Lesson video

Hi, everyone, I'm Miss Reid and welcome to our final lesson on energy and sustainability.

Let's have a look at our lesson title for today.

So lesson title for today is to write a letter with recommendations for greater sustainability to my local MP.

Well, in our last lesson, we planned our letter, so you should have your plan in front of you, if you don't have your plan, pause the video now, so you can get that.

If you do have it, let's move on.

So for today's lesson, you will need a piece of paper or a book, you'll need a pencil and you'll need your brain because you're going to be doing some extra, extra hard thinking today, using your plan and converting it into a letter.

Now for today's lesson, we are going to be turning those fantastic notes that you took in the last lesson into a letter, you might even want to send it to your local MP.

Before we start, though, I want you to take a moment to clear away any distractions that you might have, including turning off any notifications or apps or conversations that you have running in the background, if you know how to do this.

I'd like you to also try and find a quiet place where you can work so that you're not disturbed during this lesson.

Pause the video now, so you can get the things you need, including your plan, and find a quiet place to work.

Excellent, now you're ready, let's begin.

So OPV for today's lesson, we're going to be recapping on the features of a persuasive letter, then you're going to watch me model how to write an introduction and then you'll watch me how to model the first paragraph on Curitiba, then you're going to write your letter and finally, we're going to think about the conclusion.

So let's recap on the features of the persuasive letter, let's take a closer look.

So, your address, the recipient's address, you also need the date, dear, the person who you're writing to in this case, it will be your local MP.

Paragraphs, including an introduction and a conclusion and yours sincerely, and of course your name and the persuasive language features that you might be, that you might use today, my hope that you will use them.

I am writing to, or in my opinion, for your introduction, using rhetorical sentence starters or rhetorical questions sentence starters, like did you know ? Or were you aware that? I am sure that, It is widely agreed that, surely you agree that, to make your reader think in the same way you do.

And as concluding statements, you could use things like, as you can see, or without a doubt.

You're going to have a look at this information on a separate slide, so don't worry about having to rewind the video because you can click off the video, you can pause it when you're writing your letter, so you have these speeches in front of you.

Okay, so you've got this introductory information all these notes, I'm now going to show you exactly how I want you to write your introduction.

Okay, so as you can see, I have already written my address here at the top right of the page.

Now, of course, this is not my real address because it would not be very sensible to write my real address because then everyone in the country would know where I live or exactly where I live, I do have an in Peckham, So I have included that information, that this is a fake road and a fake postcode, but I wanted to show you how to lay out the address.

It's really important that we lay out the date, so I've written the date here and down here, I have written Harriet Harmon's address because Harriet Harmon, as you know, is my local MP, and if I want to change something in the area, then I have to write to her at home, so that she can work on it for me or on my behalf.

So her address is Harriet Harmon MP, house of commons, because that's where she works.

London, SW 10 0AA.

So now that I have written the, my address, the date and the recipient's address in this case, it's Harriet Harmon, I can begin by writing my letter.

So, I need to leave a line and then I need to write.

Dear Harriet Harmon comma, I could also have written dear Mrs. Harmon, but in this case, I'm writing her full name just because that's what I've chosen to do within my letter.

You could choose to write the full name or you could choose Mr. or Mrs. So now I have written dear, I need to move on to writing my introduction, so I've got my introduction or my notes, my introduction in front of me.

I've got my key questions, I'm just going to adjust this so that you can see my letter.

So now I've got my introduction or the introductory notes or line.

I've written dear Harriet Harmon, I can start my introduction, so I know that my key questions I have asked, what's the purpose of this letter? What does sustainability mean? And why is this such an important issue? And why are you writing to your MP specifically? Well, the purpose of this letter, and I know I need to start a letter with an indent, so starting after the recipient's name, so I'm going to write, I'm going to use that sentence starter from the persuasive language toolbox, I am writing to you to explain the importance of living more sustainably in our local community.

So that's the first sentence, that's the purpose of this letter, because I want to explain about the importance of living sustainably in our local community.

So what does sustainability mean? Well, I've got my notes in front of me.

I'm going to say, I'm actually going to ask a rhetorical question here because rhetorical questions, help to engage the reader.

Do you know how important, In fact, I'm not going to use important, I'm going to write the word, do you know how, I'm a change that word and up level it.

Do you know how critical it is, that we begin, to live, more sustainably.

It's rhetorical question, because I think that in this day and age, especially an MP, would definitely know how important it is that we as a society live sustainably, so I'm labouring that point.

Do you know how critical it is that we begin to live more sustainably? If you were not aware sustainability is using resources that are good for people comma, the environment and the economy, both in the present and in the future.

Okay my last question says, why are you writing to your MP specifically? Well, I chose, Oh, I realise I made a mistake, a spelling mistake.

I need to cross out one of those o's.

I chose to write to you comma, because you as my local MP comma, have the power to change our local community for the better.

Now you've seen me model how write an introduction, we're moving on to our first paragraph, our first case study on Curitiba, I'm going to show you how to turn these notes into a paragraph.

Okay, so I need to make sure that when I write my next paragraph, I'm leaving a line between my introduction and the next paragraph.

I don't need an indentation here, because I'm leaving a line, so that shows that I'm going to be skipping up to a new paragraph.

So, I want a nice sentence starter something powerful and punchy to open this paragraph with, so I might start with a question.

I might still use the question, do you know where the greenest city in the world is? Let me tell you.

Remember that I'm actually writing to a person, so I want to engage them by asking them by asking them questions and referring to them throughout my letter, so that's why I've written, let me tell you.

It is called Curitiba and it is situated in Brazil.

So I've read somebody opening sentence or sentences that draw my reader in.

Now I need to focus on my key questions again, so what measures have Curitiba taken to become a more sustainable city? Well, here I can talk about the bi-articulated buses and the pedestrianised street, because those are the notes that I've made and I've got those in front of me.

So, one of the measures Curitiba's leaders have taken to make it a more sustainable city is the creation of the, bi-articulated bus system.

Now I'm not going to model the whole of this paragraph because what I would go on to do, and what I want you to go on to do is list some facts about the bi-articulated bus system.

So I could go on, I would go on to write the bi-articulated buses can hold 270 people per bus.

They are cheap to travel on, and there are dedicated bus lanes, which makes travel quicker.

I want you to start your paragraphs and I want you to make sure that you include the facts from your notes, and I want you to make sure that the end of your paragraph, you tell your MP what they can learn from this city's practises.

So perhaps you would talk about building more pedestrianised streets, or perhaps you want public transport in your area to be more readily available, perhaps you would like safer roads.

Make sure that you've finished your paragraph, include the facts from your notes and give your MP something to think about.

Excellent, now you've seen how do that, You've also got the notes on the Fireburg, and you've got your own notes on your own local area and the recommendation that you're going to make to them.

So, your job now is to turn all of your notes into a letter.

One thing I want to make sure you don't do don't sign off the letter yet because we still need to write the conclusion.

So just finish your paragraph on your recommendation to your MP, and then you can come back to the video, pause the video now and complete your letter up to the final paragraph on the recommendations.

Excellent work, everyone, I'm so, so pleased that you've all worked so hard, we've just got one more thing to do.

So I would like all of you to write a concluding sentence and the concluding sentence could be either one of these three options, you could choose your own, but I have got three here for you, let's have a look at them.

A.

Now you have listened to my suggestion, it is time for you to take action and help to make our area more sustainable.

B.

As you can see, the time has come to take action and make sustainable choices for our local environment and the community as a whole, or C.

Without a doubt, there is no time to waste, we need to make more sustainable choices starting, now.

I'd like you to choose one of these three concluding statements for your own letter.

And then you can sign off your letter, yours sincerely, and your name of course.

You might have your own idea for a concluding statement and that's absolutely fine.

Pause the video now so that you can write your concluding statement and sign off the letter.

Amazing work everyone, I'm so proud of you.

Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson and the end of this unit, a fantastic, fantastic, well done, you've achieved so much about the unit.

You should really be looking back and reflecting on all the learning you've done.

I'd love to see as many of your letters as possible, and I'm sure your teachers would love to see your letters as well.

I, if you're able to please ask your parent or carer to share your work with your teachers so they can see all the fantastic things you've learned and if you'd like, you can ask your parents or carer to send a picture of your work to @OakNational on Twitter.

So I can see your work too.

That's all that's left from this unit, thank you so much, and take care.

Enjoy the rest of your learning today.