Lesson video

Hi there.

My name is Ms. Vincent.

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

Our lesson is based around the film "How to Train Your Dragon".

This is originally a really exciting book written by the author and illustrator, Cressida Cowell.

Today, I hope that you will enjoy the lesson.

We will be analysing an opening scene and thinking really carefully about some of the different features in this scene.

Let's get started.

So here is our agenda for today.

We're going to start with a writing warm up, thinking about improving a sentence.

Then we're going to look at why we have openings in stories.

Then we're going to get to watch our opening clips in the film, "How to Train Your Dragon".

And then, finally, we're going to move on to identify the C and S features.

Now, if you're wondering what are C and S features, don't worry because you'll find out as the lesson progresses.

So, as always, in this lesson, you will need an exercise book or a piece of paper, a pencil and your brain to get you thinking and to help you focus and concentrate.

If there's anything that you need that you haven't got, please pause the video and go and get those things now.

Okay, great.

So, hopefully, we are ready to go.

So let's start with our writing warm up.

I have written a sentence.

I wonder what you think of my sentence.

Let's read it together.

The yung viking is good friends with A dragon.

The yung viking is good friends with A dragon.

Now I've already spotted some mistakes that I've made.

Your task is to correct the mistakes in my sentence.

Please pause the video and rewrite the sentence correctly.

Off you go.

Okay, let's check our answers together.

So, first of all, the most important thing, the first thing that I have noticed is that I'm missing a capital letter T at the beginning of my sentence.

The yung viking is good friends with A dragon.

I've got the capital letter at the start of my sentence.

The next thing that I noticed is that I had spelled the word young incorrectly.

It needs an O before the U.

Let's see what's coming next.

Have you spotted anything in the next word? The next word needs a capital V because it's a proper noun.

It's the name of a group of people from history, a Viking, is good friends with; I'm happy with all of those.

I've spotted something else.

My A needs to be a lower case A because it's in the middle of my sentence and it's not anybody's name.

And then finally, to close off my sentence, I need a full stop.

Well done if you spotted some of those mistakes, really good job.

So today, we're going to be watching our opening.

And for our first piece of writing, we're going to be writing a setting description to start off our opening.

And the picture that you can see on the screen is from the opening that we're going to watch in a moment.

Now, when we write a setting description and when we write an opening, we want to make sure that the reader has a really, really vivid picture in their minds.

And when I say vivid, I mean that it's really real and really realistic, and they can imagine exactly what we can see when we watch the opening.

But before we move on to talk about the opening in "How to Train Your Dragon" film, I wonder if we can think about what the purpose of an opening scene to a film or a story is.

So in a moment, I'd like you to pause the video and I'd like you to think about what is the purpose of an opening scene to a film or story? And when I say purpose, I just mean, why is it important to have an opening in a story? What's the job of an opening? Have a think about the openings of the stories that you already know and think about why you think it's important that it's there.

And then you can just make some notes about your thoughts.

Off you go.

I wonder what you came up with.

Let me share with you some of my ideas about why it's really important to have a good opening to your story.

First of all, it's really important to grab your reader's attention.

So when a reader reads your opening scene, you want them to really want to read on, so they're hooked in and they want to find out what's going to happen next.

Another reason to have an opening is to create an atmosphere for your reader to be able to feel what it feels like to be in that story.

Perhaps they're getting excited because they can tell it's going to be an adventure story, or perhaps they can already tell it's funny if it's a funny story.

Another reason is it's where we introduce our characters.

So in our opening, we're going to introduce, right at the end of the opening, we're going to introduce Hiccup, our main character, and also the dragons that live on the Isle of Berk.

But in order to introduce the Isle of Berk, we need to set the scene as well.

And that's another reason why we have an opening.

So for example, we need to describe our setting in order to set the scene.

So I wonder if you can spot the odd one out.

I've put four different options and one of them is incorrect.

So which of these is not one of the reasons why an opening is important? Is to hook the audience in? Is it to fill time at the start? Is it to set the scene or to introduce the characters? So pause the video and choose one.

Okay, welcome back.

I wonder what your thoughts were.

Can you point to the one that you've chosen, That is the odd one out, that is not one of the reasons why an opening is important? Three, two, one.

It is not to fill time at the start.

It's got lots of reasons why it's there, but it is not to fill time at the start.

Introducing our characters, setting the scene and hooking the audience in, being really important reasons why we have openings.

So our learning objective today is to identify the C and S features of an opening scene.

What do you think that the C and the S might stand for? Have a little think.

What could we look for in an opening scene? I'm going to give you some clues.

These are some clues for the C features, and these are some clues for the S features.

I wonder if that's helped you.

Have another little think.

Okay, let's check.

So we're going to be looking and listening really closely for the colours.

So we're going to be looking to see what colours we can spot, what characters we can spot, what sounds we can hear.

And then this one here, can sometimes be confusing.

It's not sight, but we're looking at the setting.

So those are our C and S features.

And today, we're going to focus in particular on our S features because they are ones that are really, really important when we are doing a setting description.

Okay, let's check if you can remember.

What does the first C stand for? Does it stand for colours or does it stand for clip? What do you think? Point at your answer.

Three, two, one.

Colours, well done.

What does the next C stand for? Does it stand for crying, like in the picture up there or does it stand for characters? Point to your answer? Three, two, one.

Characters.

Well done.

What does the first S stand for? Does it stand for shhhh or does it stand for sounds? Point to your answer.

Three, two, one.

Sounds.

Well done.

What does the next S stand for? Does it stand for setting or does it stand for sight? Point to your answer.

Three, two, one.

Setting.

Well done.

That's a bit of a trick one sometimes because of the eyes, but it's what we can see in the setting.

Really well done for taking part.

I need you to help me out your planning for your C and S features.

You need to take your piece of paper or your page in your exercise book and split it into two sections.

And you can do that quite simply by just drawing a line down the middle, maybe a little bit neater than my line.

So let's see, everybody needs to draw their line.

Well done.

On one side, so perhaps on this side, you are going to write the heading, Sounds.

And on the other side, you're going to write the heading, Setting.

You don't need to draw pictures.

So, for example, on mine, I might write Sounds on one side, Setting on the other, and it looks like this.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

It's just somewhere where you can write your notes.

So pause the video, split your page into two parts and write your headings.

Off you go.

Okay.

Welcome back.

So we are going to use these two sections, these two sides of our page to help us take notes while we're watching the opening scene.

So in a moment, we're going to watch the opening clip, and we're going to have a go at identifying the C and the S features.

We're going to watch the clip more than once.

So don't worry if you feel like it's gone too quickly.

Remember, you can always watch the clip again, skip back through the video and watch the clip a few more times if you feel that you need to look a little bit more closely.

So the first thing that we're going to look for when we watch the clip for the first time is that we're going to listen really, really carefully.

And we're going to think about what sounds we can hear.

So it's really important that while you're watching, you're also listening carefully.

What can you hear? What atmosphere is this creating? And then when you hear something, you can make a note in the sounds section of your sheet.

For example, you might have heard that the waves crashed against the cliffs.

And something really important to note is that I want you to try and write your notes in the past tense, because when we write our setting description, we're going to write it in the past tense.

That means that your words need to be in the past tense, having already happened.

So I wrote the verb crashed because it happened in the past tense rather than the verb crashing.

So verbs in the past tense.

So we're going to watch the clip now.

So make sure that you're listening really carefully to see what sounds you can hear.

This is Berk.

It's 12 days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death.

It's located solidly on the Meridian of Misery.

My village; in a word, sturdy.

And it's been here for seven generations, but every single building is new.

We have fishing, hunting and a charming view of the sunsets.

The only problems are the pests.

You see, most places have mice or mosquitoes.

We have.

dragons.

Okay.

I hope you enjoyed that.

Did you spot any sounds while you were listening really carefully? Let's think about what we spotted and I'm going to share with you some things that I heard as well.

So the things that we could hear the clearest were the narrator's voice.

The narrator is the person who tells the story.

And I could hear his voice really, really clearly.

And the voice that we could hear was the voice of the main character, Hiccup.

And I could also hear the music that played over the top.

Now I'm not going to worry about those two.

So if you've written those down, that's fine, but they're not going to help me when I come to write to my setting description, because I'm not going to describe exactly what the narrator said.

I'm going to use my own words of what I've seen to describe the setting.

So well done if you spotted those.

But we're not going to worry too much about those because they're not going to help us when we write our setting description.

Something else that I heard was also the wind that howled menacingly, or perhaps the birds that called out loudly.

You couldn't hear them very clearly, but right at the beginning, you can hear some birds calling out, or perhaps you might have spotted the waves that crashed against the jagged rocks, or perhaps the waves that lapped against the cliffs, lapped means to gently beat against the cliffs.

Perhaps you had the sheep munching, they were grazing.

To graze just means to eat constantly on the ground.

So the sheep grazing noisily, or finally, perhaps when the sheep was snatched, you might've heard the dragon wings beating powerfully as it flew away, really well done.

So you should, in half of your page have lots of different notes.

Remember, if you'd like to magpie, that means if you'd like to take any of those that I spotted, any of those sounds I spotted, please feel free to pause the video and copy some of them down because they'll help you when we come to our writing in a few lessons' time.

So next, we're going to focus on the setting.

Now, before we look at the clip again, we're going to learn some new Mrs Wordsmith words.

Now, Mrs Wordsmith words are really useful to help us learn new vocabulary, but also to help us be really precise when we are describing something.

So the first word that we're going to learn is ominous, ominous.

The word ominous means something that's scary or threatening, like a huge tornado.

That's why we can see that in the picture, that's spinning towards you.

But perhaps in our setting, the clouds and the mist could be described as ominous.

It makes you feel like something bad might be about to happen.

We've got the word colossal, your turn.

Colossal, if something is colossal, it means it's massive or gigantic like a huge statue that makes you feel tiny.

And I think of those towers when we zoomed in and we saw those towers that looked like statues.

They're colossal watchtowers looming up ahead.

And we've got the word, my turn, your turn, treacherous, treacherous.

Now treacherous can be used to describe the water.

So it's water that's dangerous and unsafe.

You could use it to describe other things as well but in this context, we're going to use it to describe the water.

So, for example, terrifying rapids that might throw you out of your boat, or just really, really powerful waves, that would be really difficult to swim in.

So we might have treacherous waters.

In a moment, we're going to watch the clip one more time and we're going to focus really carefully on all the things that we can see.

So we're going to think about what we can see, and we're going to make notes in the setting section of our page.

Now I've got a small word bank here that you might want to take some notes from of some of the words that come up in this section of the setting.

We can see the mist and you can see the mist in that first picture.

And we could refer to it as the mist or the fog.

In the next picture, down in the middle picture, we can see lanterns and we can see watchtowers as well as statues.

We could describe the watchtowers as watchtowers that are guarding the island, or we could describe them as Viking statues.

We can see the cliffs and the waves.

Further on, in the opening, we can see the sheep and the village, and finally, the villagers.

Now I'd like you to challenge yourself.

So not just to make a note of these words that I've put in the word bank, but also to make these words even more precise by adding adjectives to describe them.

So, for example, instead of just writing watchtowers, you might write that you can see colossal, looming watchtowers, that Mrs. Wordsmith word that we just learned, colossal.

We're going to watch the clip one more time and you're going to be looking carefully to see what you can see and describing it with precise adjectives.

When I say precise, I mean the best possible adjective to help your reader have the best image in their mind.

Okay, let's watch again.

This is Berk.

It's 12 days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death.

It's located solidly on the Meridian of Misery.

My village.

In a word, sturdy.

And it's been here for seven generations, but every single building is new.

We have fishing, hunting and a charming view of the sunsets.

The only problems are the pests.

You see, most places have mice or mosquitoes.

We have.

Dragons.

I wonder what you spotted.

I'm going to go through what I spotted as well.

And remember, if there's anything that I've written down that you haven't, and you'd like to have in your notes, please feel free to copy it down as well.

So I'm going to go picture by picture so you know which part I'm referring to.

So I saw a blanket of ominous mist.

Now remember that word ominous, that's our Mrs Wordsmith word that tells us it's a little bit scary, there's something a little bit creepy about it.

I also saw colossal, looming watchtowers.

If something is looming, it feels like it's standing over you.

I also saw flickering lanterns in the distance and jagged, rugged cliffs.

Jagged, rugged cliffs are bumpy.

They're sharp.

They're not smooth.

They're very, very bumpy.

I also saw crashing powerful waves.

Lots of adjectives.

I hope you included some as well.

I saw white sheep that were like dots in the distance or the green grass.

I saw a sleepy, remote village and we've learned that word, remote, in a previous lesson.

That means that it's somewhere really far from everything else.

It's isolated on its own.

I heard about resourceful, fearless villagers who were fishermen, who built their own huts, who were really skilled.

And I also saw naive and unsuspecting sheep.

If something is naive, it doesn't know necessarily what's coming.

And that's why I've written unsuspecting as well, because they don't know that there are dragons flying up ahead or perhaps they've forgotten.

So remember if there's anything that you'd like to copy down, you can pause the video and do that now.

Okay, great.

So we have got a full sheet of words and phrases that will, hopefully, help us when we next come to our writing.

Really, well done.

So let's have a look quickly at the colours.

So let's use this picture to help us.

How would you describe the colour choices? So when directors make films and you can see the names of the directors at the bottom of my page, when directors make films from books or from their own ideas, they'll have a very clear idea of the different colours that they want in order to set an atmosphere, in order to make you feel a certain way.

So I'd like you to pause the video and think about what different colours you can see.

Off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

Let me share with you some that I saw, I saw a dark and gloomy sky.

I saw charcoal black sky or perhaps a deep blue sky.

I saw amber lights and I saw those in the village, but also inside the mounds of the statues.

And I saw bright, glowing golden fires inside the mouth of the statues as well.

Okay, so let's use the words that we've written down for our sounds and our setting to help us write really ambitious sentences.

What do you think that word ambitious means? Well, when I say ambitious sentences, I mean sentences that are really precise that you've tried to choose the best possible words, and you've really added a lot of detail.

So I've written a sentence here.

The statues were above the waves.

That's true, the statues in the picture are above the waves.

Can you improve my sentence by including some of the new vocabulary that you've learned, that you've written down on your sheets? Can you pause the video and do that now, please? Okay, I wonder what your improvements were.

I'm going to show you what I thought we could do.

So the statues were above the wave.

I think that we can definitely add in some adjectives.

Did you add in any adjectives? Well, one noun that we've got is statues, so we can add in an adjective to describe the statues.

And I think I've got the perfect one, that Mrs. Wordsmith word, colossal.

So the colossal statues were above the waves.

Already, it's improving, but I can see that waves is a noun as well.

So I could add in an adjective to describe the waves too.

What adjective would you use to describe the waves? Well, I'm going to add in the adjective crashing.

So let me read that sentence again.

The colossal statues were above the crashing waves.

Next, I wonder if we can think of a more precise verb than were because we can describe the way the statues are standing as a more precise verb.

And I thought, perhaps we could use the word towered because they're towering above the waves.

They're really, really tall.

The last step and I'd like you, in a moment, to pause the video for this, is I think that we can extend our sentence even further using the subordinating conjunction, as.

So the colossal statues towered above the crashing waves as, and when we use as, we can describe something that's happening at the same time.

So can you pause the video and finish off my sentence? So the colossal statues towered above the crashing waves as, what's happening at the same time? Off you go.

Okay, fantastic work.

So here's how I finished my sentence.

The colossal statues towered above the crashing waves as the village lights flickered warmly in the distance.

I'm sure yours were really great sentences.

Really well done for extending them even further.

Okay, so I'd like you to pause the video to complete your final task.

Use your notes to write at least two more sentences.

Remember to use the skills that we just practised to make them really ambitious.

And I've put here some of my words from my word bank so that you can use them.

Once you've finished your two sentences, you can press play for the final part of the lesson.

Off you go.

Okay, so what did you think? Is this a good opening? Thinking about what we said a good opening should do, does it introduce some of the main characters? Does it set the scene? Does it grab your attention or interest you? What do you think for each one? For A, does it introduce some of the main characters? Can you show me yes or no? Yes, it does.

Does it set the scene for B? Does it tell us about the setting? Yes or no? Yes, it does.

Well done.

Does it grab your attention or interest you? This is a matter of personal opinion, but for me it really grabbed my attention and it really interests me.

So I think that it's a yes to that one as well.

Okay.

Fantastic job.

We did our writing warm up.

We've talked about the purpose of the narrative.

We watched the clip twice, and then we thought about the C and the S features of the opening.

Really fantastic job.

You've worked really hard this lesson, and you've got lots and lots of vocabulary that you can use in an upcoming lesson to do your writing.

If you'd like to, you can share what you've learned with your parent or carer.

I will see you soon in another lesson.

Bye!.