Lesson video

Hello, my name is Miss Johnson, and I'm going to be teaching you reading today.

In today's lesson, we're going to be answering some questions on "I Was a Rat!" By Philip Pullman.

If you haven't watched lesson one, you should pause this video and go back and start there, otherwise this lesson won't make that much sense.

So you need to go back to lesson one and watch that.

If you have watched lesson one, then let's get started.

We're going to start today's lesson by recapping what we already know about "I Was a Rat!" by Philip Pullman.

Then we are going to do a quick vocabulary check.

And we're going to use a strategy to work on unfamiliar word, which is really important whenever we do any reading.

Then we're going to have a go at answering some questions based on the text, and I'll help you with those.

And then we're going to do some reflecting.

So I've got a really fun big question at the end of this lesson for you to answer.

So in today's lesson, you will need an exercise book, or paper is absolutely fine as well.

You won't be writing too much down.

You will also need a pencil or a pen, and also, I'd like you to bring your brain.

Don't just listen to me telling you what to do.

I want you to be thinking about everything that I'm doing.

And if you've got now, a window open or the TV is on, or your phone is next to you, this is a good time to move those distractions.

So my phone is actually right here.

So I'm going to pick it up, I'm going to move it away from me, so I can't see it at all throughout this lesson.

So pause the video now, and go and do those things for me.

Okay, when you're ready, let's get started.

So this is the front cover of "I Was a Rat!" by Philip Pullman, and we read the opening chapter in our last lesson.

If you didn't, have not watched lesson one, you should pause now and go and watch that lesson.

So I've got a few questions that I'm going to ask you about "I Was a Rat?".

Let's see what you can remember, are you ready? So pause the video in a minute, but first of all, I'm going to read the questions to you.

So the first question is, "Who is the author of 'I Was a Rat?'?" I always think it's really important that whenever we're reading a book or a poem, we must always know who the author is.

"What animal does the boy say he used to be?" And, "Do the old couple have children?" Do they have children of their own? So pause the video now and write down the answers, and press play when you're ready to resume.

Excellent, shall we check your answers? So who is the author of "I Was a Rat?", say it after me, Philip Pullman, say it, Philip Pullman.

What animal does the boy say he used to be? While the clue is in the title, he says, "I was a rat." And, do the old couple have children? And the answer is no, but they have always wanted to have children.

Now, we're going to do a vocabulary check.

Whenever we're reading, it's really important that we have a strategy to help us how to work out unfamiliar words.

We should never continue reading over a word if we haven't had a go at trying to work it out because if we do that too many times, we lose the meaning of what we're reading.

So I'm going to help you today.

And I'm going to show you a way that you can try and work out an unfamiliar word.

So, as I was reading "I was a Rat?", there was a word that I wasn't sure of that I came across, and that word was stained, say it after me, stained.

So the first thing I did to try and work it out was I read where it was in the text.

"It had once been smart, "but it was sorely torn and stained, "and the boy's face was scratched and grubby." So what we're talking about here is the boy's uniform when he first appears on the door of Bob and Joan.

The first thing I did was try and work out what the word class is.

And by looking closely, I can see it is an adjective because it's describing what it is like, it's a stained top.

And then what I try to do is try and replace that word with another word, but this was a bit tricky, but let's try it.

"It had once been smart, but it was sorely torn and.

"And the boy's face was scratched and grubby." Now, I actually can't replace this word, I'm not too sure.

So I perhaps need to try another strategy today, 'cause replacing the word with another didn't work for me this time.

So I'm going to try a different strategy.

And now I'm going to try and read around the word.

By that, I mean I'm going to read the sentence that it's in, and I'm going to look for clues in that sentence that might help tell me what this word means.

So should we do that together now? "It had once been smart," hmm, so smart tells me what it used to be.

So it used to be smart.

So now I know it's the opposite of smart.

It's old perhaps.

And then I learned, "but it was sorely torn." I'm not too sure what sorely means, but I do know what torn means.

If you tear something, you rip it.

So if a uniform is torn, it's going to have rips in it.

And that makes sense because I know already that it is old because it's no longer smart.

So, "It was sorely torn and stained," the word I'm still not sure of, "and the boy's face was scratched and grubby." Now, the boy is also scratched, and grubby means really dirty.

So I think because torn, scratched, and grubby all kind of are similar in their meaning, I think stained must have a similar meaning to that.

The last thing I'm going to do is try and look at the word to see if I can work it out or spot another word in a word.

I feel like I've heard this word before, stained, stained windows I think I've heard of, like the ones you usually see in churches.

And a stained window often has colourful patterns on it.

So I wonder if it's to do with the colour, perhaps, of the uniform.

And by doing this process, I have now sort of worked out what it means, and enough to be able to continue with my reading.

But to help us today, I'm now going to show you what the word means.

So stained is something that is marked or to mark something with colour patches or dirty marks that are not easily removed.

So it's a mark that has coloured patches or dirty marks on it and they're not easily removed.

So it is something, you might stain your top with a cup of tea.

If you pour tea down yourself, you would have a stain on it, or some squash or fruit juice would stain a white top.

It would leave a mark on it, which would be really difficult to get out.

And it often then, is telling me, as we can see from the picture here, that the boy's uniform is very old.

Now today, we're going to look at some questions.

When we're answering these, don't worry if you find them difficult, this is why we're practising them.

I don't expect you to get every one correct.

If you do, it's fantastic.

But if not, just keep going and be resilient.

So I'm going to ask you to pause the video in a minute, not before, and I'm going to read the extract to you first of all.

So, "Old Bob and his wife Joan lived by the market "in the house where his father and grandfather "and great-grandfather lived before him, "cobblers all of them, and cobbling was Bob's trade too." A cobbler is one who makes shoes.

"Joan was a washerwoman," so she does the laundry, she does the washing, "like her mother "and her grandmother and her great-grandmother, "back as far as anyone could remember." So all her other relatives after that also.

So what job, this is a retrieval question that I'm asking you today, the answer is in the text.

So what job did Joan's great-grandmother do? So to answer this question, what I'd like you to do is you are searching for a job, the name of a job.

That is what you're going to be looking for when you skim and scan through this text.

So I want you to pause the video, and when you do it, I want to see you skimming and scanning through this text to find the job, but then you will need to read around the text to check you've got the correct job, because in this extract, there might be two jobs mentioned.

So you're going to need to pick the correct one.

So pause the video now, and then write down your answer, and press play when you're ready to resume.

Well done.

Shall we check your answer to see how well you did? So what I found tricky about this text, was when I skimmed and scanned it, there were lots of words that were the same.

I had grandfather and great-grandfather.

I had mother and grandmother and great-grandmother, and it really confused me.

I had to really make sure that I had my finger on the text because otherwise I was getting lost because as I was speed reading, I was getting lost in the different words I was reading.

So it's really important today that I used my finger to help me track and skim and scan as a read for the information.

And as I did that, and I was searching for the job, the first job I could found was a cobbler.

But when I looked around there, I realised that that was for Bob, and his father, and great-grandfather, and grandfather.

So it wasn't the answer I was after because I was looking for Joan's great-grandmother's job.

So then as I skimmed along, I found Joan and that really helped me then.

And I found that Joan was a washerwoman.

But I couldn't just write that down.

I had to carry on reading and check that Joan's great-grandmother was also a washerwoman.

And then I was able to find the answer and say she was a washerwoman.

Well done, if you've got that correct, fantastic.

If not, don't give up, keep going.

We're going to practise another question now.

So again, I'm going to read the question to you.

Read the extract to you first, actually, then I'll read the question.

And then we can answer it together.

Well, you have a go and then I'll help you.

So, "Bob looked up with a jump.

"'Was that someone knocking?' he said.

"'What's the time?' "The cuckoo clock answered him "before Joan could, 10 o'clock.

"As soon as it had finished cuckooing, "there came another knock, louder than before.

"Bob lit a candle and went through the dark shop "to unlock the front door." My question is this.

What time of day was it when Bob heard a knock at the door and how do you know? Now, before you think this is super easy, I know in this text, it tells you a time.

So you can just write down that time, but I'd like you to really push yourself today because what the text doesn't tell me is whether it's morning or evening.

So can you, A, tell me the time, and then, B, tell me whether it's in the morning or the evening? So you're looking for that time of day.

This is also though, an inference question where you're going to have to search for the clues that perhaps tell you it's morning time or evening time.

So a few skills needed here.

So take your tracking finger, skim and scan for the time, read around it and look for the clues that tell you what time of day this is.

Is it the morning or the evening? So pause the video, write down your answer, and press play when you're ready.

Well done.

So hopefully you found out, first of all, that the actual time was 10 o'clock because it tells me that Joan, the cuckoo clock, which was the clock that makes the sound of a cuckoo when it strikes the hour, that before Joan could answer the time, the cuckoo clock sounded and then Bob knew it was 10 o'clock because it was on the hour.

But what this doesn't tell me is if it's morning or evening.

So how did you find out whether it was the morning or the evening that this happened in? And so I tracked, and I skimmed and scanned further, and as I looked through, I was able to see that Bob lit a candle.

Now, you wouldn't necessarily need to light a candle if it was the morning time, perhaps if it was winter and it was really early morning, but usually you light a candle in the evening time to show light.

And they used to light a candle in the olden times because they might not have had lights and electricity.

And then he went through the dark shop.

So the fact that shop is completely pitch black tells me it must be evening time as well.

So this is my answer.

And I wonder if you were able to find the clues as well.

It was 10 o'clock in the evening.

We know it is evening because Bob lights a candle, which tells us it is dark.

Well done.

Okay, we're going to do our next question now.

We're going to do one more question like this, and then we're going to do our big fun question at the end, which I hope you are ready for, but we have to work up to that.

So I'm going to read the extract to you.

Then I want you to pause the video and answer the question below.

"The old couple took him into the kitchen," this is the boy that the old couple have taken in, "because the night was cold, and sat him down by the fire.

"He looked at the flames as if he'd never seen "anything like them before.

"'What should we do?' whispered Bob.

"'Feed the poor little soul,' Joan whispered back." So what impression does this give you of the old couple? So this is an inference question.

Again, you're going to have to look for the clues that tell you what they're like as a couple.

Impression means what picture does the author create in the reader's mind? So how does the author present them as an old couple? What do you think of them, as a reader? Because the author has constructed that view, he's put that view in your mind through how he's described their actions and what they do, which is really clever, actually.

So how has Philip Pullman done that? Look through this text again.

Look for those clues to find out how we know what they're like as an old couple.

Are they friendly or are they unkind? So pause the video now, write your answer down, and then press play when you're ready.

Well done, shall we have a look? These types of questions can be a little bit trickier because you have to look for clues.

And sometimes those clues are not obvious.

So I said, "They are kind because they help him "by bringing him inside and feeding him." So if you look at the first line, it said they "took him into the kitchen "because the night was cold," which tells me they didn't want to leave him outside on his own.

He's a stranger to them.

So they've been really kind in taking him inside and keeping him warm.

And they've even put him down by the fire.

And then, this also tells me that they weren't sure what to do next.

And they said, "Let's feed the poor little soul." So now they're offering their food to the boy as well.

So it shows they want to look after him and that they are really friendly and kind.

Well done, I wonder how you got on with that question.

So now we're going to do some reflecting.

We're going to have a go at a bigger question, and I've got one I want you to think about, and I'm not really going to help you with this one, because this is what you think.

So sometimes when we read, we have to bring what we think about text, our own opinion.

And that's why I love reading so much because whatever book you read, you can read it almost differently to how someone else sees things.

Or when you're creating a picture of the setting or the characters in your mind, it might look different to how someone else has thought about things.

And when you're thinking about the story, we always think about what might happen next.

That's something we do automatically when we read.

So I wonder what's happened in your brain as we've read through the last few texts.

So this is the part of the lesson you really need your brain for, I hope you've got it.

So I want an extended answer.

By an extended answer, I mean, I want you to write at least two sentences, full stops, full stops, capital letters, making sense for me.

So I'm going to read you an extract from the text, and then I'll let you know what you're writing about.

So, "'What's your name?' he said." And this is Bob asking.

"'Haven't got a name.

' "'Why, everyone's got a name! "'I'm Bob and this is Joan, and that's who we are, see.

"'You sure you haven't got a name?' "'I lost it, I forgot it, I was a rat,' said the boy, "as if that explained everything." So I want you now just to pause the video and have a go at reading that back yourself, and then press play when you're ready.

Okay.

My question to you is, do you think the boy really doesn't have a name? Has he really lost it? Has he really forgotten it? Do you think he was a rat, is he telling the truth? What do you think? Do you think he is actually a rat? This is one of the most interesting openings I've ever read in a story because it's so unusual.

You never expect someone to say, "I was a rat." And it looks like he fully believes it.

So what do you think, what do you think is going to happen in this story? Do you think he was a rat? What do you think's going on here? Because I'm as confused as Bob and Joan.

I don't know about you.

So what I'd like you to do is to pause the video, and write two sentences about what you think about this.

This needs to take longer than the other questions you've done today because like I said, you really have to think about this one.

So pause the video and press play when you're ready.

Well done.

I really want to hear what you thought.

So tell me what you thought now.

Do you think the boy is a rat, was he a rat? Yeah, fantastic.

I actually don't know what I think just yet.

I think he actually does believe he was a rat.

I do think he's forgotten it, and I do think he's lost it, his name.

So I actually do think he was a rat and the way he's acting makes me even more convinced that he was a rat.

However, I think Philip Pullman might have a little twist in this story.

It seems to me that all is not as it seems. So we'll have to read on to find out what happens next.

But for now, congratulations, you completed your lesson today.

I would like you just to tell me two things you've learned about the story today, or two things you've enjoyed about "I Was a Rat?" so far.

And then, I really hope you enjoy the rest of your lessons today and that you take care.