Lesson video

Hello, everyone, my name is Mr. Brown.

And I am going to be your literacy teacher for this unit.

And I am so lucky, because number one, I get to teach you and I've heard great things about your writing.

And number two, I love this literacy unit.

It is so exciting.

It's so interesting.

And it's based on a book that was turned into a movie and we're going to use the movie clips in our writing, and I love going to the movies.

I got my popcorn ready.

I know we're going to have a lot of fun.

So I hope you're ready.

Let's go for it.

Okay, so let's get started.

We're going to start with our agenda.

An agenda means the things that we're going to be covering.

So these are the things we're going to cover in today's lesson.

First, we're going to look at the author.

Then we're going to have a look at the text which has been turned into a movie and we're going to look at the movie clips too.

And then, we're going to watch and analyse a visual clip.

So we're going to look at a clip from the movie, and we're going to analyse it, which means to look at something very closely.

Okay? In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or a piece of paper, a pencil, a pen, something to write with, and of course, your brain.

We're going to be doing lots of learning in this lesson.

So make sure your brain is nice and warmed up and ready to go.

Okay, key vocabulary.

At the start of each lesson, we will have some key vocabulary.

These are going to be some words that you will need to make sure the definitions of and make sure that how to use them when they arrive in our lesson.

And our key vocabulary words today are first of all, author.

An author is the person who wrote the text.

It's another word for writer.

Author, can you say that? Author.

Next on the top row in pink, we have a setting, and a setting is the place where the story is happening.

The setting, can you say that.

Setting.

Now, at the bottom in green, we have atmosphere, atmosphere, try saying that.

Atmosphere.

An atmosphere is the feeling or mood of a place or situation.

So you can have a tense atmosphere or a joyful atmosphere.

I would say in this lesson, we've got a focused atmosphere.

We're ready to learn.

And then finally, our last word in our key vocabulary is observations.

Observations, say that for me.

Observations.

Great.

And observations means to closely look at something.

We're going to be doing lots of observations for our visual clips today.

Okay, let's start with the author.

Who is Charles Dickens, everyone, Charles Dickens.

He is one of the most famous English authors, and Charles was born in 1812.

He lived during the Victorian age, which is when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

He wrote many famous novels, including Oliver Twist, and you might have heard of Oliver Twist.

It's been turned into a movie and a musical.

It's very famous.

His novels were often about the struggles of poorer people, and how hard their lives could be.

He didn't write beautifully happy stories.

No, they were quite dark, but that made them really, really interesting.

Let's have a look at the text that we're going to be studying in our English unit.

A Christmas Carol, this is one of Dickens most famous works.

It was first published in 1843, a long, long time ago, and it was released on the 19th of December.

This is a really cool story.

When it was released it completely sold out by Christmas Eve.

So just six days and it sold out entirely.

The story is about Ebenezer Scrooge, an old banker who is visited by three ghosts.

We are now going to watch a clip from the opening of A Christmas Carol.

When you are watching try to think about the atmosphere that is being created.

Remember, the atmosphere is the feeling or mood of a place or situation.

I want you to decide whether the atmosphere is positive or negative? Have you heard those words before? Do you know what they mean? Let me give you a clue.

This character is very positive.

Whereas oh-oh, someone's quite negative.

Positive means that it has a happiness to it, a happy feeling, whereas negative means it does not.

It's not necessarily sad.

It's just not very happy.

Okay, so when you're watching, I want you to think, is it positive or negative? Because by analysing the atmosphere, we will understand how Charles Dickens wanted his readers to feel when they were reading the opening of his novel.

This will help us when we are writing to make intelligent and purposeful language choices.

I think someone as good as writing as you won't just be choosing any words.

They'll be really carefully considering what words to use.

And that is intelligent and purposeful when you're choosing the words really carefully, so you have an effect on your reader.

Okay, it's time to watch and analyse this visual clip, positive or negative.

Enjoy.

Okay, so we're back.

What did you think it's already just from that short clip, you can tell the atmosphere straightaway, can't you? Was it positive or negative? Was it a happy feel good? Or was it awkward and tense and uncomfortable and unhappy? I think it is definitely.

What do you think? Really? I agree.

It is negative.

Of course, it is, it's a really negative feeling that has been created in the opening.

Which word would you use to describe the atmosphere there? Can you think of any words that you'd use to describe that atmosphere? We know it's negative, but are there any words you'd use to describe it? You can just shout them out if I were to ask you a question.

What do you think? I've had a go.

And I think the atmosphere is quite unwelcoming, uncomfortable, unfriendly.

Interesting how we've used the prefix un to change those words welcoming, comfortable and friendly into the opposite.

Hostile, hostile is a great word for an environment or an atmosphere is potentially dangerous.

Frosty, and I love the word frosty here because it means frosty as in the atmosphere when something is cold, and not welcoming and warm.

But also frosty could talk about actually the temperature of the scene which is very cold.

And then tense is the last word I've used.

When something is tense, it's not relaxed.

It's tense, perhaps because something bad could be about to happen.

Which word would you choose out of those six to describe the atmosphere? Well, whichever one you chose, you're right.

They're all really good words to describe the atmosphere at the start of a Christmas Carol.

Okay, my question to you now is what is the main job of an opening? What's the main job of an opening? Each time we write, we are writing a different part of the story, the opening, the build up, the climax, or the resolution, and the opening, what's its main job? A good opening needs to do three things.

It needs to describe the setting so the reader can picture it.

Because a book is not like a movie where you can see the setting with your eyes, you have to use the words to picture it in your mind.

A good opening will describe any characters so the reader can picture them too and a good opening sets the atmosphere for the story.

And we need to write an opening that will do all of those things.

I have two openings here.

I want your advice.

I want your advice everyone, which one do you think is better? I'll read your opening A.

If you'd like to read it yourself.

You can pause the video at any time.

And you can have a go at reading these first of all two.

Opening A.

One night, a street in London lay silent.

On each side of the road, the glow of candlelight could be seen through the windows of buildings and houses.

Would you then, pretty good.

Let's try opening B.

On a frosty, moonless night, a foggy snow covered street in London lay silent On each side of the narrow road, the soft glow of fading candlelight could be seen through the icy suit stained windows of the small buildings and houses.

What do you think? Which one is better? opening A, hands up, opening B, hands up.

opening B is definitely better.

Yes.

But why is that? Well, it's all to do with these word classes.

And I am going to go over these word classes again and again and again with you during our lessons because they are so important, so important.

Let's start with nouns.

A noun is a PPT.

That helps me to remember it, PPT.

And I know PPT stands for a person, place or thing.

Any person place or thing is a noun, table is a noun, computer is a noun, window is a noun.

I'm just looking around my room right now and telling you what I can see, chair is a noun.

Glass is a noun.

But a person could be a noun, Mr. Brown, I'm a noun.

You are a noun, can you point to a noun in your room right now? Yeah, everything is a noun.

An object is a noun if you're pointing to an object, great, but it could also be a place like London, or England, or Birmingham or Manchester or Devon or Cornwall, or Scotland or Wales, they are all nouns.

And thing, now, thing is a hard one because a gust of wind could be a noun.

You can describe the gust of wind, it's a tricky one, but person and place are definitely ones we'll be using the most.

Okay, next on to adjectives, say that with me.

Adjectives.

An adjective is a describing word.

Let's repeat that.

An adjective is a describing word.

An adjective is a describing word.

An adjective is a describing word.

We're going to keep going over it again and again and again.

An adjective is a words that describes something.

If a noun is a table, then the adjectives would be hard table or solid table.

If the noun is Mr. Brown, then the adjectives might be hairy Mr. Brown.

Okay, let's move on to verbs.

A verb is a doing or a being word.

Say it with me.

A verb is a doing or a being word.

A verb is a doing or a being word.

Verbs are fantastic because they can describe what characters are doing in a story.

I am doing a verb right now.

I am talking.

I'm also sitting, I'm looking, I'm breathing.

I'm smiling.

They are all verbs.

They are things that you do.

I wonder what verbs you're doing right now.

Can you say any to me? You're probably concentrating.

You're listening, that's a verb.

Okay? And the last word class is adverb.

Say that for me, adverbs.

Now an adverb describes a verb.

An adverb describes a verb.

And the top tip to remember with adverbs is they often end in -ly.

An adverb describes a verb it often ends in -ly or L-Y.

Now, what I mean by that is words like happily or sadly or carefully, or quickly, they will end in -ly, don't they? And so an adverb describes how a verb is done.

To describe a setting, we'll be mostly using these nouns and adjectives.

The key learning I want you to take away is that nouns and adjectives are like best friends, they go together.

You've got to make sure if you're writing a noun, you're mostly going to put an adjective before it.

Okay.

So let's look at our two openings again.

The reason that opening B is so much better than opening A is because it has adjectives and nouns describing, it has adjectives to describe the nouns, the nouns are there in opening A.

So one night opening A says, whereas opening B uses on a frosty, moonless night.

So it's exactly the same apart from B tells you what the night is like so that the reader can picture that night in their head.

Same with street, instead of just a street.

It's a foggy, snow covered street.

Same with road, it's a narrow road, the candlelight is fading candlelight, always looking to add adjectives before our nouns to get that extra layer of description.

And there, you can see our nouns with our adjectives before Okay, to prepare for writing our opening, the first thing we must do is decide what nouns are going to be important to use to describe the setting.

You can't describe every single noun in a setting, it's too much.

You have to choose the nouns that are going to help you as the writer to put that setting in your readers mind, to help them imagine.

Okay, it's observation time.

And observation was one of our key vocabulary words, wasn't it? For looking very, very closely at something.

We're going to watch the clip again.

And again, I want you to write down as many nouns as you can find, you can pause the video to help you with your observations.

So you can pause at any point during the movie.

And I want you to write down all the nouns you can spot.

You only need to write about the setting, not the characters, so don't worry about the characters.

We'll come to those later.

For now, we're just going to be looking at the setting.

Okay, so that's the room and the objects within it.

Remember, a noun is a PPT, a person, place or thing, but we're just going to be focusing on the things in that room.

Okay, let's watch the clip.

Again, observing very closely and writing down on a piece of paper, all the nouns that are in that setting.

Okay, so I hope you enjoyed the clip for the second time and you were making your observations.

Let's have a look.

So we were looking for nouns, weren't we? Nouns, PPT is person, place or thing.

These were the nouns that I came up with, candle I spotted, there were some keys, coins, a desk, a coal box, and a padlock on the coal box, even though they were kind of looked like the same thing.

They were two separate nouns.

We'll look at that as the as the weeks go on.

Now, I wonder if you've got any nouns that I didn't find? Did you observe any nouns that I couldn't? I wonder.

If you have, well done.

Okay.

Your task is to start generating adjectives to describe the nouns in your setting.

So I've got six nouns here.

But we know that nouns need adjectives, don't they? An adjective is a describing word, exactly.

What we're going to do is come up with adjectives for each of these nouns.

I'm going to use candle as an example.

So on your piece of paper, or you can just shout these out, what adjectives can you think of for the noun candle? How would you describe that candle? What describing words could you put before it? What kind of candle was it? You can always if you're really struggling, just use colours with adjectives.

Sometimes they're not the most descriptive, but if you're a little bit stuck, they can help.

Should I show you what I came up with.

The adjectives for candle that I decided we're quiet suited to the opening and the atmosphere were flickering, when something is not fully aflame or not fully alights like a telly, I guess could be flickering, if the screen is flickering, it's going dark and light, dark and light.

Weathering, and weathering is when something is not strong.

It's kind of weak and getting weaker and fading, which is a bit of similar, it's when something is getting weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker.

Now, I chose these three adjectives because they fit with the atmosphere that we are trying to create in our opening of negativity, of unhappiness, no positivity in flickering, weathering and fading.

Can you pause the video to complete your task and your job is going to be to generate adjectives for these nouns, I've done candle for you.

But you might be able to think of some more adjectives for candle too.

Like keys, coins, desk, call box and padlock.

You can have a go at generating adjectives for those.

And then when you're finished, just resume your lesson.

Well done everyone.

We're going to pick a lot of that up next lesson.

Okay, let's finish up with reminding ourselves about our word classes.

I wonder if you have remembered what these word classes mean? What are nouns? What are adjectives? How about verbs and what are adverbs? If you want a bit of extra time, you can pause the lesson and write them down.

But I bet lots of you were able to get these.

Okay, let's go through.

Nouns.

A noun is a PPT, a person, place or thing? An adjective is just describing word, a verb is a doing or a being word.

An adverb describes a verb, and we know that it often ends in -ly.

Okay, let's go back to our agenda.

We've looked at the author, Charles Dickens.

We looked at his amazing text, A Christmas Carol, and we have started to watch and analyse visual clips of A Christmas Carol.

Congratulations, you completed your lesson.

Well done, everyone.

You've worked very, very hard today.

So there we are.

Our first lesson together done.

It has been an absolute pleasure.

You've worked really hard, and I look forward to next lesson where we can continue our work on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

Well done everyone.