Lesson video

Hi everyone.

My name is Mr. Brown, and I'm going to be your teacher for this unit.

And it's a pretty special one.

We're working on a book that is so unique.

You won't have seen anything like this before.

Some of the pictures are going to blow you away.

So let's not hang around here.

Let's get started.

Okay, so our learning objective for today's lesson is to explore a text.

And it's our first lesson of this unit.

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

The agenda for today, we're going to start with a writing warm up and we will do this every lesson.

We'll look at the front cover of our book.

We're going to look inside the book.

And then finally we'll be making predictions.

But let's start with a writing warm up.

And for today's writing warm up, I would like you to write these words in the correct word class categories.

All words can be sorted into word class categories, and these four are the big four, the ones you need to know.

Nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs.

Here are the eight words I have given you to be sorted today.

Searched, rusty, shadows, examined, curiously, atmosphere, chaotic, motionlessly.

Don't worry if there's any of those words you're not quite sure on.

We're going to explore them throughout this unit.

If you would like to get some advice from a friend or a parent or a carer at home, you can do that too.

Your job is to sort these eight words into the four word class categories.

And just to help you, I'm going to show you this.

A noun is a PPT, a person, place or thing.

So remember that when you're sorting through those eight words.

Adjectives, they are describing words.

Verbs are doing or being words.

And adverbs describe verbs.

They tell you how the verb was done.

Remember that? Okay, it's over to you.

Pause the lesson, take as long as you need to.

And when you're ready, just start up again and we'll continue.

Off you go.

Okay, let's see how you got on, remembering what our four word class categories are and what they mean.

Let's have a look.

So let's start with nouns.

What nouns did you choose then? What nouns did you think there were out of those eight words? Well, well done if you said atmosphere and shadows.

And they were particularly tricky.

I wanted to give you words, well, nouns, that you wouldn't necessarily think, you know, well, they're nouns, I can pick them up like table or chair or pan or phone, they're obvious nouns.

They're ones that I think you definitely would have known.

But atmosphere and shadows, you can't pick them up and describe them like a chair or a table, can you? But an atmosphere can definitely be described.

You can have a warm atmosphere but you could also have a frosty atmosphere, an anxious atmosphere.

Let's have a look at our adjectives, rusty and chaotic.

Well done if you've got those two.

You can describe something as chaotic.

It was a chaotic day at school.

There was lots of chaos happening.

And rusty, you can definitely describe a metal as rusty.

Verbs are searched and examined.

And adverbs must be then curiously and motionlessly And of course you'll notice with our adverbs, they most likely end in ly, L-Y.

Well done.

Let's have a look at the front cover and I have actually got our text with us right here.

Let me show you.

But before we do that, prediction, you will need to know what that word means throughout this lesson.

What does prediction mean? So that you know.

If you want to pause the lesson, you can do to go and have a think about it.

You might want to look it up in a dictionary if you have one at home.

Prediction is to make a carefully considered statement about what you think might happen using any information you already have and your own life experiences.

The one thing that I hear from children lots at school is that a prediction is a guess but it's not.

Prediction is to make a really carefully considered guess.

It's something that you will really think about carefully.

You don't just randomly pick a number.

It's not like choosing which number a dice will land on.

That's a guess.

You've got a one in six chance of getting it right.

Prediction is when you use your own experiences, you carefully consider what the answer might be, you think about what might happen, you use any information you already have and your own life experiences to decide what you think is going to happen.

So here is the wonderful book that we will be working on during this unit.

I have it right here.

It is, there it is the right way up, "The Viewer" by Gary Crew and Shaun Tan.

Have a look at the front cover.

Already, you're probably making predictions about what you think this book might be around, what topic it might be on.

Is it fiction, nonfiction? Let's have a look closely.

Can you see at that part of the cover, there looks like some sort of leather strap with a buckle, a gold buckle there? And then there's definitely an old man it seems that's kind of hidden.

And it looks like someone that you might find on a five pound note or something like that.

Then there's, it looks like some sort of contraption, maybe even a dial in the middle, almost like a compass.

And in that top left corner, there's almost, it looks to me like some sort of, is it a skull, a skull shape? Very unusual.

This image is right in the middle of the front cover.

And it looks to me like it's very deep, long, dark hole.

And do you find yourself being drawn towards it because of those circular emotions? It's almost a hypnotic like it's trying to hypnotise you into heading into that dark hole.

Here, again, more example of interesting images.

There doesn't seem to be a link between them all.

They seem to be taken from perhaps all over the world.

And if you look at the front cover again, you're drawn towards that hole in the middle.

It's catching my eye every time I look at it.

How does the front cover make you feel? We've looked at different parts of the front cover in detail.

How does the front cover make you feel? When you were in a bookstore and you're looking through and you see "The Viewer" on the shelf in front of you, how does it make you feel when you look at that cover? My next question to you is what are your predictions about this book? When you look at that front cover, what are your initial predictions about this book? Do you think it's fiction or nonfiction? Do you think it's going to be aimed at children, adults, teenagers? What do you think? What are your predictions about the book? Let's have a look at my initial responses to the front cover.

See if we were similar.

How does the front cover make me feel? Uncomfortable.

It isn't obvious what this book is about.

There's no characters on the front cover.

There's no setting.

It looks, it looks dark to me.

And this is a word that adults use a lot.

They refer to things as dark and they might refer to movies as dark.

An example of this is Batman.

Batman has always been referred to as a dark movie.

And that's because it's more serious.

There might be a slight sinister tone to it.

Maybe it's not going to be like perhaps a Spider-Man movie, which might be more fun and light and aimed at younger children.

I think this book seems to be darker, isn't it? It makes me feel anxious.

I feel a bit uncomfortable and worried about the fact that I don't know what this book is about.

And I'm a bit nervous about looking at that hole in the middle that seems to be hypnotising me.

Intrigued.

While that's going on, I'm still so intrigued to open this book and find out what's happening.

Definitely intrigued.

Mesmerised, that hypnotic way of the kind of swells in the middle certainly is mesmerising me.

And my predictions about this book, I think it's fiction.

I don't think it's going to be a nonfiction information text type book, because if that was the case, I feel like it would have photographs on the front, images that would tell me what the book was going to be about.

So I think it's a fiction book, a storybook, not real.

Could involve looking back on the past, could be some sort of historical book maybe set in the past.

Some of the images that I can see around the edges aren't current and have older people in, so perhaps could be looking back in the past.

And I think it might not be suitable for younger children.

I don't think this is the kind of book you're going to find in a reception classroom.

Okay, let's have a look inside the book.

And today I'm only going to show you one picture, one picture from the opening of "The Viewer".

So let's have a look.

There it is.

This is the first picture that I want you to look at from inside "The Viewer".

Very, uh, I mean, what is the word? What's the word here? Is it chaotic? Is it confusing? Is it intriguing? Is it mesmerising? It's all those words.

It's continued the theme from the front cover, hasn't it? When you get an image like this, I think the easiest way to analyse it is to start picking out what you can see here.

There's so much to look at.

Start picking out what you can see here.

So what I suggest you do is in a moment you're going to pause this lesson and you're going to write down everything that you can see.

Starting with the things that your eyes have been drawn to first because that will be intentional.

The illustrator, Shaun Tan, will have wanted your eyes to be drawn to something first.

And that will have worked.

So write down a list of all the things you can see first of all in this picture.

Off you go.

Okay, so you should now have a list in front of you of all the different things you can see in this picture.

I wonder if you've got any of these things.

Now I can see a person.

There's a person in the middle there who is bending over, looking at something on the floor or doing something on the floor with their hands.

I can see a car that's obviously not being used anymore.

It's off the ground on top of something kind of wedged into a pile of different objects.

It looks like junk.

It looks like there is a television.

And we're actually looking through this broken television in front of us.

There's some light bulbs.

In the bottom left corner, there's some glasses.

There looks like a cinema or a photograph reeled, just sort of bending its way into the television.

A pattern's starting to emerge there because I'm seeing things like a television and I'm looking through it so I am becoming the viewer.

Then there is glasses which help you to view things and then a kind of movie film or I photograph film of something that you might be viewing.

It looks like a movie film because the image is all at the same.

So maybe you'd have to put it into a movie camera like in a cinema where you get images kind of bouncing along really quickly, and they're very, very slightly differently.

And then it looks like it's moving.

Very, very interesting.

Okay, today's lesson is all going to be about discussing and making our kind of initial ideas about "The Viewer".

So let's start making some predictions.

Using the picture from the opening of "The Viewer", let's make some predictions about the story.

Where is the opening set? That's the first question I want you to think about.

Where actually are we in this scene? When is this taking place? Is it now? Is it five years ago? 10 years ago? A hundred years ago? Or is it even set in the future? Who is the person? We know there's someone pictured in the middle of this scene, the person bending over, but we don't know who they are.

Is it a boy, a girl? Is it an adult? And then what are they doing? Why are they bending over? Are they looking at something? Are they searching for something? So these are the four questions that I'd like you to answer today.

You're going to be using your prediction skills to answer these four questions.

Well, to predict the answer you don't know yet.

Okay, here is a scaffold I'd like you to use when writing your predictions.

For each question, you will write I predict that the opening is set in, if it's where the opening is set question.

If it's, for example, when is this taking place? You might say I predict that the story is taking place in, and then give your answer.

So for where is the opening set, I've put I predict that the opening is set in a, and I've left a gap for you to put your own ideas in.

And then that's that key word next, because.

Because means that you're going to have to justify why you think the opening is set in wherever you think it's set.

So give your reasons.

And then if you've got more reasons, you can use furthermore to give even more reasons why you think the opening is set in a certain place.

And that's the same for all four of those questions.

Where is the opening set? When is this taking place? Who is the person? And what are they doing? I'd like you on your piece of paper to have a go at answering those questions using your prediction skills now.

Okay, welcome back.

I hope you had a good time making your predictions.

We will see if you are right next lesson.

So today we've done a writing warm up.

We looked to the front cover of this amazing book, "The Viewer" written by Gary Crew and illustrated by Shaun Tan.

We then got inside the book and we've even started to make predictions about what this story is going to entail, where it's going to be set, what's going to be happening.

Congratulations, you've completed your lesson.

Well done, everyone.

Great work today.

I will see you next time as we continue our work on "The Viewer".