Lesson video

Hello everyone, My name is Ms. Weerasekera.

And today we're going to be doing lesson five of our English.

Based on the exciting story of Persephone we read Today, I decided to go on a cycle ride.

I thought it looked nice and sunny out and it was when I started.

Then when I was on my way back, it started to pour with rain and I got soaked.

What have you been doing today? For today's lesson you're going to need something to write with and something to write on.

So a piece of paper and a pen or pencil.

You're also going to need your brain, but hopefully that's already in your head and you're ready to use it.

If you don't have a pen or pencil or a piece of paper, you can pause the video now and go and get it.

And then you can press, Play when you're ready to go.

Great, you've got everything you need and now we're ready to start our learning.

In our lesson we are going to do these things, we're going to start with a spelling activity, exploring the spelling where we've been looking at all week, we're then going to move on to a strategy check that basically just means looking at our reading skills and how we can concentrate and read really well so that we can use our story to help us with our answers.

After that, we're going to read sections of the story together.

We know it pretty well by now, but it's good to go back and really focus in on certain sections to see what they might mean.

Finally, we're going to practise making inferences together, by answering some inference questions.

Remember, inference is all about reading between the lines and finding clues in the text when the answers might not just be written there for us, I can't wait to get started.

Today to try and practise remembering our spelling well, we're going to play a little game.

I'm going to give you some clues about words that have the dge sound in them, but either spelt with D-G-E or G-E.

Your job is going to be to guess what I'm describing, what word I'm describing, and then to write it down on your piece of paper, try to decide which of those two spellings is correct.

Does it have a D-G-E or a G-E making the dge sound in each of these words? Our first word today is going to be something that we use to walk across a river.

So if there's a river in front of you, what would you walk on to get from one side to the other? Have a think, once you think you know write down the word and remember, is it D-G-E or G-E? Okay, our next word is something that if you were really hungry and you fancied a yummy snack and that snack was something that had to be kept really cold, you would go into your kitchen and you would open this to get your snack out.

What do you think I'm describing? Could that be spelled with a D-G-E or a G-E? Our next word is something that if it was snowing outside and there was a massive hill covered in fresh white snow, you might have one of these.

You would sit on it, hold on tight and go down all the way to the bottom.

Have a think, what could that be? D-G-E or G-E.

Our next word is a word, an adjective infact that you had to describe a giant.

You would say that that giant is, it's a four letter word.

It's an extra clue.

Is that with a D-G-E or a G-E.

Our next word is a colour and a fruit.

It's a really tiny, delicious fruit and quite often you have fruit juice that's it's flavour as well.

Can you think what it might be? Is it spelled with a D-G-E or G-E? Our final word today? This is a bit of a tricky one and actually me saying that it's a tricky one is kind of describing what it is.

Sometimes in a lesson at school, you might have been said, would you like to try, now once you've finished your work and it's something that is a little bit trickier, it makes you think a little bit harder about something.

I wonder if you can think of what that word might be.

Is it spelled with a D-G-E or a G-E.

Okay, we're going to go and have a look now at what these spellings are.

And we can see if we managed to find the right words from my clues.

And if you managed to choose the right spelling of the dge sound.

Here are our spellings for today.

The first one, I said something you had to walk over if you want to walk over a river, you would go across this is a bridge and it's spelt with D-G-E.

The second one I said was if you were really hungry and you wanted a snack then you would go and open this in your kitchen and it's fridge, which is spelt with D-G-E as well.

The next one might've been a bit trickier, so this is when it's a nice snowy day outside, if you were lucky enough to have one of these, you might be able to sit on it, hold on tight, go all the way down the hill to the bottom.

And that's a sledge also with D-G-E.

The next three are with a G-E spelling for the dge sound at the end of these words.

We've got huge, which I said is an adjective we might use to describe a giant.

We have orange, which I said was the name of a fruit, and also a colour, something that you might have orange juice sometimes.

And our final one which might have been tricky, like it is in the word is challenge, which also has G-E at the end.

So well done if you managed to guess from my clues and well done if you also managed to guess those spellings correctly as well.

Don't worry if there were any that you couldn't guess that might've been, cause my clues weren't that good.

And don't worry if you've got any of those spellings of the dge sound wrong just go through and correct them now.

If you need to pause the screen so that you can do that, that's fine.

And then you can press Play when you're ready to move on to the next part of our lesson.

Now we're going to do our strategy check, okay? So today we are going to be looking at different parts of our story that we've already read a few times.

And in fact, hopefully you guys know it really well now in your brain.

And when we do this, we need to make sure that we're looking at the page, but in this case, I guess at the screen.

That we are listening and that we are following along with our finger.

If we can do all of those things, it's going to really help us to read accurately and to understand what's going on.

And then when we move on to answering our inference questions, hopefully you'll be able to go back and use those skills to help you find the answers.

Let's get started with our first bit of reading and our first question.

So Demeter looked everywhere for her daughter, but she was nowhere to be found.

Eventually she stopped smiling, stopped speaking, stopped making life on earth.

Oh my goodness, poor Demeter that doesn't sound very nice, does it? That's a connector question.

So, as I said earlier, all of our questions, are going to be inference questions.

And when we have an inference question, it means that the answer might not be written really, obviously there on the page.

We might have to dig a little deeper and read between the lines to find clues that help us to answer our question.

So today we're going to be detectives looking between the lines, finding those clues to help us answer these inference questions.

Our first question is asking us what this little section that we just read is showing us about Demeter and Persephone and how they're feeling.

It says, this shows us that and gives us three options.

Our first option is that Demeter and Persephone are not close.

The second option is that Demeter cares for her daughter.

and the third option is that Demeter is pleased that Persephone is gone.

Hmm.

Which one of those three do you think is correct? Let's have a little look back at the piece of writing, Which one of those three is correct? I'm going to ask you to pause the video here and to make your decision.

When you're done, you can press Play.

Great, hopefully you have picked the one that you have chosen.

Let's see if you thought the same as me.

I said, this shows us that Demeter cares for her daughter, I wonder if you've got the same.

I think it shows that she cares for her daughter because she's so upset when she's gone, that she must really care about her.

She stopped smiling, she stopped talking and she stops making life on earth.

That sound like something a sad person might do.

I've added the word because here, cause I think we can extend our answer.

Quite often when we use the word, because to explain why we've chosen something, we might choose some evidence from the story to help us.

I'm going to show you what I've written and you can either use that or perhaps you could think of your own.

I said, this shows us that Demeter cares for her daughter because she stopped smiling and speaking, when she cannot find a Persephone.

Do you think you could put something similar or would you write your explanation differently.

If you want you can pause again now and have a ago.

Great, let's move on to our next question.

So our next question, we're going to look at a new bit of text from the story.

Follow along with me, remember and make sure you're listening, you can use your finger to help you.

Persephone sat in a corner facing the wall while tears trickled down her cheeks, she refused to eat or drink anything Hades offered her.

So remember Persephone has been stolen by Hades and taken down to the underworld.

And when she's down there, this is her response to Hades and her situation.

Let's have a look at our question.

Question two says is Persephone feeling similarly or differently to her mother? Let's have a think, in that first question we knew that Demeter was upset about being separated from Persephone, didn't we? What were the reasons why? Can you remember? You're right? It was because she stopped smiling and she stopped making life on earth and she stopped talking, didn't she? Which are kind of signs of the sad person.

I wonder if Persephone also felt sad or if she felt differently to her mother about the separation, maybe she could have been happy to have some time apart.

What do you think? The sentence stem here says Persephone feels to her mother because.

In that gap I want you to have a think about whether you're going to put the word similarly or differently.

I've also put the word because here, so I think we can really challenge ourselves to extend our answers and explain why.

Can we use some of the evidence from here that tells us whether she feels the same or differently to her mother Demeter.

Pause the video here and have a go at writing out their sentence for yourself and when you've done it, you can press Play again.

Fantastic, okay.

I'm going to show you what I put here.

You might put something that's slightly different and that's okay.

As long as you have explained it well and use the evidence from the text to help you.

This is how I answered this question.

I said Persephone feels similarly to her mother, because the tears trickling down her cheeks show that she is sad too.

Did you put similarly too? You might have chosen a different reason for how you knew that Persephone was also sad.

Perhaps you talked about the fact that she wouldn't eat or drink anything or that she sat in the corner and faced the wall.

I think all of those things are signs that someone is sad and that's us using what inference skills to read between what's being said, because it doesn't just say Persephone is sad or that Demeter is sad, we have looked in there and read between the lines to figure out that what they're showing us is that they are sad.

So well done, you've done a great job with your inference skills.

Our next section is this, the world became cold, nothing would grow.

Nothing could be born.

Everything began to die.

Got a multiple choice question here.

That means I've given you four options and you have to choose which one of them is correct.

The question is, why has the world changed? Option one says, Hades controls the seasons and made it winter.

Option two says Persephone was upset so the world's got colder.

Option three says Demeter controls the seasons and refused to make life without her daughter.

And option four said, Zeus punished the other gods by making the world cold.

Now all of these sound like quite good explanations, but only one of them is actually what happened in the story.

Can you remember which character controlled the changing of the weather in the story? And therefore, which one of these options do you think is correct? I'd like you to pause the video here, have a little think about which option you think it's going to be, and then press play when you think you're ready to find out.

Great, so let's find out which one you picked, I wonder if it was the same as mine.

Well done if you picked option three too.

You're right, it was Demeter, wasn't it? Who controls the seasons, she refused to make life, didn't she? When her daughter Persephone was missing, when she was returned after six months of the year, then everything would come back and be beautiful and it'd be summery and lovely and full of life.

And then when she went away again, things would die and it would be sad like it is winter with all the plants and trees and the leaves dying.

So it was option three, it's Demeter that controls the weather depending on how she is feeling.

Let's read this section together, so just remember our strategy check.

We're looking, we are listening and we can use our finger to carefully follow along too.

So from that time to this Persephone, spends half the year under the earth.

During this time Demeter is sad and the world grows cold with nothing growing.

This time we call winter.

For the other half Persephone returns to her mother who happily makes new life for earth.

The world grows warm and everything can grow again.

this time we call summer, this is the kind of final conclusion isn't it? Of the story and we really understand the power that Demeter has.

And also what the ending is.

I would say it's kind of a half sad, half happy ending.

Persephone and Demeter do get reunited.

But every year for six months she has to go back down to the underworld with Hades.

So it's kind of bitter sweet is a word you might use to describe it better, which is not a very nice taste, actually sweet, which is a lovely taste.

So it's happy and sad, bitter and sweet.

Let's have a look at another question.

This is a true or false question.

That's one of my favourites.

It says the months of summer show Demeter's sadness.

Months of summer show her sadness.

Is this statement true or false? I'd like you to pause the video and use the sentence stem either verbally or write it down on your piece of paper.

This statement is true or false because, pause the video here have a ago and press play.

when you think you've got it.

Great, so hopefully you've made your decision.

Is it true that in summer, it's showing Demeter's sadness, let's have a look.

I wrote, this statement is false because the months of summer are when Persephone returns and Demeter happily makes new life.

Do you remember from the story we know that Persephone and Demeter when they're together everything is better.

She makes new life and it's summery and lovely.

It's when Persephone goes away that she's sad that then she stops to make a new life and stops smiling.

Well done, if you've got that too, I'm going to give you a quick challenge now.

And this is the last little part that we're going to do today in our English lesson.

This challenge task is, says match the emotion word synonyms to the season.

If you haven't heard of the word synonyms before, don't worry.

A synonym is a word that is different but means the same thing.

So two words that might mean the same thing, but they're different words.

For example, I might say overjoyed, which is the same as being excited, yeah.

So it's not exactly the same meaning, but it's very similar and then different words and I call them synonyms. So for our synonyms game game, I've put two headings at the top two seasons, i've put summer and winter.

Underneath I have a lots of different words, emotion words, and I'd like you to try and match up the emotion words with the season that they go with.

So we remember summer was when Demeter was so pleased, wasn't she? That Persephone was back, and she would make new life.

So which of those emotional words would link to summer? And then think about winter when Persephone is gone and perhaps she's feeling lonely, which of those words might match up with winter.

So have a go writing on your piece of paper, the word summer and choose the words that match that and then the word winter and the words that match that.

As an extra challenge, you could see if you could think of any other emotion words that might go with each season that I haven't thought of.

Pause the video here and have a go at your challenge task and then press play when you're done.

Amazing, well done for taking on a challenge task again today and actually challenge is one of our words, isn't it? So hopefully by hearing it lots and lots, we will know how to spell it.

And we'll remember it's the G-E spelling for the dge sound.

Let's have a look at where these synonyms match up, shall we? So summer I've said is happy, joyful, delighted, winter, I link to heartbroken, sad and miserable.

Can you see that those words are synonyms, they're different, but they mean a similar thing, don't they? Being heartbroken, being sad, being miserable, all kind of sad down in the dumps emotions.

Whereas happy, joyful, delighted are all really bright, joyful emotions.

Now they are different words, but they mean a similar thing and that's what makes them synonyms. Just want to say a massive well done for your hard work today.

I've really enjoyed this lesson and I'm loving our story.

If you would like to share your work with us, I would really love to see it.

Then please ask a parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter by tagging @OakNational and using the #LearnwithOak.

I would really like to see your work.

I hope you have a fantastic day and hopefully I'll see you in our next English lesson.