Lesson video

Hello, my name is Miss Vincent.

And I'm going to be teaching you today for this writing lesson.

We're going to be moving on to a new outcome, in our How to Train Your Dragon unit over the course of this unit, we're going to be writing the build-up, a build-up scene from this film, which is based on the book by the same title by the author and illustrator Cressida Cowell.

In this lesson today, we're going to have a go at thinking about the two main characters, really carefully about the character of Hiccup, the young Viking and Toothless, the night fury dragon.

We're going to watch some of the clip and we're going to think carefully about how we can describe these two exciting and fun characters.

Let's get started.

This is our agenda for today's lesson.

We're going to start with a writing warm up.

Then we're going to watch the bit of the clip that we're going to focus on this writing outcome.

We're going to move on to think about some specific vocabulary to describe the two characters that we see in this scene and then finally, we're going to have a go at writing some sentences.

In this lesson, you'll need an exercise book or a piece of paper.

You'll need a pencil or a pen and your need your brain switched on ready to do lots of learning.

If there's anything that you need to go and get a piece of paper or pen, please pause the video, go and get it, and then come back and press play.

Okay, fantastic.

So hopefully we're all ready to go for our learning.

So this part of our texts, this part of our writing focuses on the build-up of the story in How to Train Your Dragon.

And I just wanted to go over what each part of the story does and what the purpose, what the reason behind each part of the story is.

In our previous outcome, we looked at the opening and this is where we met some of the characters, we set the scene so, we found out where the story was set.

And it does a really good job of grabbing your attention in the opening.

I wonder if you've heard any of these terms before the build-up, the climax and the resolution.

So within a story, you can have lots of these story mountains where the action builds-up.

There's lots of action, and then it goes down again, and that can happen throughout the course of a whole story, or it can happen in short moments, within a story as well.

In this lesson, we're going to focus on the build-up, but first I'll tell you very briefly what the purpose of each section of the story mountain is.

So we've already discussed the opening.

When we think about a build-up, we think about a part of the story where a problem is introduced or a challenge is introduced.

And the purpose of the build-up is to build up excitement.

So our attention has been grabbed in the opening, and then we continue to build our excitement as we move through the builds up.

And you've got a little sneak peek there of a picture from our build-up that we're going to be watching today.

The next section in our story mountain is the climax and the climax is where the most exciting part of the story happens.

It's where all the action happens.

It's the most important part where we built up to a point of excitement and that's where the action happens.

And then finally we finish off on the resolution where any loose ends are tied up, where any problems or challenges are resolved and we can find out what the solution is.

So, as I mentioned today, we're going to be focusing on the build-up, which introduces a bit of a challenge.

And we're going to see the challenge of Hiccup and Toothless.

So I'm going to show you a small clip in a moment then we're going to talk through our writing warm up, and then we'll watch a bit of a longer clip, but just to give you an idea of where we've moved on from our previous writing outcome.

At this point in the story, So we started off with the opening in our previous outcome.

At this point in the story, we are seeing Hiccup going to try and befriend Toothless, who is the dragon.

Now Toothless is a very rare type of dragon called a night fury.

And if we rewind back in the story, Hiccup is a bit of an unusual Viking and he is quite shy and he's quite clumsy.

And the other Vikings sometimes think that he's a little bit useless.

So he really wanted to prove himself.

And he really wanted to catch a dragon to prove to the other Vikings that he was worthy.

And he actually managed to capture this night fury in a trap, so it was tied up with some rope.

However, he felt bad.

So he went to find a night fury and eventually ended up releasing it.

He then realised that the night fury was hurt.

So, the wing of the night fury wasn't quite working and the night fury was hurt.

So in this scene, he's bringing the night fury a fish, and he is trying to make friends with the dragon.

So he's trying to approach the dragon and trying to build a relationship.

So let's watch a tiny little bit of the clip before our writing warm up.

Great, so that was a bit of an introduction to the two that we're going to be looking at closely today.

We're going to be looking at the character of Hiccup, the young Viking boy and we're going to be thinking about the dragon, the night fury dragon called Toothless as well.

So for our writing warm up, we're going to think about key vocabulary.

And before we do that, I thought it would be a good idea to think about our four-word classes again, and to think about each of their definition.

Can you remember what a noun is? Let's check a noun is a P, P, T, a person, place or thing.

My turn, your turn, a noun is a P, P, T, a person, place or thing.

Fantastic.

Let's remember what an adjective, an adjective describes a word, It tells you what it's like.

Good job.

Okay, this is a long one, so we split it into two parts.

A verb is a doing or being word.

If you do it or you are it then the word is a verb.

Fantastic.

And then finally, we've got our adverbs.

My turn, your turn.

An adverb describes a verb, often ends in -ly.

Great job.

So remembering that our nouns and adjectives go really closely together and our verbs and adverbs go really closely together because adjectives can describe nouns and adverbs describe verbs.

So they add to the verbs and the adjectives attitudes, the description of the nouns.

So today, because we're thinking about two characters and we're going to be thinking a lot about adjectives to describe them.

So we're going to look at a video clip closely in the lesson and think really carefully about how we could describe the two characters.

So we've already watched a small section of the build-up scene so we can use what we know from this and from what I've told you in this story, to help us come up with lots of different adjectives.

So in a moment, I'd like you to pause the video and I'd like you to think about this question.

How many different adjectives can you think of to describe Hiccup? And they can be adjectives just to describe his appearance.

So what he looks like from looking at this picture and from what you've seen in the video clip, or they can be adjectives to describe his personality, what kind of a person he is.

And you might do that by thinking about his actions.

So thinking about the fact that he's trying to make friends with the dragon, that he wanted to prove himself to the other Viking, so thinking about his personality.

And we're looking for adjectives and remembering our clue there to remember what adjectives are.

So an adjective describes a word, it tells you what it's like.

So I'd like you to pause the video and have a go at coming up with as many adjectives as you can to describe Hiccup.

Off you go.

Okay, fantastic work.

So I'm going to share with you some of the adjectives that I wrote down about Hiccup from this short section that we've seen.

So I can see that he's quite thin.

I can see that he's young.

I can see that he looks worried.

He looks unsure about what he's doing.

He's quite small compared to other Vikings.

He is brown-haired.

So we can put two words together with a hyphen to describe somebody's appearance, and it can make an adjective like brown-haired and then he's quite scruffy but I can tell that he's also very curious, because he wants to go into the valley to find out which means that he's probably a little bit brave as well.

And I think he's quite kind and caring too.

So really well done for coming up with some adjectives.

So I'm going to show you some statements where I've written some descriptions of Hiccup using some adjectives.

And you need to think about whether the adjectives that I've chosen are correct.

Whether they actually describe what we know about Hiccup is going to be some thumbs up, thumbs down.

So I'm going to give you three or four seconds to choose your answer and point to your answer.

So let's have a look at the first one.

Hiccup is a tall, muscular Viking.

Pointing to your answer in three, two, one.

He's not, he's not tall and he's not very muscly, but that doesn't stop him being strong, being determined and getting what he wants to do done.

So he's quite an inspirational Viking as well.

Let's have a look at the next one.

Hiccup is a brave, curious Viking.

Point to your answer in three, two, one.

He is, he's brave.

He's gone really, really close to a night fury dragon, which lots of Vikings would be really scared of doing.

And he's curious to find out a little bit more about dragons.

So lots of the Vikings in the story think that dragons should be feared and they should be hunted, whereas Hiccup is trying really hard to make friends with the dragon, just to find out a little bit more about them.

And this serves him quite well in the story.

Our next one.

So, although he is shy, he is still very brave.

Point to your answer in three, two, one.

Correct, so the fact that he's shy and that he's a little bit clumsy, doesn't stop him doing what he wants to do.

So I need you to help me with your planning format by taking your page and splitting it into two section.

And we section, sorry, and we've done this before in a previous lesson.

Once you've done this, you'll put one side, you'll put their heading Hiccup, and on the other side, you'll put the heading Toothless.

So I'd like you to pause the video, split your page in two and put your two headings on the sheet of paper, off you go.

Okay, really well done.

These two sections are going to help us make notes of adjectives to describe the characters while we're watching the build-up scene.

So we'll have a section to put all our adjectives down that we're coming up with to describe Hiccup while we're watching, and then a section to describe Toothless with all our adjectives as well.

Well done.

So before we watched the clip, I've got some Mrs. Wordsmith words that I think will be very, very helpful.

So let's learn some new Mrs. Wordsmith words.

The first one is hesitant.

My turn, your turn.

Hesitant, one more time, hesitant.

Fantastic.

And if somebody is hesitant, they are nervous or they're uncertain, like for example, in the picture, somebody who's afraid to jump off of the diving board they might be hesitant.

And remember, we can take that adjective, sorry, and turn it into an adverb by adding -ly.

So you might describe Hiccup as moving hesitantly.

If you want to show that he's not certain.

Our next one has a similar meaning.

It's wary.

One more time, wary.

Fantastic.

And if you're wary, it means you're careful and you're cautious.

For example, like in the picture, like a fly who's afraid of getting zapped.

So Hiccup is very wary around the dragon because he's afraid of getting hurt from being near the dragon and perhaps the dragon getting close with him.

And then the final one my term you turn tenacious.

One more time, tenacious.

Good job.

If somebody is tenacious, it means they're really determined and they're really strong weld.

That means that they, so for example, in the picture refusing to let go of something, but that can also be refusing to give up on an idea.

And Hiccup is very tenacious because he refuses to give up on the dragon and he wants to help the dragon be able to fly again.

So three words that we might use to describe Hiccup, or perhaps the dragon, the dragon is also hesitant and a little bit wary of Hiccup as well.

Okay, so we're going to watch the clip now, and we're going to think about the two characters you should have in front of you, your sheet that has been split into two parts.

And while you're watching, if you think of any adjectives to describe either Hiccup or Toothless, I'd like you to make a note of those adjectives, because that's what we're going to be doing in this part of the lesson.

So making lots of notes of adjectives, you might want to skip back in the video and watch the clip a couple of times and do the same again, to see if there's anything that you missed the first time round while you were taking your notes.

So we're going to watch, and we're going to take down some adjectives while we're watching.

Okay, let's go.

Toothless, I could sworn you have.

No no, no.

I don't have any more.

Great, I really hope you enjoyed watching that section of the build-up.

I really love that short clip.

I think it's a really nice show casing of the friendship between the two characters building.

It's funny, it's sweet.

It's a really lovely little clip.

Now that clip that we've watched is a little bit longer than what we were going to be writing in upcoming lessons, but I thought it would be nice for you to get an idea of the characters so that when you're coming up with your adjectives, you can see as much of them as possible.

So now let's have a look at the adjectives that I came up with.

If there are any that you spot that you'd like to copy down and add to your planning, then I will give you an opportunity to do that after I've read out all of the adjectives.

So I'll let you know when you can pause the video and copy some down.

So let's start with some of the adjectives to describe Hiccup.

I thought that we could see that he was wary, so he wasn't sure if he was safe or not around the dragon.

And he was unsure.

He was a little bit hesitant because he wasn't sure that the dragon wanted him to be there, but he was trying to be really friendly, he remained calm.

He is young, he's funny, he's quite small.

He's quite thin, he's very kind.

And then finally, I thought he would showed himself to be very curious as well.

I'm sure that you came up with lots of other excellent adjectives too.

If you'd like to copy down any of the ones that I've just shown, you can pause the video and do that now.

Press play when you're ready to move on to Toothless.

Off you go.

Okay, so let's think about what adjectives we might have come up with for Toothless, just like Hiccup.

I thought that he was also wary and he was also a little bit suspicious.

So he wasn't sure whether he could trust Hiccup or not.

And he was hungry and he wanted the fish, but he was a bit suspicious of why Hiccup was in the valley at all.

He was defensive which means that he was trying to defend himself.

He was growling and he was showing with his body language that he was very close, but we saw further on that, he was quite intrigued, intrigued as very similar to the meaning of curious, which means that he wants to find out a little bit more about this human who's come into the valley.

He was showing threatening behaviour at the beginning.

So he was a threatening dragon.

And threatening means that he's trying to show Hiccup that something bad might happen if he doesn't go away.

But I think that the reason that he was doing that was because he was scared.

So he was scared of this person coming in and historically in the Island of Burke, humans and dragons do not get along.

So Hiccup was, it's an exception that Hiccup came calmly towards the dragon.

So it's understandable that Toothless would be scared.

And he was starving, he was cautious.

So he's being very careful.

He's very powerful.

He's very agile.

So agile means that he can move really quickly and really swiftly and jumped down from the rock with no trouble at all.

And then finally, I thought he was very observant.

If somebody is observant, then they are watching everything that's going on around them before they make a decision.

And he was observant when he watched Hiccup come in, but he also noticed that he thought had a knife on him.

So again, if you'd like to copy any of the adjectives relating to Toothless, then please pause the video and do that now.

Great, let's move on.

For my next question.

I want us to think about how we can refer to these two characters in different ways, because when we're doing a piece of writing, we don't want to just keep repeating Hiccup did this Hiccup did that Toothless then did this next Toothless did that, we want to be able to refer to the characters in different ways to keep our reader engaged.

And so that we keep our writing slow going.

And it doesn't sound so much like a list of events that happened, but it sounds a lot more like a narrative.

So I've put for each of our characters, I've put two ways of describing them.

I've got Hiccup and boy to describe Hiccup, and I've got Toothless and dragon to describe Toothless.

I'd like you to pause the video and have a little think about whether you can come up with different ways of describing these two characters, off you go.

Okay, let's check.

I thought of two other ways for each of the characters, we could describe Hiccup as the Viking or the young Viking.

And we could describe him as the youngster.

And for Toothless we could describe him as the creature or perhaps we could describe him as the beast.

And we could actually also describe him as the night fury, as we know that's the name of the type of dragon.

Fantastic, well done.

So now that we've got lots of adjectives, we're going to have a go at putting those adjectives into sentences to help us write sentences, to describe our two characters.

So my ten first, we're going to think about the character of Hiccup.

I've got my notes here.

I've got my notes of the adjectives that I could use to describe him.

And I've got my notes of the different ways that I could refer to him.

And a sentence that I came up with to describe him was the brave, curious Viking went in search of the mysterious dragon.

So I'm telling the reader what happened in this section of the story, but I'm also using some vocabulary from my word bank.

So I didn't have brave on there so you might add brave if you didn't have that down, but I'm using my word bank and I've got my sentence with my adjectives to describe him.

And I've also referred to him as a Viking instead of referring to him, just with the name Hiccup.

So it's your turn, I'd like you to pause the video and have a go at writing at least two sentences to describe Hiccup.

I've put the word banks for you on the screen if you need them.

And remember to include precise adjectives and to refer to him in different ways and not just always Hiccup.

So press play once you've finished writing your two sentences about Hiccup, off you go.

Great, fantastic.

Well done.

I'll show you some more examples of sentences that I wrote using my word bank.

I thought, although Hiccup was wary, his curiosity kept him searching.

So even though he was a little bit unsure because he was so curious, his curiosity kept him searching for the dragon.

Or the youngster was hesitant about feeding the dragon, but he remained calm and friendly.

So I've written a compound sentence there using the coordinating conjunction, but.

So although, sorry, the youngster was hesitant about feeding the dragon, but he remained calm and friendly.

So that shows an opposite idea.

He was hesitant about it, but he stayed calm.

And then same above, I also have an opposite idea, but that's in a complex sentence, although, complex sentence.

So although he was wary, his curiosity kept him going.

So I'm sharing opposite ideas there as well.

Okay, so let's do the same, but thinking about Toothless.

I've got my word banks to help me.

And the sentence that I thought of to describe Toothless was the powerful creature was cautious about approaching the stranger.

So I used some word banks, so I used some words, sorry, from my word bank, I described my character in different way, rather than just saying Toothless.

So I've got my two adjectives there and I've also got a different way of referring to the character.

Okay, your turn.

So pause the video and write at least two sentences to describe Toothless.

You've got everything that you need on the screen or on your notes in front of you, off you go.

Okay, well, done So I'll show you some more examples that I came up with.

So, for example the wary dragon was suspicious of the arrival of the new comer.

So a newcomer is somebody who's just arrived in a new place or the threatening beast watched Hiccup observantly while he made his mind up about him.

Okay, so fantastic work today.

We've completed all of the sections of our learning and we've finished our lessons.

So really well done for all of your hard work.

And you should feel very, very proud of how hard you've worked.

If you would like to, please share what you've learned today with a parent or carer.

I'll see you soon for some more lessons about this section of How to Train Your Dragon.

See you soon, bye.