Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson, and welcome to our lesson on RE, on Religious Education.

You have done an amazing job.

You should feel really proud of yourself because you have got an essay.

Well done, it's not an easy thing to do, and you did it, so well done.

Feel really proud of yourself.

If you haven't got an essay yet, you need to pause this video and go into the essay writing lessons so that you can make sure that you've got your essay nicely written, bringing together all of your learning from the whole unit.

For the rest of us who have got an essay ready to go, we're going to spend today's lesson thinking about how we can improve it.

And I'm going to give you some tips of how to improve your lesson, your essay, all about Judaism.

So this is what the lesson will look like.

First of all, we're going to do a quick check of spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

It's sometimes called SPAG, SP-AG, SPAG.

Because that's the first letters of spelling, punctuation, SP-AG, SPAG.

And SPAG is really, really important.

Lots of people make mistakes with SPAG, it's perfectly normal, but it's really important to neaten and tidy it all up.

You've got a great essay.

So you don't want silly errors in there.

Then we'll think about how to improve our essay by adding some conjunctions, like because, and like however, and they're going to really help to stretch your thinking and stretch your ideas.

So I'm going to teach you how to do that.

We'll finish with another quiz just to make sure that all of that key information isn't falling out of your head.

So let's get started 'cause there's lots to do.

Spelling, punctuation, and grammar.

So, first of all, let's hear from one of our favourite bears who said, "My spelling is wobbly.

"It's good spelling, but it wobbles "and the letters get in the wrong places." My spelling wobbles sometimes.

Sometimes the letters go in the wrong places.

I always try to say the sound and think, how do I write that sound? But sometimes, the spelling can go a bit wobbly and sometimes the grammar can go a bit wobbly with my full stops and my commas and all of the different grammar that I'm supposed to use, and that's okay.

It's perfectly normal when we're writing away, thinking about all of our facts, for some of the spelling, or the punctuation or the grammar to go a bit wobbly, but we always need to fix it.

So that's what we're going to do now.

For example, take a look at this sentence.

You can read it.

Some Jews go synagogue when they want to pray and sing.

Now might have noticed that there's one or two mistakes in this sentence.

I was writing too quickly.

In fact, there are six mistakes in that sentence.

Can you pause the video, find and fix the mistakes? So pause the video and write out that sentence without any mistakes in it.

Pause the video and do that now.

Awesome work.

Let's see if you are correct.

I'm going to show you the corrected sentence now.

So first of all, my sentence needs to start with a capital letter, so I should have a capital letter there.

When we're talking about members of a religious group, we usually use a capital letter.

So Jews should have a capital letter here.

I've just said, some Jews go synagogue, but we need this preposition.

They go to the synagogue and I spelled synagogue wrong.

It should have a UE at the end here, so I've corrected that.

I've also spelled when wrong.

It should be, WH to make the wah sound.

When they want to pray and sing.

And I also forgot my full stop, so one, two, three, four, five, six mistakes, and they're all fixed.

Did you find them all? Did you spot all six mistakes? Is your sentence written out perfect or perfectly, I should say? Spelling, punctuation and grammar is important, perfectly.

Well done, if you did a great job.

You can correct it now, if you missed some, absolutely fine, I made it quite challenging.

So pause the video and fix it so that they're all correct, even if you didn't get it right the first time.

Let's stretch it out.

This time, I've written a whole paragraph.

And again, I've been a bit too speedy and I've made a few mistakes.

No problem.

Part of the writing process is going back and fixing, finding, and fixing those mistakes.

So at this time, I've got a whole paragraph, and in this paragraph, there are 16 mistakes.

I made 16 mistakes.

Can you find them all? Now, I want to give you a clue.

It's about capital letters.

When we have the name of a place or the name of a person, it needs a capital letter.

When there's just one of those things, it's a unique thing, like a person, like Mr. Hutchinson, or like a place, like London or Mount Everest, they need capital letters because there's just one of them, so they're special.

And you might notice that I've been really, really sloppy with my capital letters in this paragraph.

So 16 errors to find.

Pause the video, write out that whole paragraph, finding all of the mistakes.

Okay.

How many did you find? If you found all 16, you're amazing.

You are a spelling, punctuation and grammar ace.

So well done.

If you didn't quite get 16, don't worry.

How many did you get? Maybe you got 10, maybe five.

Every error that you catch is great work.

Let's see how many you got.

I'm going to show you now the corrected version.

So you can have your pen out, ready to mark.

First of all, the Exodus story needs a capital letter because it's the name of the story.

The Exodus story is very important to many Jews.

It describes how Moses freed the Israelites from the Pharaoh in Egypt.

Egypt is the name of a place, it needs a capital letter.

I also need a full stop because that's the end of one sentence.

Moses led the Israelites into the desert.

This says dessert.

Dessert is like ice cream or chocolate cake, it's what you have after dinner.

Desert only needs one S.

Lots of people make that mistake.

Into the desert, parting the Red Sea.

It's the name of a place, the Red Sea, as he did.

Capital letters for Red Sea.

Whilst, whilst needs an H, again, that wah sound, with an H, whilst in the desert, comma, because this is a subordinating conjunction, whilst in the desert, subordinating clause, sorry, whilst in the desert, Moses climbed Mount Sinai capital letter of Sinai, and received, I need EI, received the Ten Commandments, capital letters, from God, capital letter for God.

These are, E at the end of are, the basis of the laws, which, not what are, which are important to many Jews today.

How many of those did you find? How many do you fix? Give yourself a big pat on the back for every single one that you found, 'cause it's great work.

If you missed some and you might've done because I put so many in, don't worry.

Now's your chance to fix it, and it will remind you not to make that mistake yourself.

So pause the video, make sure that you've completely fixed the entire paragraph.

Awesome work.

You're doing some great SPAG work here, some great spelling, punctuation and grammar work, such good work that now that you've practised with my sloppy work, what I would like you to do is go back to your essay and read it, just like you read my work, looking for those areas to fix.

I bet that you'll find some.

So go back to your essay, check for spelling, grammar, punctuation, read back your work, see how many mistakes you can find and fix to make your work even better.

Pause the video, go away with your essay, or in fact, you can do it in the same place.

Pause the video, get your essay out, get maybe a different colour pen out and go through and make those corrections now.

Awesome work.

Welcome back.

We've done our spelling, punctuation and grammar checks.

We're ready to move on to improving our essay, and we're going to, the first way we're going to improve our essay is we're going to add the word because.

Now because it's a really useful word, because it helps, because it helps to stretch your thinking, add more information and give reasons which makes your writing better.

So we love putting in the word because.

For example, I might have written this sentence in my essay.

During Passover, many Jews will eat herbs in salty water.

Okay? I might've written that.

And that's a good sentence, and it's correct, but I could make it even better.

I can improve it by adding the word because.

I could say during Passover, many Jews will eat herbs in salty water because this reminds them of the salty tears of the Israelites when they were slaves in Egypt.

Look how much better that is.

Compare the two sentences.

It gives some really useful information about why that salty water is significant, why it's important, and it makes a better RE, religious education or theological is a better word for that.

Theological means to do with God, understanding about God, better theological writing.

And you can do great theological writing by adding because, as well.

Let's practise.

So I'm going to give you a stem sentence here.

During Passover, many Jews will eat a lamb shank.

There was that lamb bone that's part of the seder plate that you might remember from our lessons.

Let's practise expanding this using the word because.

So instead of just ending the sentence there, during Passover, many Jews will eat a lamb shank because, pause the video and write out that sentence and add on some extra information after that stem sentence.

Pause the video and do that now.

I wonder what you put.

I had a go at this exercise, and this is what I wrote.

During Passover, many Jews will eat a lamb shank because this represents the lamb that was sacrificed during the final plague.

You'll remember that during Passover, the angel of death came down into Egypt, sent by God, and was sent to kill the children of the Egyptians, but the Israelites marked their door with a lamb that had been sacrificed.

And so on Passover now, when Jews eat Passover, have the Passover meal, to remember that event, they'll have a lamb shank, and I'm putting that into my essay now, so it's making it even better.

So we practised using because.

We've seen how it can improve lots of different sentences.

Pause the video, go back to your essay, maybe with a different colour pen and see if you can improve your essay by adding the word, because.

You can choose a sentence, you could choose more than one sentence and add the word because to expand the information that you're using.

Awesome work, we've corrected our SPAG, we've added extra information with because.

We've got one more thing left to do to improve our essay.

And that's to add the word however.

So we've added the word because to expand our thinking, now we're going to use this word, however.

However is an excellent word to use in an essay because it helps to balance your essay by showing different ideas at one time.

So we usually use the word however to say a different idea.

So I might say chocolate ice cream is my favourite food, however, I sometimes enjoy cherry ice cream.

So I've said one thing, and then I'm sort of going against it a little bit.

And that's a really useful thing to do in an essay, to put forward one idea and then show that there might be a different idea over here, as well.

There's as a first idea, however, second idea.

And you're putting both of them into your essay, which is going to make your essay much, much better.

So let's see how we would do it.

I might write God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, on top of the mountain.

This is my first sentence.

If I added however afterwards, and we usually put a comma afterwards, it would say, God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son on top of the mountain.

However, God sent an angel to stop Abraham at the last moment.

So it's added some additional information, some information that's almost going against the first bit, which makes the essay so much better.

Let's have a practise, see if you can have a practise.

So I might, for example, write some Jews believe that the Messiah will be a leader who will arrive and bring peace to the whole world.

That's true, that's a good sentence, but I could add another sentence afterwards with however, and put a different idea in.

So what would you write? How would you finish that sentence after however? Pause the video and write a however sentence, following on from some Jews believe that the Messiah will be a leader who will arrive and bring peace to the whole world.

Great work.

You're working very hard, your essay's getting better and better and better.

Very impressive.

Let's see how you did.

So I wrote this.

Some Jews believe that the Messiah will be a leader who will arrive and bring peace to the whole world.

However, other Jews believe that we must all work together to bring world peace, then the messianic age will begin.

So if you had a similar idea to that, give yourself a tick.

You might've had a different idea and that's what's so great about using these different words.

They help your essays to be slightly different and your essay to be unique and interesting to people.

You've had a practise using however, adding a however after a sentence that you've written.

So now go back to your essay and see if you can add a sentence beginning with the word however, and remember, we usually put a comma just after however.

So pause the video and give that a go now.

Amazing work.

I'm sure that your essay is much better now.

So well done for adding to it.

One thing that we'd like to say at my school and that I'm always telling the children I teach because I heard it from another teacher, somebody called Ron Berger is that, if it isn't perfect, it isn't finished.

Our work can always be better.

I've made mistakes in these lessons where I put things in the wrong place.

The more time you spend trying to improve, looking back, checking the better it will be.

Now, maybe nothing's ever perfect, but the more time you spend on it, the more perfect it becomes.

So if you're looking at your work and thinking, Oh, there's so many mistakes in this, it's not perfect, that's fine.

It just means that it's not finished.

What you need to do is make sure you go back and improve it.

Don't just leave it how it is, make it better and better and better, because then that work represents you and people will see it and think, gosh, this person really takes care of their work, they're really smart, and they've done an amazing piece of work to share everything that they know.

If you'd like to show off that essay that you've written, the new and improved essay, then you can do that by asking your parents or carers to share the work on, take a photo and share it on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, and they just need to tag in @OakNational, and put the #LearnwithOak, and then lots of other people will be able to see and be blown away and impressed by your work.

And you deserve that, because you've worked so hard on it.

That is the end of our lesson and the end of our unit.

You're left with lots of knowledge and an amazing improved essay.

And I'm really proud of you.

Well done, and I'll see you next time.