Lesson video

Okay, this is our final lesson of our "Aladdin" unit.

What a long way you have come, and what fantastically hard work you have been doing.

I'm very proud of you.

You have been making such fantastic effort.

And today we've got quite a fun lesson, because you get to call the shots a bit more.

You get to decide how the story ends.

So let's just see what will happen.

Okay, in this lesson, you will need your exercise book or some paper, with, I think also all your brilliant writing that you've done so far in the first part of the "Aladdin" unit and the second part, so your description, your build-up, your speech, your climax, have all of that because, you're going to read through it.

I also want you to have a pencil, and your brain for some really fantastic ideas for where the story could go next.

I'm really looking forward to finding out what you might do with it.

Pause now if you haven't got any of those things already.

Wow, you have worked so hard.

We're just going to do this last one of this unit, so we will make sure we have a warm up.

We will prepare to write, and think about how to do that.

We're going to then, you are going to write the ending of the story.

I'm not going to help you.

You are going to use your fantastic imaginations to do a much better job than anyone else.

And then you're going to read it back to make sure it's all okay.

So, let's do our warm up.

Simple, compound, or complex sentences, which one is which? We've got, "The hairs on the back of his neck prickled as he saw the cave before him." I think you know.

"Jafar's eyes fixed on the cave." "Cautiously, he edged inside, but it wasn't what he had expected." Hm, simple, compound, or complex? Pause and have a look and decide which is which.

Okay, now tell me, which one do you think it is? Simple one, compound one? You have been paying attention! Let's just make sure you are right.

First one, simple.

B is a simple sentence, "Jafar's eyes fixed on the cave," because it has a main clause, just one, and a main course has got to have a.

Verb, that's right.

Okay, next one, compound, which one is it? Which one is it? Which one is it? It is a, oo, C.

"Cautiously," with a fronted adverbial, "he edged inside," comma, "but," as our coordinating conjunction, "it wasn't what he had expected." "Cautiously, he edged inside," makes sense on its own.

Let's do it this way.

"Cautiously, he edged inside." That could be a sentence on its own.

"It wasn't what he had expected," is another main clause joined by a coordinating conjunction.

And then the last one, a complex sentence.

"The hairs prickled on the back of his neck as he saw the cave before him." Really good, there's our subordinating conjunction, "as," linking to our main clause.

Ooh, now I need some help with my punctuation.

Can you remember your speech sandwich to help you? "'Oh no,' muttered the servant when he saw the sight of the cave." "Oh no!" "Oh no." "'Oh no,' muttered the servant when he saw the sight of the cave." Let's see what punctuation you can correct for me.

I know you know this, because you've been doing such brilliant work.

Can you spot it? Okay, tell me.

Point to it.

Where is it? Yeah, brilliant.

Have you spotted them all? Let's see.

Ooh, yeah, we've got our opening speech marks, we've got our closing speech marks, but we haven't got a capital, capital, always capital letter at the beginning.

We've missed it out.

It needs to have a capital letter at the beginning of the speech.

And, my comma is in the wrong place! It needs to be the tomato in the sandwich.

When did you ever have a piece of bread, and then the stuff, and then a piece of bread, and then a tomato on the outside? Just doesn't work.

So, got to have the bread around the full bit of speech.

So then we need to make sure we don't have a capital letter after that, 'cause of our wonderful shield.

We wouldn't really after a comma anyway, but if there was something else.

And then, "Muttered the servant," comma, "when he saw the sight of the cave." Mm-mm, we don't have it there.

Let's see what it should look like.

"'Oh no,'" comma, "muttered the servant when he saw the sight of the cave." So we need to not have that comma there, because the subordinating conjunction is coming second.

I think you'd remember that.

And there's our speech sandwich, just to remind us of the rules.

We've got the bread, the capital letter, the cheesy speech, then another tomato, and then the bread afterwards.

Otherwise it will get sloppy.

Now we are going to prepare to write.

We have done our opening, we have done our build up, we have done our climax, and so the last one is the resolution, that's the end of the story, and I just don't know how it's going to go.

That is inside your little grey cells in your brain.

So the story so far, we have done so much, look! We go left to right, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch, and that last one, and onwards, is anyone's guess.

So I'm going to read what we wrote together just to remind you where we are in the story.

It's quite a long bit of reading, but I think it's good 'cause it gets us really in the mood to write our next bit.

"As the inky sky darkened, the glowing moon shone brightly.

The stars glimmered like fireflies.

Below the cold sky, a shadowy figure waited impatiently on top of a steep sand dune.

Suddenly, a galloping horse rode to join the first man.

A squat man with ragged clothes jumped off his horse and stood with the other man looming over him.

The yellow eyes of the horse and the man seemed to pierce his skin in the darkness." That was our opening.

Then, "'You're late,' boomed Jafar.

'A thousand apologies oh patient one,' snivelled the servant.

'You have it then?' asked Jafar menacingly.

'Got it,' croaked the thief.

'Ah ah ahhh, the treasure!' he added.

'You'll get what's coming to you, my pungent,'" which means smelly, "'friend,' snarled Jafar threateningly." So that was our speech section.

Now our build up.

"Slowly, Jafar reunited the two pieces of the precious golden treasure.

As the villain grinned wickedly, the thief trembled in fear.

Instantly, the mysterious bug shot to life.

It had become a burst of fiery sparks.

Jafar quickly let go of the insect and watched it hovering in front of his eyes." You can feel the pace building, can't you? "Sweat trickled down the servant's back as his eyes bulged wildly." Climax.

"In a flash, the glowing beetle shot off into the darkness.

Zing! Jafar's startled horse reared up, and they galloped rapidly after it.

Jafar gripped tightly to the reins.

The ground began to shake.

Jafar's heart beat wildly in his chest as a monstrous beast rose menacingly out of the desert." We worked so hard on that! Now I would like you to pause and just read what you wrote.

And we wrote the other one that I just read together, but I would like you to read what you have written so that you are clear what you have on paper and what needs to come next.

Pause now.

Okay, I want you to think about the effect that had on you.

How did it make you feel? What did your writing conjure up? This is how I felt when I read my writing, or our writing, it should say, because we did it together.

I felt uneasy.

Ooh, kind of worried and a bit like, "Ooh, what's going to happen? This is a bit scary." I felt excited, because it's so, it's magic, it's in the desert, it's mysterious people who are not very nice.

And I felt curious.

I wondered, "What is going to happen next? What is that cave?" And that what is going to happen next is down to you.

Why did I feel like that? Why did I feel anxious, uneasy, but also curious with lots of questions in my head? Here are some of the reasons.

The story's set at night, which is often more mysterious.

The stealing of treasure is always pretty exciting in a story.

The double-crossing of the thief, so you don't know what's going to happen next, 'cause they're turning on each other.

The characters' body language, the both of them, the characters' body language and facial expressions.

So how they're feeling was really conveyed to me in the writing.

And the fast action.

All made me feel anxious, uneasy, but also curious what's going to happen next.

So next, these are just some ideas, they are not things that you have to do.

I want you to have a good think about what you want to happen in the story, and it's really exciting, 'cause it's your story.

Could it be that the treasure inside, there's treasure inside the cave and the thieves are rich, and that's it? Maybe.

Could they enter the cave and never get seen again, so they get their comeuppance for stealing and being horrible people? Could they enter the cave and find something magic that we don't know? Maybe the parrot double-crosses them both! These are just some ideas.

I bet you've got better ones.

So, pause and have a think, but what I want you to remember is you don't have to do the same story as "Aladdin" if you know it.

In fact, it would be better if you didn't.

If you want to follow some of the ideas, that's fine, but that's not what we're doing.

We're not writing the story of Aladdin that you know, it's your story, not the person who wrote it down, who was it, Antoine Galland, many years ago, and not the Disney story.

It's our story, which is much better.

Pause and have a think.

What do you want to happen? Maybe try it out with someone in your house if there's someone there, then come back to me.

Okay, I think what would really help you is if you just write down some of the key action.

now this doesn't have to be your idea, but this is the kind of thing I mean.

For example, the men go in, it's filled with gold, and the parrot grabs the lamp.

Could be.

Just write down, pause, and write down the key things that you want to happen in the last bit of your story.

Okay, now we want to just remember what skills we think we'll need for our writing to be successful, so that our reader will really picture what is going on in our story.

We need to follow our plan, so that's why it's really helpful to have a plan.

Think of what we want to say, say what we want to say, write what we want to say, and read, look at and read what we want to say.

We need precise vocabulary, definitely.

We need different sentence starters if possible.

We definitely want accurate punctuation, 'cause otherwise it will not make sense, and different sentence types if we can, so see if you can get some simple, compound, and complex.

Think about how the writing flows.

You could also, to prepare yourself, if you want, write down some really good adverbs, verbs, adjectives, and nouns.

Here are some that we gathered before, but they might not be useful, so I don't want to suggest that these should be yours, because your story is your story.

But some adverbs could be carefully as they went into the cave, cautiously, or proudly, like they're very important, 'cause Jafar thinks he's very important.

Verbs, could step, or he could spy something, see something, or he could survey, look around.

And some adjectives could be, if there's treasure inside, glittering, beaming, shining, and you could talk about the treasure, or the cave, or the mouth, instead of the cave.

It's hard for me to say, 'cause I don't know what your brilliant ideas are yet, but just, it helps me sometimes when I'm thinking of powerful things to say, just to jot down some powerful words like we have been so far.

Pause and have a go at that.

Now, here are some of the sentences that you could write.

You could write some compound sentences with two main clauses.

"Jafar's hands trembled," pause and say the rest of my sentence, "Jafar's hands trembled." "Jafar's hands trembled, but his mind was fixed on the treasure." Just an example of a compound sentence.

Complex.

"When he stepped inside," pause and finish the sentence.

"When he stepped inside," comma, "his eyes were met with a sight he'd never seen before." So that's with our subordinate clause at the beginning.

Again, just a thought, but make sure you include different sentence types.

So now for the fun bit.

You get to write the end of your story, and the most important thing is to enjoy it, because your imagination is the most powerful thing of all.

So make sure you say your sentence, make sure you write your sentences, make sure you check, and make sure you edit to improve.

So pause now, then resume when you've finished your story.

Last thing, we need to read back your writing.

Why? Why do we need to read it back? To check it makes sense, important, mine often didn't, yours often won't.

To get a sense of being the reader.

So the whole point of these stories is so that people read and enjoy them.

So if you don't read it, how do you know what's on there? To make sure we've got the purpose right.

So, why is it, why are you writing the story? Is it to excite someone, is it to intrigue them? What do you want? Have you succeeded as the writer to do that for your reader? To check and change punctuation errors so that your reader understands, for sure.

To check we've used precise vocabulary to convey what is in our minds and what we want to put into our readers' heads.

To check and change spelling errors, also important, otherwise they won't understand you.

And to enjoy it, because if you don't read your writing, you don't get to know how brilliant you are.

Pause and just have a think to make sure that you are going to do all of those things.

Then resume.

So, now that you've written your story, and you've read your story, and you've edited your story, if you want, you don't have to, but I always love doing this, you could publish it, which means writing it up in neat, drawing all the pictures, and making it into your very own book.

You could even give it to someone.

Adults love getting stuff that they've made, I assure you.

So, mine I thought could be called "The Cave of Wonders," but yours could be called something else.

You could write who it's by on the front.

And it's a really nice thing to have.

So, well done.

You've completed not only your lesson, but the whole of this "Aladdin" unit.

We've done two sections with so many outcomes, we've written a whole story, you may have even written it into a book.

So, if you want, you can show some of your work to someone at home, and if you would like as well, I would love this, 'cause I would love to see what you produce, you could get a parent or a carer, or someone at home who's old enough, to share your writing on Instagram, on Facebook, or Twitter, Tritter, Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

And then I get to see your brilliant stories.

I cannot wait.

I'm really excited to see your writing.

Really, really well done for all your hard work.

I'm very proud of you.