Lesson video

Welcome to today's English lesson.

I'm Mrs. Crompton.

Our focus today is writing skills and the use of symbolism in our work.

You will need a pen and paper.

Take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away and have everything you need at hand.

To begin with, let's think about how symbolism can help us in our writing.

So the use of an image, a symbol, will help us create additional meaning and emotion in a story.

The other thing that I would like us to know at this stage is that if we keep repeating that image throughout our piece of writing, that then becomes what's known as a motif.

Let's experiment with that a little bit further.

We're going to look at a series of images and what I would like you to do is to consider each of the images as a symbol or a relationship.

That could be a romantic relationship.

It could be a relationship between a parent and child.

It could be a positive relationship.

It could be a broken relationship.

So there are various choices that you can make when you see the symbols.

What I would like you to do on your piece of paper is to write the title Exploring Images.

And when you see each of the images, I want you to write down what it is that you see.

I want you to think about the literal properties of each of the items, and also the potential connotations.

Let's just have a look.

I've been delaying it, but let's look now.

Here we have a kite flying in the sky, but notice it is still held by the strings, so think about that as a particular property to the kite.

It could be a symbol of freedom, but it's not a complete freedom.

Okay, I won't give any more clues away.

With the next one, we have an image of a tree.

What could a tree represent in terms of a relationship? The next image is of a kaleidoscope.

So that's the cube-like toy that you might've played with when you were younger and you twist it and inside you get lots of different patterns.

So we've got an image of a kaleidoscope.

In the bottom corner, we have an image of a painter's pallette with all of the different colours there.

And then finally, we have a piece of string or rope that is frayed.

It's starting to fall apart.

So what could each of those represent? I'll just go back to the instruction slide for you, and then hand over control to you.

You are writing down what you see in terms of literal properties and then potential connotations.

Over to you and I'll be waiting for the next step when you are ready.

And welcome back.

So probably lots of ideas there, and it might be that you chose different relationships for the different items. That's fantastic.

We're now going to have a little look at a piece of writing, and this was written by a student in a classroom, just like you.

And what we're going to look at is how they have used the same images that I gave you and selected the tree as a symbol for the relationship that they wanted to write about.

As we read through this response, and if you just pause at this point before we begin and make sure you've got all of these bullets to help you with your thinking, I want you to consider how the symbol of the tree has been used.

I want you to think about what you actually learn about the relationship.

What sorts of emotions do you get coming through? And any other design choices you find effective so let's just pause on that phrase design choices.

What is it that the student has done in terms of the way they have constructed their piece of writing, organizationally, vocabulary choices, anything else, sentences, punctuation, that you think that's really good, I like that technique, I'd like to try that myself.

Okay, so pause at this point, get the bullet points down to make the reading a little bit more focused for you and you'll get the most out of it.

And then I will read through the extract with you before giving you control of the screen, okay? Pause.

Resume when you're ready.

And welcome back.

So let's have a look at this response together.

As I said, I'll read through it with you once.

I always think it's really helpful to hear a narrative read, and then you can have a look at it at your own pace.

Our Tree.

Rain threw itself heavily onto my shoulders, my shoes soaked my feet floating in a puddle gathered within them.

Droplets dripped from my grey, raggedy beard.

I scratched it without thinking, as I laughed to myself, you used to do the same to your beard, never left the damn thing alone.

I looked up, gazing upon our field, thinking of you; of us.

I remember you bringing me here for the first time.

I was four years old.

You drove me in your car for hours, we played eye-spy and sang to the nursery rhymes you had on a CD.

When we pulled up in the middle of nowhere, I bounced out of the car, giggling uncontrollably.

You beamed at me with that twinkle in your eye, then put me on your shoulders and ran through the field.

Just when I thought we were lost, I saw it.

It was the most beautiful, most magical thing I'd ever seen.

A tree.

A perfect tree.

As tall as the BFG you had told me about in the stories.

Vibrant green leaves gently swaying in the cool breeze of the beautiful, sunny summer's day.

We sat under it and you read to me until I fell asleep in your arms. You brought me again, do you remember? I must have been 14 or 15.

You said it would be good for us to spend more time together.

The drive took a while longer than last time.

You had to put in a new tyre.

We listened to my Green Day CDs as we sat in silence.

You always hated my taste in music.

The leaves had withered then.

They were browner, weaker, but still the tree stood firm.

Anchored.

Proud.

We talked for a while under the clouded sky, then you read your book whilst I played on my phone; and then we went home.

The last time I was here before now was my 40th birthday.

You said it was a surprise.

I didn't have the heart to deny you, so disregarding my reluctance, we set off in my car.

The drive took no more than an hour.

You were always so needlessly cautious with your driving.

Every 10 minutes, you muttered under your breath how reckless I was.

Other than that, we sat in total silence.

The grass was damp from the slight drops of rain which had crept into our routine.

Most of the leaves had fallen away now, blown away in the wind.

We sighed.

You told me it would've been nice to show a grandchild our tree before this happened.

I drove you home, then left.

And now here we are, I am, for the final time.

Your funeral was nice.

Sentimental.

You would've liked it.

You would've liked Tommy too.

He's four.

I'm standing with him now.

I'm looking at him, beaming a twinkle in my eye.

All that remains of our tree now is a stump and roots.

So I bought some seeds.

Tommy is planting a new one.

Okay, so we've got to the end of our narrative.

Let's go back to the beginning.

How did that relationship develop? How was the tree used as the central motif throughout the piece? And look at how the emotions were communicated through the tree, through the leaves.

And any of the design choices, look at the sentence length, look at the way all the details were used in terms of punctuation, or even how little details would change slightly about the music that was being listened to in the car.

Okay, so over to you.

Take a little bit more time looking over that and seeing whether you can gather any further ideas about how to use a symbol in your piece of writing.

I'll be waiting for you when you're ready to resume.

So having taken all of this on board, what we're going to do now is design our own writing.

Review the images.

Decide what relationship you want to represent.

And then I've put together a little table for you to fill in so that you're checking all of your ideas and just start to draught out some of those thoughts.

Let me just show you.

We've got the images again.

We've got the table.

So think about what characters you're going to include, what the relationship is, and what the event is that's going to happen, or the emotion that you want to communicate.

Think about the symbol that you've selected and its connotations.

And from there, think about the emotion that you want to create and the impact on your reader.

Okay, so over to you.

I'll be waiting for you when you finish your activity.

Finally then, just to complete our learning for today.

Let's have a little think about symbolism and recap on what we've done.

We looked at how symbolism helps create meaning and emotion in a story.

Did your symbol do that? Let's then think about other images that could be used.

And I'd like you to think about three or five more symbols of your own and think about how you could match them with a genre or a theme.

It's really interesting.

The paint palette that you saw there was not one of my ideas.

That was something that one of my students came up with.

And what was really interesting was that she said to me, "Miss, I've been waiting to use this image." And I thought that was great, that she had actually thought about this idea and had waited until the right moment came with a task to actually then put that into her writing.

That's what I'd like you to be able to do.

So are there other symbols that you have in your head that you think you could use? For example, a road, if we imagine a road, it's symbolic of travelling.

It's symbolic of going from A to B.

It's symbolic of change.

That would be really useful in a narrative where a journey is taking place.

Okay, so final reflection point.

Have a look at how your symbol work, did it create the meaning and emotion that you wanted, and then see if you can come up with some new ideas of your own, of symbols that you might want to use in the future.

As soon as you've completed this task, resume the video and I'll be waiting for you.

All that remains for me to say is thank you for your focus today.

Please don't forget to complete your exit quiz and enjoy the rest of your learning.