you may already have known, and you might have done this but if you haven't come across this, let's have a little think about the purpose of it and how it might be helpful for you, when it comes to a descriptive writing task.

On the screen you can see our image again, but this time, there are five red boxes around various details on the screen.

The first box is of the whole image.

So we've picked out what you would almost have like a wide shots in a film while you're taking in the whole scene.

We've then got various details picked out so, a particular detail on the road at the bottom of the screen, we've got one of the space craft, whatever they are, picked out in a box, we've got something in the distance, something like a pyramid type of thing in the background picked out.

And then we've got an area of the sky picked out for descriptive detail.

And this is a really nice technique to help you move around your image stimulus, and to think about a focal point for five different parts to your writing.

I like five.

Five different paragraphs, would generate about two sides of writing, which is a really good amount for a piece of descriptive writing on the any time to condition.

On the right hand side, we can see some other questions for you to think about.

Are you personally going to be inside or outside the scene? So, are you moving around and walking within those boxes and areas, or, are you going to be an observer? So are you going to be a narrator looking into the scene? A couple of choices there.

Look again your picture and let's try box-planning.

Pause, complete the activity, as soon as you're happy, then resume the video.

Next one ladies and gentlemen, what we're going to look at, is a table this time, I would like you to draw on your piece of paper, and on the table, you're going to be filling in your initial ideas to the prompts.

So let's have a look at it together.

We've got the scene again, and this time, thinking about the image, again another planning tool, to help you get the most out of these images is to think about place, sights, sounds, smells, sensations and atmosphere.

Now, when it comes to something like smells, I know we've got our five senses, and we need to think about all of them, however, it smells isn't important to you.

You can eliminate that.

So think about appropriateness.

Sometimes you do see pieces of writing where someone's trying to jam everything in and it might not be the right thing.

So, if you wish you can eliminate something that is not appropriate.

Similarly, sensations could be touch, they could be feelings as well.

So it could be other things that you're considering, okay.

So go back to the instruction slide, you now have control, draw the table, pause, complete the task, and then resume when you are ready.

I'll be there waiting for you.

And welcome back.

So now what we're going to do is to combine those two ideas that we've looked at so far with this whole thing of using table and the image, but adding a little bit more.

So this time we're going to think about two things.

I want you to think now far more carefully about how you're going to move around the image, in terms of either the narrative voice, in terms of you being the narrator, not that you're writing a story I mean by that, but your narrator voice, or, if you're in the scene, how are you going to do it in a first person way? I want you to think about the sequence now, be really clear when am addressing the organisation aspect.

And then the other thing that I want us to be really precise about is the descriptive detail that you're going to add.

And we had that in the vocabulary column, being precise.

And I have put that, you might want to redraw the table, just so that you've got plenty of space, and you're not getting everything crammed.

So let's just have a look at the planning tools that I've got for you.

And the first question I want you to think about is the mood.

So when you look at that image, we want to settle on a feeling that you want your reader to have as they work with your piece of writing, as they're responding to your piece of writing.

Do you want your reader to have a positive, or a negative feeling towards this setting? Decision made? Okay, so let's have a look at how we can be precise with our vocabulary.

Let's have a look on the left hand side.

We have got four words there.

We can describe the city in terms of the buildings as gleaming.

On the right hand side, you might want to create a more ominous feeling by saying that they were shadowy.

We could describe the city as beckoning, or we could describe it as prohibiting.

We could describe the city as inviting, or we could describe it as menacing, welcoming or hostile.

Each of these words has a different feel, and then if you look at the list of words, if you picked those out and put them within your extract of writing, you're going to start creating a tone to the piece, in mood that you are in control of.

So this is the next step that I want you to think about along side the sequencing.

Okay.

So the reminder is, going back to the table, rethinking it, adding the extra details and so when you're thinking about the place, the sights, the sounds now think about the mood that you want, whether it's positive, negative, or maybe you want a twist somewhere in the middle.

So think about that sequence.

That's the secondary part sequence.

So in terms of sequence, which bits of the image are you going to travel to first? Are you going to do the wide shot first, and then move to one of the spacecraft? How are you moving around? Okay.

So two things, I'll go back to the instruction slide, and then you have these prompts slides to help you out.

Number one, how are you going to move around the image, sequence? Try make a list one to five, and then you've got a really clear guide.

Number two, what descriptive detail will you add? And there, we are thinking about positive, negative mood, that atmosphere, the connections that you want your reader to make between the chain of words that you have deliberately put into your piece of writing.

Control is over to you, work through the slides, as soon as you're comfortable, resume the video and I'll be waiting for you.

And welcome back.

So, brand new picture on the screen now.

What we're going to do now, is to dip into two more images.

And this is an opportunity for you to select.

So you might not want to do box-planning.

You might want to just look at the image, and think about the grid instead.

So I've given you two alternatives about how to start your initial planning.

And what we're going to do now, is to practise with two further images, and you are going to go through the same process.

You're going to think about, how are you going to divide the image up, either using box-planning, or using the grid with sights sounds et cetera.

You're then going to think about the sequence, so the organisation of your writing, how we are going to move around the image, and I want you to number it one to five, so you've got almost a paragraph plan.

And then, I want you to think about the mood and the tone of your piece of writing.

This image has got very deliberate colour choices.

When I picked this, I wanted you to think about capturing the mood that is created and using the image to help you.

I know there's an individual in here too, so you might want to comment on the individual I say, more of a robot, but what cyborg creature that is, you can make reference to it.

There's a second image that's going to be very similar, but very different colouring.

So we've got two more to work with and practise our techniques.

So it's over to you for the planning, when you're ready, resume the video.

And welcome back.

And here's the third and final image that I promised.

So we have now looked at the initial setting that we worked with.

We then looked at, we'll call it cyborg picture, the one with the very futuristic setting, and now we have got another setting.

A little bit mysterious, but very deliberate choice in terms of colouring again because I want you to really concentrate on tone and atmosphere and thinking about the sensation you want your reader to have from your writing.

So, a repeat of the process, planning through, we're thinking about, five points, sequenced, vocabulary choices, box-planning if you wish, or the grid it's over to you, as soon as you're happy, then resume.

And welcome back.

So, at this point, what I want you to do, is to choose one of the three, whichever one you've enjoyed working with the most.

And we're going to work with that now, and do a little bit more thinking and all of this is around the planning sequence.

And now, what we want to concentrate on is about the writing itself and the sequence that you've selected.

So within your sequence, even though it's a descriptive piece, and we're not trying to write a story, it's very difficult to think about a piece of writing without thinking about generating some sort of movements, and thinking about creating some sort of shape.

So within your piece of writing, how have you got a sense of a starting point, a sense of moving through some sort of action emerging to a climactic point? And that climax could either be, somewhere you zoom in on a descriptive detail and do a really tight close up, or it could be something where you zoom out? And have you got a sense of that moving through to a final conclusion? So these are the questions I now want you to ask yourself.

Does your sequence make sense? Is it structured for effect? Pause while you look at that idea and then resume the video.

Now, we're going to finally have a little look at this idea of working with that final image.

Checking through that our vocabulary is precise, that the sequence allows us to create pace and texture.

And what I'm going to do is to show you an example of a particular text and how they have used a focal point, to add another layer of meaning.

So, in these next two extracts you're going to see how writers are using descriptive detail to add deeper meaning.

In this instance, both writers use the image of a window.

Just thinking about a window, everyday objects, we're not going to think anything particularly purposeful of it.

Wooh, maybe we should.

We need to think about some of these ideas that it represents.

Ideas of being maybe a barrier ideas of it actually opening up onto something, depends how you want to see it.

Similarly with a door, you can think about how these different details within your image, can allow for an extra meaning.

Let's have a look at the examples together.

Extract one.

"She looked out of the windows, the street was blurred and misty, but light striking the panes, turned their dullness to opal and silver, and the jeweler's shop seen through this were fairy palaces." And extract two.

"He had viewed the world as if it were a picture framed by the moulding around the window.

He believed the scene would never leave his mind, wall, blind man, tree, cart, road." I've got two extracts there, and what I want you to think about is how the window is being used in the first one.

We've got this image of she, the individual in the story being blocked from a world outside.

It seems blurred, but then there's just this little detail that offers a sense of hope through the opal and silver, and they looked like fairy palaces to her.

The second one is interesting, because the window is imagined by the person as a picture frame.

And it's something actually that this person sees quite a lot because they're in a hospital bed looking out through the window, and they're constantly seeing the same image.

So that would feel like a picture frame.

Wouldn't it? What we can tell from this, is that actually the scene doesn't change very much.

So I've got sense of monotony presented.

Having to look at your own extract, and see whether you can review the work you've completed.

Think about the precision of your vocabulary, and then think about sequence and whether it allows you to create pace and texture.

As you go through it, is there a particular focal point that you could add the detail of a window, et cetera, to your piece of writing? So control is over with you.

I'll be waiting for you in a moment to have a little look on next and final step.

And welcome back.

So, final step, in those two extracts, both protagonists felt a conflict between themselves and the world around them, the society around them.

For the girl, the glass was a barrier.

Something that she could see the rest of the world through.

For the man who I said was in a hospital bed, again, it was a separation.

He's not well, he's not part of society.

So again, the window represented an image and a barrier.

And this is the final thing to consider within your piece of writing.

Taking the four types of conflict, and let's just have a reminder of those on the right hand side, man versus man, man versus nature, man versus himself, or man versus society.

Are any of these relevant to your piece of writing? And could you add that extra layer of detail within your response to a setting stimulus? Final reflection point for you there, reread, think about which one you could address, as soon as you're ready, then resume the video.

So welcome back and thank you for your focus today.

I hope you found some of the strategies helpful planning techniques, and it might be you're itching to write your piece.

Now please do, if you want.

And that's the main purpose, that you have got some techniques in place now, so that if you are given a setting stimulus, you can think about the steps that we went through today in order to generate a piece of writing that had descriptive detail, had shape.

So we're thinking about the organisation and also had that deeper lack of meaning.

Thank you for your focus today.

Please remember to do the exit quiz.

That's still part of the lesson, that's really important that you've finally complete that last step, and enjoy the rest of your learning today.