Lesson video

Hi everyone, Miss Vincent here for your English lesson today.

So you're going to continue on learning on Persuasive Letters and in today's lesson.

We're going to plan out all of the paragraphs about persuasive letter so that over the next few lessons, we can write it out.

So, let's get started.

This is our agenda for today.

We're going to start with a writing warm up then we're going to move on to structuring our plan so thinking about what it should look like and what we need to include.

And then finally, we're going to move on to planning all of the paragraphs of our letter.

In this lesson today, you will need an exercise book or a piece of paper.

You will need a pencil or a pen and if you have one, you will also need a ruler to draw out your plan.

So if there's anything that you need to go and get, then please pause the video and go and do that and when you're ready, you can press play so we can start the lesson.

Fantastic, so hopefully, we have everything that we need in order to do our learning today.

So let's start with our warm up.

Our warm up today, is all about, Apostrophes.

Because we are writing a persuasive letter, we are writing using a formal tone.

A Formal tone means that, we want to sound serious, we want to sound professional and we want to make sure that, our letter is taken seriously.

So when we're writing in a formal tone, we do not use apostrophes for contraction which means that, when I have words like don't, I need to make sure that I stretch them out to make two words.

So I have, do not instead of don't.

So what I want you to do for your warm up, is to change these contracted forms, back into their original word.

I've done the first one for you so you can see that to start with the word we were given was, wasn't and I've changed that back to it's original form with the two words, was not.

So you need to do the same for the following words.

Won't, can't, don't, haven't, didn't, I'm, and you're.

So you need to take those words, that have got an apostrophe for contraction and you need to turn them back into their original forms, what they started off with before the apostrophe was put in.

So pause the video and do that now.

When you've finished, press play and we'll check our answers.

Okay, really well done.

Let's check our answers.

So won't, if we stretch it out, was, will not.

Can't is one word, that is cannot.

Don't becomes do not.

Haven't becomes, have not.

Didn't becomes did not.

I'm becomes I am and then finally, you're becomes, you are.

So really well done for giving that a go and if you got one or two or all of those correct, then well done and good job for trying.

If you got some of them wrong, don't worry, that's how we learn.

It just means you need a little bit more practise.

Really good job.

So now, let's think about structuring our plan.

So let's think about what it needs to look like and what we need to include.

So in order to use our plan today, you're going to have to do a little bit or work to create a table.

So if you've got your ruler, this the part of the lesson where you need it.

On your sheet of paper, you're going to have to create a table with six rows and two columns and you will notice that the first column should be much narrower than the column that comes after it.

That's because, the first column is just going to contain the heading so what we're going to include in each row and then the second column is where we write all of our notes so we need a lot more space there.

And you'll also notice that the first and last row should be much narrower to.

So narrower at the top and narrower at the bottom.

That's because in those two rows, we're going to write our headings, Dear Father and Yours Sincerely, Hiccup and nothing else so we don't need a lot of space.

When you've got your rows, you will then include these headings here and you can also include your information about Dear Father and Yours Sincerely, Hiccup at the bottom.

So I'm going to ask you to pause the video now and do your best job at copying this table.

So remember, six rows two columns.

The first column is much narrower as you can see and the first and last rows are much narrower and then you need to copy in those headings into each of those columns and rows.

So pause the video to do that.

Lots of steps there to follow.

Take your time, copy what's on the screen and press play when you're ready to move on.

Wow, really fantastic job.

Now, you've got an organised plan that you can keep for the rest of this unit to help you write your paragraphs.

We're going to write one paragraph at a time so it would be really useful for us to have our plan really well done.

Let's think about our planning.

Let's think really carefully about what we need to include.

So, in a moment, we're going to watch a clip of Hiccup and his Dad discussing Hiccup going to dragon training.

Because remember, our persuasive letter is from Hiccup to his father, telling him that, he does not want to go to dragon training, and telling him that, he wants to open a new kind of dragon training school where vikings train dragons to let them fly on their backs rather than what happens now at training school which is the vikings learn how to kill dragons.

So we're going to watch a clip of the two of them discussing dragon training so that we can get a little idea as to why Hiccup has to write a really really convincing persuasive letter.

Let's watch.

Hiccup Dad, I have to talk to you dad.

I need to speak with you to son.

I think it's time you learn to fight dragons.

I decided I don't want to fight dragons.

What? You go first.

No you go first.

All right.

You get your wish.

Dragon training.

You start in the morning.

Oh man, I should have gone first 'cause I was thinking, you know we have a surplus of dragon-fighting Vikings but do we have enough bread making vikings or small home repair Vikings? You'll need this.

I really don't want to fight dragons.

Come on, yes you do.

Rephrase, dad.

I can't kill dragons.

But you will kill dragons.

No I'm really very extra sure that I won't.

It's time Hiccup.

Can you not hear me.

This is serious son.

When you carry this axe, you carry all of us with you which means, you walk like us, you talk like us, you think like us.

No more of this.

You're just gestured to all of me.

Deal? This conversation is feeling very one-sided.

Deal? Deal.

Good, train hard.

I'll be back probably.

And I'll be here maybe.

Okay so it looks like Hiccup is going to have a hard time convincing his father whose name is Stoick the Vast to let him drop out of dragon training.

So when we're writing, we need to jump into character as Hiccup so you are Hiccup.

When you are writing, you are Hiccup.

That means, that we will be writing in the first person.

Just take a moment to think, what does it mean to write in the first person? Hmm, do you think you know? Well, writing in the first person means, talking about, I, me, my.

Talking about we, us and our.

So we really are imagining that we are Hiccup the Viking and we are writing through our eyes for ourselves to our father, Stoick the Vast.

So really important to remember that, when we're writing our letter, that we write in the first person.

I, me, my.

So for our opening paragraph and hopefully you've got your plan in front of you with that first row just underneath the opening, the introduction of why are we writing.

I want us to think about what are the reasons for writing to our father? So what are your reasons for writing to your father? What do you not want and what do you want to do instead? So in our introduction, in our first paragraph, this is where we tell our father, Stoick the Vast that we do not want to go to dragon training anymore because we don't think that we're very good at it and we also think that we can't kill dragons just like Hiccup said in the video.

And what do we want to do instead? Can you tell your screen what we want to do instead? That's right.

We want to open a different training school.

So what I'd like you to do now, is to pause the video and write down some notes that answer those questions inside this part of your plan.

So what are your reasons for writing? What do you not want? To go to dragon training.

And what do you want to do instead to open a new dragon training school? So pause the video, write in some notes and then press play so we can share ideas.

Okay, really good job so I'm going to share some of my ideas as well and then I'll give you a chance to pause the video and write down anything that you want to add to your ideas so I thought very very simple, my first reason for writing is, I do not want to continue dragon training.

My second reason, I cannot bring myself to kill any dragons, I have managed to train a dragon and now know that they are not as aggressive as we thought so, Vikings thought that dragons were really dangerous and would always kill them so they thought they would fight them first but Hiccup has discovered, we have discovered that that is not true and then the final point that I've made is what I want to do instead which is, I would like to set up a dragon training school instead.

so if there's anything here that you would like to add to your ideas then please pause the video and do that now.

For the next section of our plan, we want to start a paragraph where we tell our father, that we are not good at dragon training that, our first day at dragon training, did not go well and we want to think about how do you know you aren't a skilled fighter? What evidence do you have for this and what will happen if you continue going to dragon training.

So to help us a little bit with this, we're going to watch a short clip of part of Hiccup's first day at dragon training so that you can get an idea of how it went.

If it went well or if it didn't go so well which it didn't go very well.

So let's have a little look at the clip and then, we can think about filling in our plan.

Let's watch.

Quick, what's the first thing you're going to need.

A doctor plus five speed.

A shield.

Shield, go.

Your most important piece of equipment is your shield.

You must make a choice between a sword or a shield.

Take the shield.

Hiccup, get in there.

Oh, I guess it's just you and me huh? No, just you.

One shot left.

Hiccup.

What do you think? Not his most successful day so we can now think about the reasons that we as Hiccup can give our father for why we want to drop out of dragon training so we need to think about telling him the evidence so we can tell him the fact that, our first day of dragon training was not good and if the teacher whose name is Gobber, if Gobber hadn't gone to save us, Hiccup right at the last moment, then we probably would not have been here writing this letter for example.

So we need to add a little bit of that exaggeration that we talked about when we looked at the features of persuasive letters saying that, perhaps if Gobber hadn't saved us, we'd be dead or we wouldn't have survived.

So making sure we add in a little bit of that exaggeration.

We also need to think about perhaps, what we know from previous outcomes.

So in previous outcomes, we thought about how Hiccup was very caring towards his pet dragon, Toothless.

So we can tell our father as Hiccup, we can tell him that when we had the opportunity to kill a dragon, we just weren't able to.

We wanted to make friends with it instead.

So what I'd like you to do now, is to pause the video and think about answering those questions in your plan and including your evidence.

So if you say, I'm not good at fighting dragons, you need to include a piece of evidence and that can be something from that video clip that we just watched.

So answering those questions, remembering the first person, so I, me, my and then we can share our ideas.

So pause the video, write in your plan and when you're ready, you can press play and we'll share ideas together.

Off you go.

Okay, really well done.

So let me share some of the ideas that I came up with.

So quite simply, we could tell our father, I am not cut out to be a dragon slayer and slayer is another word that means killer.

To be cut out is something means that, you're naturally very good at it and we as Hiccup are saying that, we're just not made to be a good dragon fighter.

My first day at dragon training was a disaster like we saw in that clip.

A conditional if sentence, so saying if Gobber hadn't rescued me, I would be dead so if this thing hadn't happened, then this thing would have happened, with our comma separating those two ideas.

When faced with the opportunity to kill a night fury, I just could not bring myself to and never will.

So giving the evidence of the fact that, we could have killed Toothless but instead, we decided to train him so giving that as a piece of evidence and then, another piece of exaggeration.

so if I continue dragon training, I will fail or die.

So the exaggeration to really get our point across.

So if you'd like to copy anything from my plan and add it to your own ideas, then please pause the video and do that now.

Okay, really good job.

Let's move on to our next paragraph.

Our next paragraph, is all about setting up a training school and if you completed the previous outcome, all about instructions, we can use lots of that knowledge to help us, lots of knowledge about getting to know dragons and taming them and training them.

So that's again evidence that we can give to our fathers that we're ready to start up a training school.

So thinking of questions to help us? So what do you think you should do instead? You want to set up a different training school.

What evidence do you have that you will be good at this? This is where we'll have to tell our father Stoick about having been able to train a dragon, about knowing how to fly a dragon and about how successful that has been.

And then finally, what will be the benefit of setting up this school? And we'll really have to use some presumption perhaps and use some exaggeration to tell Stoick the vast to tell our father, that if we can get Vikings and humans working together, then we can be really really successful.

So I'd like you to pause the video, use those questions to help you fill in this part of your plan and then when you're ready, you can press play and we'll share some ideas.

Off you go.

Fantastic, let me share some of my ideas with you and perhaps we came up with some similar things.

So what do you think you should do instead? My answer was, I want to set up a new training school.

What evidence do I have? I have successfully trained a dragon to fly with me on its back.

And then also, I thought we could say, I've learned a lot about dragons and how to look after them.

And then finally, what will be the benefit, perhaps another if conditional sentence, if we befriend dragons.

So befriend means, to make friends with, the war between us can stop and we can sort of make a bit of a promise that if this can happen, no one will be hurt again.

So if there's anything that you'd like to add to your plan, then I'd like you to pause the video, copy it down and press play when you're ready to move on.

Okay, well done.

Now moving on to our closing paragraph.

So our final paragraph for this letter.

Our closing paragraph is where we'll have to bring all of our ideas together perhaps, use a little bit of flattery, compliments to help convince our reader and a little bit of presumption to show that we're really confident and we know that he will agree with us.

So here are some questions to get us thinking and some statements.

So we'll need to summarise key ideas.

Summarise means, think of everything that you said and write it in a simpler, shorter way just to recap, to revisit the idea.

How can you flatter your father? As Hiccup, what compliments can you give him? Perhaps you can tell him he's a really fantastic leader.

Perhaps you can tell him, he's wise and intelligent so you know that he will make the right choice or you could tell him that, you know he's really caring so he wouldn't want any Vikings to get hurt.

Lots of ways that you can complement your father, Stoick in order to get him to help you.

And what presumptions can you make? So thinking of I am confident that you will make the right choice.

So being so confident that you're saying that you know that he will make a good choice as well.

So, I'd like you to think about those questions and those ideas and have a go at writing down your ideas in this section of the plan.

At least, one idea for each of these points and then you can press play and we can share our ideas together.

So pause the video, have a go and then press play to move on.

Okay, really good.

Let's share ideas.

I'll share with you what I thought we could put here.

So, as a summary, we've already talked about how it will be beneficial, which means it will be a good thing for dragons and Vikings so I've written that again.

I'm sure you will agree that this is a step in the right direction for humans and dragons.

I'm doing a little bit of flattery so I know that as a leader as intelligent and caring as you, so some compliments, would want the best for his loyal viking followers.

A little bit of presumption.

I have no doubt that, you will come to the decision that is morally correct.

So morally correct means, the right thing without harming people, thinking of everybody's feelings.

So again, a little bit of presumption to show that I'm confident.

I look forward to hearing positive news and reading your wise words on this matter.

So assuming that the news is going to be positive, so him saying yes, is a little bit presumptuous isn't it? But it's perhaps a technique that might work and reading your wise words, we're giving him a compliment, some flattery to tell him that we think he's very wise.

And then we've got our sign off which we added to our plan before.

So if there's anything that you'd like to add, perhaps some of the flattery or some of the presumption, you can pause the video and copy it down now and when you press play, we can move on to the next part of the lesson.

Okay, great.

So we have now got a completed plan so that in the upcoming lessons, we can write each part of the letter.

We will write it paragraph by paragraph, thinking really carefully about using those key features of a persuasive letter to help us.

So that's all the sections of our lesson complete today.

Really well done for all of your hard work.

If you'd like to, please share what you have learnt with a parent or carer and I will see you soon for another lesson on how to train your dragon.

Bye.