Lesson video

Hello, is Mrs. Smart.

Welcome to the final lesson in this English unit, all about journalistic writing.

If you have completed every lesson in this unit, that means you have watched 19 lessons.

Wow, that is really impressive.

In today's lesson, we're going to be writing the closing paragraph of our newspaper report.

By the end of this lesson you will have written a whole newspaper report, what an achievement! In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some lined paper, a pen or pencil, and all of the writing that you've completed so far in this unit, that means your opening paragraph, your chronological recount paragraph, and your quotes paragraph.

If you haven't gotten any of those items with you right now, just pause the recording and go and get them.

In today's lesson we're going to start with an introduction to closing paragraphs and we're going to look at an example.

We're then going to draw out some of the key features and identify our success criteria for our piece of writing.

I'm going to model a piece of writing to you, and then for your task, you are going to need to write your closing paragraph.

Just to remind you one last time, this is the structure that we're following for our newspaper report.

You have written the opening, the chronological recount, and the quotes paragraph already.

So of course, today we are focusing on the closing.

Here's an example of a closing paragraph, we looked at this right at the beginning of the unit.

Let's read it through and remind ourselves of some of the key features.

If you want to pause the recording and read it through yourself, you can.

Otherwise just follow along on the screen.

"Local residents are still shocked "at yesterday's unusual events.

"The perpetrator has been formally identified "as local girl Goldilocks, age 12, "who spent last night in a police cell.

"Questioning of the defendant and her victims "will begin later this morning.

"Currently, forensic scientists continue to investigate "the crime scene and have sent various pieces of evidence "off for further testing.

"It was reported that no one suffered serious injuries.

"However, there was significant damage "to the Bears' property.

"Before police can release further details, "they are appealing for witnesses to come forward "with any information linked to the event." Here is that same paragraph, but I've highlighted some of the key features in pink.

Let's go through each one.

The first sentence says local residents are still shocked at yesterday's unusual events.

This is the opening sentence.

It summarises or introduces what the rest of the paragraph is going to be about.

"The perpetrator has been formally identified as local girl Goldilocks , we've got our brackets that add extra information as well as a relative clause who spent last night in a police cell, to add extra information.

"Questioning of the defendant and her victims "will begin later this morning." That's showing something in the future tense, something that's going to happen.

"Currently, forensic scientists continue to investigate" That's in the present tense, that tells me what's happening right now.

"It was reported that no one suffered serious injuries." That's an example of a journalistic phrase.

"However, there was significant damage "to the Bears' property." I've linked those two sentences together using a formal back conjunction, however, to show that they are contrasting opposites.

"Before police can release further details, "they are appealing for witnesses." Again, that's in the present tense, that tells me what the police are doing right now.

Now you've had a chance to read through an example closing paragraph, have a go at answering this question.

What is the purpose of the closing paragraph? Why do we include it in a newspaper report? Pause the recording and write down your answers now.

The purpose of the closing is to summarise the events.

It gives a brief overview of the events a little bit like the opening.

The closing is actually very, very similar to the opening paragraph.

But it also explains what has happened since the event occurred.

So if the event occurred yesterday afternoon, what's happened since then, what's happening right now, and what will happen next in the future.

So that's a little bit different from our opening paragraph.

You've had a chance to look at an example closing paragraph, so hopefully you can think of what features are really important to include.

Let's think first of all about the language and the sentence types.

Pause the recording and write down any sort of language features or sentence features that you think you need to include in this closing paragraph.

I've written formal language, referring to nouns in different ways, prepositional phrases, journalistic phrases, formal conjunctions.

We've practised all of those already.

The one that's a little bit different is past, present, and future tense.

Hopefully you've completed the grammar lesson when you practise that already.

What about sentences? Again, we are looking for a range of different sentences, simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and particularly those complex sentences which include a relative clause.

So when we use the relative pronoun who, or which to add extra information to a sentence.

Have a think about the layout and the punctuation you would expect to see in a closing.

Pause the recording and write down any features that you can think of.

For layout, we need to include an opening sentence at the beginning of the paragraph like the example that we looked at, and a closing sentence, something that brings the whole report or the whole paragraph to an end.

For punctuation, of course we're going to have full stops, capital letters and commas as always, but we might want to try and include some brackets for extra information.

You've done this really well in the three previous paragraphs so I'm sure you'll be able to include some brackets today as well.

Here is the success criteria we're going to be following for this piece of writing.

I have used formal vocabulary and journalistic phrases.

I have used past, present and future tense.

I have used prepositional phrases of time and place.

I have used a relative clause and brackets to add extra information.

Now those features have appeared in the previous three paragraphs apart from I have used past, present and future tense.

So that's something that's a little bit different in this paragraph.

I'm now going to model an example closing paragraph to you.

So let me think about my first sentence.

Remember, I need to introduce the rest of the paragraph in my opening sentence.

I'm going to write, "Local residents are still shocked "after yesterday's event." Now I need an apostrophe after yesterday to show the event belongs to yesterday.

Okay, now I want to go on to talk about Wolf, I want to say what's happened to him.

So I'm going to refer to him as, what could I use? I know, the perpetrator, I don't think I've used that one yet.

The perpetrator, what's happened to him? Spent last night in custody.

That's a little bit similar to like in a police cell, but we refer to it as in custody.

Now I could add a bit more information in this sentence because I've got two simple sentences there, one after the other.

So I'm going to have the perpetrator, maybe I could add in a relative clause here.

I know, I could say, "Who has now been formally "identified as Wolf." So that means he's officially been identified, we officially know that it was definitely Wolf who committed the crime.

So let's read those two sentences back.

"Local residents are still shocked after yesterday's event.

"The perpetrator, who has now been formally identified "as Wolf spent last night in custody." Now I want to know what are the police's going to do with him now now that he's in custody, they're going to question him all day.

So I'm going to say, "It is thought, I don't this but I'm presuming that's what they'll do, "It is thought that the police will begin, I'm not going to say questioning, I'm going to say conducting, "conducting interviews with the, I don't want to say perpetrator again, I know, I'll say defendant, "with the defendant and his victims later this morning." So that's something in the future tense to mean that they will do.

Now, could I add in some brackets here? Maybe I could give my reader a bit more information about who these victims are.

We know that they're Mrs. Puckett and Red.

So they're going to start questioning them.

Now, I can say something about what the police are doing right now at the scene, we know that forensic scientists are probably investigating.

So I'm going to start with currently, to show something is currently happening, it's happening right now.

And that's an adverb sentence start, so I need to follow it with a comma, "Currently, forensic scientists are investigating "the crime scene." Crime scene, maybe I could extend that with a conjunction.

I know, I could add and, what else are they doing? "And have sent various pieces of evidence "off for further testing." So they might've found hairs or fingerprints and things that they've sent off for further testing.

Now, what are the police doing now so that to help them with their investigation? I know, police are launching an appeal for witnesses to come forward with further information.

So they want to find out more information from anyone who saw or heard part of the incident.

Maybe I could extend that a little bit more to make it a complex sentence.

I could add a subordinate clause using so, so why are they doing this? Why do they want witnesses? So they can, what can we say? So that they can complete a full investigation.

Excellent, because they want to do a really thorough, full investigation into this incident.

They need to find out more information.

Okay, let's meet back those last two sentences.

"Currently, forensic scientists are investigating "the crime scene and has sent various pieces of evidence "off for further testing.

"Police are launching an appeal for witnesses "to come forward with further information "so they can complete a full investigation." Let's have a look at my success criteria and see how I'm getting on.

I have used formal vocabulary and journalistic phrases.

Yes, I definitely did that.

I thought really carefully about some of the words I was using.

I used perpetrator and I think I used victims and witnesses.

I think I entered in this journalistic phrases.

I'm sure I included it is thought that, which is one of my journalistic phrases.

I have used past, present and future tense.

Yes, I wrote about what has happened, what's happening right now and what's going to happen in the future.

I have used prepositional phrases, and I didn't have so many of time in this paragraph, but I did have some preposition of phrases of where things were happening.

So for example, the Wolf spent the night in custody.

I have used a relative clause and brackets to add extra information.

Yes and yes, I managed to include both of those.

For your task today, I would like you to write the closing paragraph of your newspaper report.

This is your very last piece of writing as part of this unit.

Remember to use your success criteria.

And we haven't done a plan for this piece of writing, but it would be really useful if you looked through all of the work that you've completed in this unit to remind yourself of all of the events that you need to refer to in your closing.

In our final lesson we had an introduction to closing paragraphs, we identified some of the key features and the success criteria.

I modelled an example closing paragraph to you and now it's your opportunity to go off and write your own.

Congratulations, not only have you completed this lesson, but you have completed this whole unit of work, well done.

Please feel free to share your work with Oak National.

If you'd like to, please ask your parents or care to share your work on Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I'm sure people would love to see parts of your newspaper report.

It's been an absolute pleasure to teach you and I hope you enjoy the rest of your English units.

Goodbye.