Lesson video

Hi everyone.

It's Mr. Brown here with your English lesson for today.

So you ready? Let's go.

Okay our learning objective for this lesson is to generate verbs and adverbs to describe a setting.

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

Our agenda for this lesson, we're going to start like we always do with a writing warm up, we then going to be generating verbs and then generating adverbs.

So let's get warmed up.

Oh dear, I have forgotten to put on the name of our word classes I've got the definitions for you but I wonder if you'd be able to work out from those definitions, what the full word classes are.

So the first one says A is a PPT, a person, place or thing.

The next one that pink box says an, is a describing word.

The green on the bottom row is a, is a doing or a being word and the last one, the purple box an, describes a verb.

I wonder if you could put those in the right place for me.

If you think you're ready, you can have a go at writing those down now.

If you need a little bit more help, perhaps this will help you.

You might be able to see now you've got the four word classes where they might go so pause, have a go, I'll see you in a sec.

Okay welcome back let's see if you were correct.

And now on is a P,P,T, a person, place or thing, an adjective describes a noun.

They go together, those nouns and adjectives like best friends.

A verb is a doing or a being word and of course an adverb describes a verb, verbs and adverbs go together just like nouns and adjectives, that's how I remember that.

Nouns and adjectives are like best friends and verbs and adverbs are best friends okay.

So let's start generating verbs.

And of course we are in the world of "The viewer," the beautiful book written by Gary Crew and illustrated by Shaun Tan, using this picture from the of opening "The Viewer," we generated nouns and adjectives last lesson but you need verbs and adverbs as well and that's what we'll be doing today.

Last week we managed to come up with the nouns like factories, car, clock, boy and then we added adjectives and you can see them in pink there, filthy, towering for factories, smashed, rusty for car, broken, circular clock and skinny dark haired boy.

We even to go description to the next level, didn't we? By finding the nouns within the noun.

So we spotted that the sky was a noun, so then we went deeper and we were like okay, let's see what nouns we can find within the noun and that's where we found clouds, birds and smoke.

So we know how to describe stuff in great detail.

If we put all those together, we can write an outstandingly descriptive description, for example, the amber, cloud scattered sky, which was rippled with thick black smoke, really good that's the level we're working at.

However to make our descriptive sentences complete, we need to bring our settings to life using verbs and adverbs for example, in the amber clouds, scattered sky which was rippled with thick black smoke billowing repeatedly upwards, dark circling birds hovered silently over the chaotic scrapyard below.

So I've got billowing and hovered as my verbs and repeatedly and silently as my adverbs and suddenly when I read that sentence, I get a sense of movement.

I know that the smoke is billowing repeatedly up towards the sky and I know that there's those birds circling above us.

They're hovering silently really nice.

Okay but to do that, we need to have a good understanding of what our verbs are.

So can you please find the verbs pause the lesson, read through these one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine different words and see if you can spot the verbs and remember a verb is a doing or a being word, off you go.

Okay welcome back, let's see if you spotted them, first of all, if I told you there were only three verbs out of those nine words, I wonder if that would change your answer, maybe you've got four or five written down, there's only three so you might want to check your answer, perhaps you have got only two written down, find that last one, have a look through any that you can get rid of you think, ah actually that's not so bad.

Okay let's see if you are right.

The verbs, the doing or being words, the things that you can do are set, looked and blue.

Well done if you've got all three of those.

So how do we choose verbs to describe a picture that is still, this picture is absolutely not moving.

It is a drawn picture in a book, there's no movement to it.

So how do you describe verbs? How do you put verbs in our writing when there isn't anything that's moving, verbs describe things that are usually moving, isn't it? Like if I were to do this, I am waving exactly, I am smiling, perfect but there's nothing that's moving in that picture.

First of all let's find the nouns and decide if they are doing anything.

So same as we did last lesson, we find those nouns.

For example, the boy, that's a perfect example.

He is probably the main, most important noun in this picture.

So the boy, what's he doing? What is that boy doing? He's not moving, is he? In the picture but what is he doing? If you were looking into this picture and imagining it coming to life, what's the boy doing? He's searching, he searched, good.

And be careful with our tense we're going to go past tense with this and say the boy searched.

Okay what other verbs can you think of for what he did? He searched, anything else you might want to pause the lesson if you think you've got a few here, pause the lesson and write down as many as you can.

Okay so the boy searched, I have also got that he hunted 'cause he's hunting for something same as searched.

Scavenged, I love the word scavenged.

It's when you're looking through lots of different objects to find something.

Examined, he's very careful.

You can see the way that he's bend over looking at something closer, he's examining it.

He examined, he collected.

We know that he's there looking to find something by the looks of it.

He's collecting something shuffled the way that he might be moving across that sandy dusty floor.

And he leaned, of course, he's leaning in isn't he? Great so now we've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven verbs, that's far, far more than we actually will need so we'll have to do a bit of choosing from that list but it's great to start with a big list when we're generating vocabulary.

Okay so we've got verbs, what do we need? What do we need? What do we know goes with our verbs? Of course it's adverbs, so I have given you an adverb now to say how he did those verbs and the one I've chosen first is carefully.

I don't think you need to worry about choosing the precise adverb for the precise verbs, I think in this instance, you can come up with a list of adverbs, a list of verbs, and then do the matching.

So we've got the boy searched, hunted, scavenged, examined, collected, shuffled and leaned.

Carefully I think actually goes with pretty much all of those, the boy carefully searched through, yeah.

The boy carefully hunted, yeah.

The boy carefully scavenged the objects in front of him, yeah how about the boy carefully leaned? What would it be because maybe he wouldn't want to fall over and fall into these objects 'cause they're all shattered and broken and probably dangerous.

Great, what other adverbs can you come up with that will suit any of those verbs, pause the lesson, take your time, remember adverbs end in "ly" so adverbs that work with those verbs of you go.

Okay welcome back let's see how I got on and I wonder if we got any of the same adverbs, ah, desperately, inquisitively, curiously, silently, gradually and cautiously.

Those were the adverbs I came up for.

Now this is where you might have to do a bit of choosing, for example something like examined, carefully works really well with that but then so just inquisitively desperately, maybe not quite so much so we are doing a bit of picking and choosing here, aren't we? I think what would be a good activity now is to pause the lesson again and have a go at selecting an adverb for each of your verbs, just to start pairing them together of you go.

Okay so let's see if we can use those in our writing, here's my example, the skinny dark haired boy curiously shuffled across the dusty floor and carefully examined the, now what words should I go for here to describe all those different objects on the floor? I think I've got the perfect word and I can teach it to you 'cause it might be a word you don't know.

The skinny dark haired boy curiously shuffled across the dusty floor and carefully examined the debris, can you say that? Debris, it's a French word so that's why it looks to us like it would be spelled debris but it's actually pronounced debris and debris means scattered pieces of rubbish or remains.

Sometimes when I look into a classroom at the end of the day after they've been doing some junk modelling, perhaps in reception, there's lots of bits of debris everywhere.

You might have this at home perhaps when your bedroom needs to tidy, you might have lots of bits of rubbish or remains that need tidying, that could be debris.

Debris I think is a great word to describe all the random bits of rubbish and objects that are found in this scrapyard.

Debris, rubbish or objects, they all could be used to describe those different things.

Now let's think about verbs that would work for those because technically they're not doing anything, that's why I've put lay is the first one that I can think of.

The debris lay on the floor.

It just lying there it's doing anything, is it? But actually to lay there is a verb, lay is a verb.

So even when someone or something is not doing anything, is completely still, it's still doing something, see what I mean? It's quite a hard thing to kind of understand but right now I am going to be completely still and not do anything, ready? Here we go.

What am I doing? I'm waiting, aren't I? That could be a verb.

I'm just waiting for the lessons to restart.

Interesting, isn't it? So the verbs that I think will work for the objects are lay, set, 'cause lots of them are just sat still, perched, which is when something is kind of on top of something else.

Balanced, all of these objects are kind of thrown up together, there will be some that are balancing on top of something else.

Slept and rested.

Now we are adding a human quality to these objects, aren't we? The objects are not actually sleeping, we know that but to bring us into life we can do that with objects.

We can say that the cars sat on top of a smashed television or something.

We can say that the objects slept on the ground waiting to be picked up.

Now we know verbs have to go with adverbs, so what adverbs can describe something that is fundamentally sitting completely still and not moving, tricky.

I've got motionlessly as a good adverb there.

If you, motion means to move, there is motion happening.

Motionless means there isn't any moving and motionlessly is the adverb of that.

So we've got motionlessly, silently, patiently, eagerly, peacefully and precariously, that's a nice word.

Precariously means when something isn't solid and fixed and sturdy, for example if the car was perched precariously on top of an object, it might mean that the car was not a hundred percent solid, it might be wobbling a bit through the side if the wind blew.

Okay what if you have a go through and see if you could match any of my verbs to any of my adverbs.

See if there's anything that works there, what would you put with slept? Would that verb go with silently? It's up to you.

Hope you pause the lesson and see if you can match any of those up.

Okay welcome back, so I think the ones that jump out to me there are quite like slept peacefully.

I like rested silently because I think it just gets that sense that all these objects are just still and quiet and just waiting to be picked up.

Maybe sat eagerly for those objects that want to be chosen, they're desperate to be picked up and collected, great.

Let's have a little listen through now then, the skinny dark haired boy, curiously shuffled is my verb and adverb across the dusty floor and carefully examined the debris that waited eagerly to be collected.

Very nice, good work okay.

Have a quick go at this, we're now starting to piece all the work we've done in the last couple of lessons together, we've got adjectives, nouns, verbs and adverbs.

I am describing the smoke so I've gone for thick black smoke and then my verb and adverb tells me what the smoke did, it rose gradually, thick, black smoke rose gradually, thick, black plumes of smoke rose gradually into the amber cloud scattered sky, that's how it would look in a full sentence.

So I would like you to have a go finishing this table for me.

I have missed out the adjective for the second one but I've given you the noun it's birds so what adjectives would you use to describe the birds? For the birds I've given you the verb as well, flew, but I've not given you the adverb and then the last one I've given you the adjectives, filthy and towering but I haven't said the noun, can you work out what the noun is? I've given you the verb, loomed but again not the adverb.

How did that thing loom? Okay pause the lesson, over to you of you go.

Okay welcome back.

I bet that took a little while actually so let's have a look, we have got large, loud birds I went for, but I'm sure you came up with something very creative too, large, loud birds flew ominously.

I love that word, ominously.

The birds are circling around like they're looking to sweep down and peck maybe the child, the boy that's in the scrap yard.

And then our last one, filthy, towering, what was filthy? Well everything pretty much in the scrapyard but what was towering? What was very, very tall, filthy, towering factories loomed.

And then how about this, imposingly, if you are imposing it means that you make everyone else feel a little bit less secure and confident because something is imposing it sort of taking up lots of space and seems more important than everyone else.

The filthy towering factories loomed imposingly, lovely.

Okay so over to you now, I want you to use the adjectives, nouns, verbs and adverbs that we have generated over the last two lessons to write three sentences, describing the setting.

Your extension for those people that like to push themselves to go above and beyond which is pretty much all of you, try using a relative clause to add extra information, for example, the skinny brown haired boy who examined the debris that lay before him shuffled gradually through the scrapyard.

So that extra information, that relative clause just tells us a bit more about the boy, doesn't it? The skinny brown haired boy who examined the debris that lay before him shuffled gradually through the scrapyard.

Good luck everyone, you can pause the lesson now or you can let me finish and then do it after.

Well done today, you have done your writing warmup, you've generated verbs, you've generated adverbs and we've really thought about how we can pull that all together in our writing.

Great work.

Congratulations, you've completed your lesson.

You are in such a good position now to go ahead and write the opening of "The Viewer." The way that we have generated nouns, adjectives, verbs, and now adverbs it's pretty special and it's exactly the process you need to go through every time you're going to do a piece of writing where you want your description to be detailed, accurate, imaginative, very good.

I'll see you next time.

Thanks everyone, bye bye.