Lesson video

Hello, I'm Mr. Hutchinson and welcome to our final lesson on Sikhism.

Now, over the last two lessons, you've planned and written an essay.

If you haven't done that yet, you need to do that, because this lesson won't make much sense without it.

So, go back and make sure that you've planned and written your essay.

If you have, well done, I'm really proud of you.

I know how hard it is, and I think you've done a fantastic job and stuck at it and you should feel proud of yourself.

Of course, although you did a wonderful job, all of our work can always be a bit better and so in today's lesson, we're going to think about how we could improve the essay, that we've written.

Now, I haven't read your essay specifically, though I'd love to.

Please do ask your parents to share on social media.

But, I can think of some common things, some common ways, almost like tips and tricks, of how to improve essay writing.

And so I'm going to share those with you today.

So, the first thing that I need you to do is, get your essay out.

So, wherever you wrote it, get that out, so it's there and ready, 'cause I'm going to ask you to make some improvements in this lesson.

The first thing we'll do, is some spelling, punctuation, and grammar checks.

When all of your brain power is focused on all the factual information, it's really easy to make those little errors.

I do it all the time and so we're going to just have a sweep of SPaG.

We'll then think about how we can use the word 'because', what you should be familiar with using, to extend, improve, and provide reasons in our answers and our writing.

Similarly, we're going to add balance to our essays by using the word, 'however'.

And we'll finish with the end of unit quiz, to bring everything to a close.

So, first of all, 'SPaG'.

Now I'm sure, that SPaG is something that you're always thinking about.

Winnie the Pooh here is thinking about SPaG.

He says in one of the books, written by A.

A.

Milne, "My spelling is Wobbly.

It's good spelling, but it wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places." All, I think all of our spelling can wobble sometimes and so it's important to go back and check and just make any corrections that we can spot.

For example, here's a sentence that I wrote, when I was obviously very tired and wasn't paying close attention to my SPaG.

Have a read of it.

You might've noticed one or two little errors in that.

So, I wonder if you can spot them.

I wonder if you can pick them out.

There are six mistakes in that sentence.

Can you find them all? So write out the sentence, with all of the errors corrected.

Great work.

Let's see how you did.

So, it should look like this.

Some Sikhs, with a capital S, 'cause it's the start of a sentence and Sikhs usually has a capital letter, as well.

So, the name of any, within a religion, the religious followers, whether it's Christians or Muslims or Hindus, we usually give it a capital letter.

"Go to the Gurdwara." We need the preposition and the definite article there.

"They go to the Gurdwara." We don't just say, go Gurdwara, go to the Gurdwara.

When, when needs a h, "they want to pray and sing", with a full stop.

Well done if you spotted all of those, if you didn't, you still got time, to check those errors.

Here's a longer one.

And I've made some mistakes in this paragraph as well.

And this really is helping you to practise that skill, of proofreading, of reading back and reading for the errors.

There will be errors in your work, I promise you.

There's always errors in everybody's work.

Anybody that writes, there are errors, in it and so your job is to read carefully, to see if you can spot them.

So in this paragraph, there are five mistakes.

Can you find them? I'd like you to write up that whole paragraph, correcting the mistakes.

Great work.

Let's see how you did.

So, I'm going to put up the correct paragraph now and see if you spotted them and see if you can make the corrections, if you missed them, no problem.

So, that was the wrong version.

It should look like this, "Guru Gobind Singh", capital letter, 'cause it's his name, "was the tenth and final human Guru.

He collected the hymns and writings of other Gurus" and there's some parenthesis that need to go in here, "as well as other holy people." Because it's a bit of, additional information and so when we have additional information, we use parenthesis.

You could use brackets, we could use dashes.

You could use a pair of commas as well.

I've gone for dashes.

If you chose a different parenthesis and that's okay.

"and placed them into the Granth Sahib.

Guru Arjan had already begun this work.

After Guru Gobind Singh died," capital A.

I forgot it there.

So, it should have a capital A, "died" and I need a comma here, because it's a subordinating clause.

So, it's a subordination of time.

I don't know if there were time, sorry, adverbial of time, I should say.

"the guruship passed on to Guru Granth Sahib, which is regarded as the eternal," comma, 'cause I'm listing, "eternal, living Guru by Sikhs." So, little picky errors, but that's the difference between a really fantastic essay and a mediocre essay, getting in, and polishing all of those tiny little punctuation, errors and improvements.

So, you've had a little bit of a practise now.

What I'd like to do, is pause this video, get out your essay and go through with a fine tooth comb, correcting all of the spelling, punctuation and grammar.

Pause the video and do that now.

Awesome work and well done.

So, we're now going to look at adding the word 'because'.

Okay? So, adding the word 'because', it's a small word, but it can make a huge difference to the quality of your answers.

So for example, it helps to stretch the thinking, add more information.

So for example, I could have written this sentence here.

It's perfectly fine sentence.

"During Vaisakhi, Sikhs celebrate by holding parades and parties." And they do that, that's right, but, it would be even better if I extended that thinking by using the word 'because'.

So, I could write, "During Vaisakhi, Sikhs celebrate by holding parades and parties, because they are remembering the birth of the Khalsa.

Now if somebody is reading this, it gives them that extra bit of information.

So they understand Sikhism a bit better and that's really important, when we're trying to write these pieces of factual writing like essays.

So, let's see if you can try.

I've written out a stem sentence.

"Whilst at the Gurdwara, everyone will join in to help prepare the meal." Good sentence, could be better if we extend it with 'because'.

So wright out the start that sentence and then how would you end it? Finish that sentence.

What did you write? I finished it off like this.

"Whilst at the Gurdwara, everyone will join in to help prepare the meal because langar is an important part of Sikhism, showing everyone is equal." So, you can see the difference here, between the first sentence and the second sentence.

It's so much better.

See if you now, so now, I'd like you to pause the video and see if you can improve your essay, by finding one or two of your sentences, maybe more, and using 'because', to extend your thinking and your answers.

Pause the video and do that now.

Awesome work.

So we've checked the SPaG.

We've extended our sentences using because, there's still one more improvement, that I think could make your essay even better and it's adding, 'however'.

Now this is a really top skill.

This is, where you start to get really sophisticated essays, because really good essays should be balanced.

They shouldn't be one sided.

And 'however' helps to give that balance.

What's sometimes called nuance, fine thinking.

So for example, I might have written this sentence, again, perfectly fine sentence.

"Sikhism is usually regarded as a monotheistic religion, meaning that there is only one God." That's true, it's a good sentence.

But, imagine if I put, 'however' after it.

I then have to think of something a bit different.

'However', I need to bring in a bit of a different perspective, a different idea.

So I could write this.

"Sikhism is usually regarded as a monotheistic religion, meaning that there is only one God.

However, others understand God and Sikhism in a panentheistic way, meaning that the universe is part of God and that God is 'in' the universe." How much better is that? So just by adding, 'however' prompts your brain to think, "I need to add a bit more depth to this answer." Let's, why don't you give it a go? So, go through your essay and see if there's anything that you could add, 'however' to, afterwards.

Well done.

You should now have an essay that's even better than when you started out and was good to begin with.

And now, because you've added 'however' and 'because' and checked the SPaG, you've got an essay, a redrafted essay, that is even better, getting close to perfect.

"If it's not perfect, it isn't finished." So a teacher called Ron Berger, said that, and I love that quote, it isn't perfect.

It's just not finished yet.

And we can always go back to our writing and help make it better and better and better.

And then that right, then that becomes part of us.

That habit becomes part of us.

Whenever we write.

We write brilliant essays and brilliant stories and become able to use the written word, to communicate and get across ideas and entertain and inform people.

Well done for working so hard across this whole unit.

I'm so impressed with you.

You should feel really proud that you've got that essay now to show everything you got and you can go back and read that, next month, next year.

So, you, that all that knowledge of Sikhism, it's locked in your brain, stays in there forever.

Awesome work.

It's been a pleasure doing these lessons with you.

I've loved learning about Sikhism.

Thank you for working so hard and goodbye.