Lesson video

Hello.

Nice to see you again if I've met you before.

If I haven't, I'm Ms. Waddell.

I have the pleasure of teaching you this writing unit.

We're going to do it based on a really lovely story.

And I'm really looking forward to doing that with you.

Just did a little bit about me, I enjoy films, and I enjoy travelling.

and I really like writing and teaching writing, so I'm looking forward to doing this with you.

This first lesson is going to be engaging the texts so that we get familiar with it and start gathering some brilliant ideas for our own writing.

So let's get started.

Let's have a look at what this lesson will look like as we engage with this text.

So the first thing on our agenda is we're going to introduce the narrative.

So we're going to find out a little bit more about the story.

Then we're going to read the narrative together so I will read it and you can read along if you can.

Then we're going to analyse the narrative.

So analyse means to look at it and think a bit about what it's about and how it makes us feel.

In this lesson, we will need our exercise book or paper, a pencil or pen, and definitely a switched on brain and a good listening.

So if you don't have any of those things, just pause the video and go and get them, and when you come back, make sure you are somewhere where there is as little distraction as possible, because we want to really listen and concentrate for this first lesson and all lessons.

But it's good to start as we mean to go on.

So pause and get those things now.

Okay.

Now we are going to introduce the narrative, so the story say.

Mm, so first of all, what is a narrative? Name your three favourite narratives.

Pause and have a think if you need to.

If they're straight at the top of your brain, just shout them out, straight away to me.

Three favourite narratives, what stories make you go , "So exciting I can't help but not read this"? Tell me.

Good choices, fantastic.

So let's have a look at the ones that I chose.

I kind of cheated.

I've actually got four, sorry.

'Cause I just couldn't narrow it down, but I just thought they might be nice ones for you to know about if you didn't know about them already.

Maybe you do.

Let's see.

"Hooray for Anna Hibiscus", so I really liked this one because Anna Hibiscus lives in West Africa in a country.

They don't actually tell us which country, but a country in West Africa.

And this story is about being brave, so being scared, but trying to do something anyway.

And how important people that you love are to helping you to be brave.

So I really liked that one.

Another one is "The Boy in the Back of the Class".

So this is about a refugee who joins the class, a refugee is someone who moves from one country to another, and trying to understand what that is for that child.

And it's really good.

It's about being at school really.

Then this one is "The Butterfly Club", and that's about friendship.

And sometimes friendship is not as straightforward as you would hope it would be, but "The Butterfly Club" is good because it helps you think about being friends with people who you wouldn't expect maybe at first or maybe helps you to understand why people are sometimes not so nice when they're friends with you.

So I really liked that one.

And then the last one, this one is a graphic novel, so it's like a cartoon.

And it's about a girl growing up in America in the '50s, the 1950s, and being deaf and a special machine that she used to help her, which made her into a superhero.

I really, really liked that one.

So if you don't know those, give them a try.

This is our narrative, Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince".

Can you tell me from, so these are three different books of the same story, and that's the front cover of the books.

Can you have a look at the front covers, you can pause and have a look if you'd like to, and tell me, where did you think that this story is set? What kind of place? Tell me what the setting is.

Pause now.

Okay.

So can you tell me what you think a setting might be? Is it in a forest? Is it on the beach? Is it in a jungle? What do you think? Thumbs up, thumbs down.

No, it's not any of those things.

Tell me where you think it is.

Yeah, it looks like it's in a city.

And how do we know from that front cover that it might be in a city? Can you point to the screen to a clue that you used to decide it that you think it might be in the city? Are you pointing to this one? Yeah.

There city kind of houses.

Those are some of the houses that you might see in older bits of London maybe.

They do look quite old fashioned, or maybe somewhere else in Europe, a European town.

Concrete, you find lots of concrete in cities, often very grey.

And yet you might find a river, like in London you have the River Thames, and some buildings, lots of buildings around.

Now I want you to pause and think about the characters.

What clues are there in here that tell you what our character's might be? What can you see on each of the pictures? Now let's point to where we might see some characters.

Ready, steady, and point! Yeah.

That's a big statue up there.

There seems to be a statue in each of the pictures.

Maybe the statue is a character, possible.

And the statue's got a crown, and that gives us a clue maybe in the title.

And then are there any other characters that you can see in more than one of the covers? Yes.

Yes, the bird.

So these might be some characters in our story.

We don't know for sure.

Now I want you to think about whether this is a fiction or nonfiction book.

How do you know? Now, it is, in fact, a fiction book.

It's a fiction story.

And you might guess because there are characters, but sometimes there are characters in nonfiction.

They're just real people.

Maybe also on this cover, there's a bit that says "The Happy Prince: A Tale by Oscar Wilde".

And a tale is usually something that you might find in fiction.

So a tale is another way of saying a story.

Good to have a tale told in real life, but it's just a quite a good clue to tell us that this is a fiction story.

And the author of this story is a man called Oscar Wilde, and he wrote lots of different things.

He was born 1854 and lived to 1900.

And he wrote plays, and he wrote stories.

And he was also a journalist, and he was very, very popular at the time that he was alive.

He also had quite a difficult time at one point, but he was very, wrote lots of very successful things.

And the time that he was writing is the time, is an era called the Victorian era where Queen Victoria was on the throne.

I'm sure you've heard of her.

And there you can see on that side, there's the Elizabethan era 1558 to 1603.

And you can see there's a little line after it.

So I've just put that there 'cause you might've studied The Great Fire of London possibly.

It's after The Great Fire of London, quite a long time after and before World War II.

So you can see World War II after the Victorian era and then 2020 and beyond is the modern day, so he was writing when Queen Victoria was on the throne.

So he was a famous Victorian writer.

So we're going to start the story in a minute.

But first, before we start, I want you to understand some key vocabulary, some words that are in the writing that we're looking at.

Now, the first one is, my turn, column.

Your turn.

A column is a long, tall structure that sometimes has a statue on top.

So this picture here is Nelson's Column in Trafalgar Square, which is in London.

And you can also have columns at the front of big old buildings that hold up parts of buildings.

And then the next one is pedestal.

My turn, pedestal.

Your turn.

Great.

And a pedestal is the bit that a statue's feet go on.

So you can see there you've got the the feet of Nelson, Admiral Nelson there, on a pedestal.

And it's just that bit that they stand on, and a pedestal is sometimes used to describe other things that people might stand on to go above other people.

So let's see if you remember.

Can you please tell me what the long, tall thing is? Ready? Tell me.

It is a column.

And can you please tell me what the bit that the statue's feet go on? The thing that you stand on is called a.

Fantastic, pedestal.

Okay, let's see if you're listening and you remember.

Can you please tell me what the long tall thing is? It's a, oh, oh! Oh, it's not!.

That's a pedestal.

So the pedestal is what you put your feet, the statue puts its feet on, or someone puts his feet on to go above other people.

And the other one, the long, tall one is called a column.

Fantastic.

Okay, now we're going to read the narrative.

So listening carefully, and I want you to just, as I read, think about how it's making you feel because that will be important to us understanding what the writer is doing and then what we need to try to do.

The story is "The Happy Prince", and it is abridged, which means shortened and changed a little bit, from a tale by Oscar Wilde.

And there's a picture of the Happy Prince and the bird, the characters that you spotted.

"High above the city on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince.

He was covered all over with thin leaves fine gold.

For eyes, he had two bright sapphires and a large red ruby that glowed on his sword.

He was very much admired indeed," which means people thought he looked great.

"'I'm glad there is someone in the world who is quite happy,' muttered a disappointed man, as he gazed at the wonderful statue." So you can imagine the disappointed man might be standing in those dirty streets, and he's looking up at the golden statue, and he's disappointed.

Maybe something didn't work out in his life.

"One night, a little Swallow flew over the city.

'Where should I rest?' he said.

Then he saw the statue on the tall column.

'I will rest there,' he cried, 'It is a fine position with plenty of fresh air.

' So he stopped on the pedestal just between the feet of the Happy Prince." You can see there he's perching on the pedestal.

"Just as he was putting his head under his wing, a large drop of water fell on him.

'What a curious thing!' he cried.

'There was not a single cloud in the sky.

The stars are quite clear and bright, and yet it's raining.

' Then another drop fell, and he looked up, and he saw that the eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears and were running down his golden cheeks.

His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.

'Who are you?' he said.

'I am the Happy Prince.

' 'Why are you weeping then?' asked the Swallow.

'You have quite drenched me.

'" Drench means soaked, make very wet.

"'When I was alive and had a human heart,' answered the statue, 'I did not know what tears were, for I lived in a palace where sorrow was not allowed to enter.

Round the garden ran a very high wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it because everything around me was so beautiful.

My friends called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure is happiness.

So I lived, and so I died.

And now that I'm dead, they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city.

And though my heart is made of lead,'" which is a metal that's very hard.

I'll explain afterwards.

"'I can't help, but weep." Very heavy.

Okay, so I want you to just see whether you were listening carefully and answer the true and false statements below.

So the main character is a girl.

The story is set in a city.

The story is a true story.

When you've decided the answers to those, press Play again.

Just say it.

You can just say it or have it in your head.

That's fine.

So press Play when you think you're ready.

Here are the answers.

The main character is a girl.

Mm-mm-mm.

Who's the main characters? The bird, that's right, and the Prince.

Brilliant.

The story is set in a city, true.

We kind of establish that, didn't we? The story is a true story.

False, but how do we know that's false.

True story, did that really happen? Let's see.

How do you know? Do we know because the bird can talk? Do we know because the statue can talk? Do we know because the statue cries? Do we know because the bird can fly? Decide which of those tell us that this probably isn't a true story, but is one from an imagination.

Okay.

Tell me the ones you agree with.

Is it because the bird can talk? Okay.

The statue can talk? Okay.

The statue cries? Okay.

And the bird can fly.

Let's see.

So the bird can talk, but apart from parrots, actually can't talk.

The statue can talk.

Have you ever seen a statue that can talk? No.

So this suggests to us that it's not a true story.

It's fiction.

And the statue cries.

Similarly, I've never seen a statue cry.

And then the last one, the bird can fly.

That's true, but birds can fly anyway.

So it doesn't tell us that that means it's not a true story 'cause birds can fly.

Now, let's get some key vocabulary for the next bit of the story.

The first one is poor house.

I'll say it, poor house.

Your turn.

Okay.

A poor house is a place in Victorian Britain, lots of them in the main cities.

And there were places that people were forced to live if they really didn't have any money.

So instead of getting help from the government with benefits that allow us to try and live a life independently, they would have to live with lots and lots of people and work for free just to get a little bit of food.

But the food was very, very bad, and the conditions were very, very bad.

So a poor house was not somewhere that people wanted to live.

And it was seen as being very shameful, which now we know that being poor is not a shameful thing.

It's just something to do with the circumstances at that time, whereas then it was seen as being a very bad thing.

And a seamstress was a tailor.

And it was just an old fashioned way of saying a tailor, which is someone who mends clothes or makes clothes.

It's very good skill.

So let's carry on with the story.

So this is the statue talking.

"'Far away in a little street, there is a poor house.

'" there's that word, "continued the statue.

'Through the window, I can see a woman seated at a table.

Her face is thin and worn, and she has rough red hands, all pricked by the needle.

She is a seamstress.

In a bed in the corner of the room, her little boy is lying ill.

'" And you can see he's ill there.

Got a nice Get Well Soon card.

"'He has a fever and is asking for medicine.

His mother has nothing to give him, so she has no food and no medicine, so he is crying.

Swallow, will you please bring her the ruby out of my sword? My feet are fastened,' which means fixed, 'to this pedestal, and I cannot move.

' The Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Swallow was sorry.

'It is very cold here,' he said, 'but I will stay with you for one night and be your messenger.

' So the swallow picked out the great ruby from the Prince's sword and flew away with it in his beak." He's got it in his claws there, but "in his beak, over the roofs of the town.

He passed by the cathedral tower where the white marble angels were sculptured." So you can see there the cathedral, and there's some white marble angels.

Marble is a stone.

"He passed by the palace and heard the sound of dancing, while the beggars," people who were trying to get money, ask people for money, "were sitting at the gates, and starving children crouched in the black streets." So starving children, you may or may not know are children who have so little to eat, but they're finding it very hard to live.

Horrible situation.

"At last, he came to the poor house and looked in.

The boy was tossing feverishly," which means turning over, feeling really unwell, "on his bed, and the mother had fallen asleep because she was so tired.

In he hopped and laid the great ruby on the table.

Then he flew gently around the bed, fanning the boy's forehead with his wings.

'How cool I feel,' said the boy.

'I must be getting better,' and he sank into a delicious slumber." So that's a really nice sleep.

Then the Swallow flew back to the Happy Prince and told him what he had done.

'It's curious,' he remarked.

'But I feel quite warm now, although it is so cold.

' 'That is because that you have done a good deed,' said the Prince." Hm.

So when he said that he feels quite warm, do you think he means he feels warm in his body, like, "I'm a bit hot"? Or do you think he means something else? Do you think he means warm in his body? Thumbs up or thumbs down.

Show me.

Ready, steady.

Let's check.

Thumbs down.

No, he's talking about feeling warm inside.

And then what feeling warm inside is another way of sort of saying that you feel happy about something, or if you feel loved, you might feel warm.

It's a way of describing a feeling that otherwise might not be something you feel like with touch, but it's something inside.

So he feels warm inside.

So that was the opening and build up of the story.

And there are some of the pictures from what we were just listening to.

That's going to be the bit that we focus our writing on, but I'm going to read you the end of the story so that you understand where it's going.

And because later on in the unit, you're going to be writing that bit yourself.

But just so you know, we together are focusing on this bit of the story.

Let's read the rest of it because it helps us understand the message.

Lead, this came up earlier on.

Lead is a very, very heavy metal.

There's a picture of some lead.

I'm going to say it, lead.

Your turn.

So you find lead, also, people talk about lead in your pencil.

And actually, it's not actually that kind of lead anymore in a pencil, but that's another word for lead.

But here we're talking about lead that is a very heavy, heavy metal.

And a furnace, this one we're going to come up against.

Furnace.

Your turn.

Great.

And a furnace is a really, really hot oven.

And people use it to do, to melt metal, to do metal work.

And so it's something that's so, so, so, so hot that it can do other things that a normal fire can't do 'cause it's so hot.

Furnace.

Let's carry on the story.

"Each day, the Prince asked, 'Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you not stay with me one night longer?' And each day the swallow delivered treasures to those that were suffering.

Each of his sapphire eyes," I'll explain that a bit later, "and all of the gold on his body until he was a dull grey statue that could no longer see.

Then, the snow came, and after the snow came the frost.

The streets looked as if they were made of silver, they were so bright and glistening.

Long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from the houses.

The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince because he loved him too much." I just want to point something out here in the story.

I've got then, but really then should have a little comma after it.

So I just spotted that.

And I also wanted to show you you can see the poor little Swallow, the Swallow has a capital letter, and the Prince has a capital letter because they are characters in the story.

And we need to remember that when we do our writing as well.

"But at last, he knew that he was going to die.

He had just enough strength to fly up to the Prince's shoulder once more.

'Goodbye, dear Prince!' And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips and fell down dead at his feet.

At that moment, a curious crack sounded inside the statue as if something had broken.

The fact is that leaden heart," so the heart made of lead, "had snapped right in two." It's also quite magic, isn't it? Yes.

Early that next morning, the Mayor was walking in the square below with the Town Councillors." And the mayor is like the guy who runs the town, and the Councillors are the people who help him.

"As they pass the column, he looked up at the statue.

'Dear me! How shabby,' which means kind of messy, 'the Prince looks,' he says.

'How shabby indeed!' cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor.

'The ruby has fallen out of his sword.

His eyes are gone, and he is no longer golden,' said the Mayor.

'In fact, he is little better than a beggar! And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!' So they pulled down the statue of the happy Prince." Oh, dear.

"Then, they melted the statue in a furnace, but strangely, the lead heart would not melt.

So threw it on a dust heap where the dead swallow was also lying.

'Bring me the two most precious things in the city,' said God to one of his angels.

So the angel brought him a leaden heart and the dead bird.

'You have chosen correctly,' said God.

'For in my Garden of Paradise, this little bird and the Happy Prince will live together forever.

'" Let's have a think about the story and how it made us feel.

How did it make you feel? Have a think.

Did it make you feel sad? Did it make you feel happy? Did it make you feel angry? Did that make you feel confused? Tell me what you felt.

I felt.

Okay.

So it could have been any one of those things because really how something makes you feel is just for you personally, how it makes you feel.

It made me feel sad.

It also made me feel happy because they had that lovely friendship.

Sad because they died, but happy also because they got to be together in the Garden of Paradise, which is also something that some people believe in as being like a heaven.

Or it could be just somewhere you imagine people go when they die, and it's something that people hold in their hearts, a kind of paradise in people's memories.

Angry, well, I did feel a bit angry at the Town Councillors for being so callous or unkind to the statue who had done so many good things.

And they were just judging him because, well, because of the way he looked, which is not a nice thing to do, is it? It's not about what people look like.

It's about who they are and what they do.

And the Prince had tried to do lots of good things.

Confused, yeah, there might've been some bits where I was confused.

I would like you to tell me how it made you feel.

And I would like you to tell me by writing it down.

I want you to say your sentence, The story made me feel because.

And say your whole sentence.

The story made me feel sad because I didn't like that the people died.

Or, the story made me feel happy because the bird had made a lovely friend.

How did it make you feel? So say your full sentence.

I want you to write it down.

I want you to check it.

I want you to edit it.

So make sure it's got all the things it needs, a nice capital letter, a nice full stop.

And then once you've written it, press Play again.

Pause now.

Okay.

Now I want to think with you about whether you feel like the story had a message.

It felt to me, well, you tell me, did it have a message? Was it telling us something, telling us something about how we should be, or was it just a happy thing that, well, okay, we'll forget about it? What do you think? Thumbs up, thumbs down.

Ready? I think it did have a message.

In fact, it did have a message.

And that was the purpose of what Oscar Wilde was writing.

He was writing these stories, and it's a part of a collection of other stories that he wrote for his two sons.

And his two sons would be read them as bedtime stories.

And the purpose was, well, he was writing it in the Victorian era, as we said, when there was lots of poverty.

Poverty is where there are lots and lots of people who are very poor and don't have anything.

And this is a picture of London at the time that he was writing it.

It's an etching, I think, and it's shows lots of children.

You can see, they don't have any shoes.

They're very dirty.

The sky is very filthy and there were, and there still are really, lots of people who were poor.

And then a few people who were very, very, very, very, very, very rich.

And he wanted people to know, Oscar Wilde wanted to people to know that that was not fair.

And he wanted his children to understand that that was not fair.

And so this kind of story is called an allegory.

An allegory is a story with a message.

So the purpose, the point of Oscar Wilde's story is to convey to tell us a message.

Allegory.

Your turn.

It wants us to learn something.

He wants us to learn something from this story, and he wants us to learn a moral.

The moral is a lesson or story that can help you understand about what's right and what's wrong.

My turn, moral.

Your turn.

The purpose for Oscar Wilde to make us feel something so that we would learn something and maybe change the way we behave.

So let's think about what that message might be.

Was it, do you think, to help your friends? Was it to take as much as you can? Was it to help people who have less than you? Was it to be kind? Was it not to judge only from what you can see? Which ones of those do you agree with that that those were part of the message? And which ones do you not agree with that they were not part of the story? Have a think now and decide.

Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, or yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, whichever you think.

Which ones do you agree with, and which ones do you not agree with? So these are the ones that I think it is saying.

And there are other messages too, I think.

It's a kind of religious tale I suppose.

It's saying something about what a Christian God, he was talking about Christian God, but lots of gods, you could say, might be judging who you are and what you do rather than what you look like.

That might be a message, but these are ones that I think are quite strong, that you should help your friends.

Not that you should take as much as you can.

It's not saying make sure you have all the rubies or make sure that you have all the gold because he had all of that, didn't he at the beginning of the story or the beginning of his life? But he was still sad when he was a golden statue.

Is it to help people who have less than you? I think it is.

Yeah, because he made people happy by sharing his wealth, by giving what he had.

To be kind, certainly the Swallow was kind, and also the Prince was kind.

And not to judge from what you can see.

So the Mayor and his Councillors, we don't get a sense that they're very nice people, do we? We get a sense that they are a bit callous or unkind, that they don't think about people's feelings.

They just think about what things look like, which is not how we should judge people.

So there might be something in all of those messages, in our allegorical story, in our allegory, this story.

So I would like you as your last task to write a sentence that tells me which message is strongest for you.

So I want you to choose one of the numbers and write this sentence, the message that is strongest for me is number.

Is it number one, two, three, or four? Because.

So I want you to write a full sentence and remember to say your sentence, to write your sentence, to check your sentence, edit your sentence.

And when you've done that press Play again.

Off you go.

Fantastic.

You've done your first lesson.

Really, really good.

Lots of listening, lots of thinking, and I think it's important to have a sense of how it made you feel because in the next lesson, we're going to think about how the writer did that, so how Oscar Wilde made us feel something and how we can make our readers feel something.

Look forward to the next lesson.