Lesson video

Hello, everybody.

Welcome to lesson nine on our unit on writing a non-chronological report on pandas.

I really hope you've enjoyed the unit so far, and I hope that you liked writing your opening paragraph.

Today's lesson is the planning unit, so that, lesson, so that you will feel more confident for your writing in the upcoming lessons, let's get started.

So our lesson objective today is to plan the appearance paragraph of a non-chronological report on pandas.

The paragraph is going to be the second paragraph that comes straight after the introduction and is focusing purely on the way the panda looks and is recognised.

On our agenda today, it's a writing warm up, then we're going to have a look at the characteristics and the purpose of these characteristics in the panda.

Then we're going to have a look at some key vocabulary before we create a plan so that it's ready to be used to help you with your writing next lesson.

In this lesson, you're going to need an exercise book or some paper, a pencil or pen and your notes from your research lesson.

Now's the time to go and grab those.

And if you can, find a nice, quiet, calm spot where it's best for you to concentrate.

So for the writing warm-up, you'll need a pen and pencil and some papers, some lined paper.

For the writing warm-up, you're going to be asked to write a sentence about this picture of the panda using a colon.

You might remember learning about the colon in a previous lesson.

But here is one example of it being used and that you can use to help you.

This is the use of a colon in a list.

So, a panda has a number of key distinctive features colon black and white fur, dark patches around their eyes and large white stomachs.

The thing to really remember about the punctuation we're doing right using a colon in a list is that none of the items in the list are capitalised.

They don't have capital letters and that's throughout the list.

Another thing to note is that in your final item in the list, it doesn't come after a comma.

It comes after the word and.

So you don't need a comma and the word and.

Pause the video now and have a go writing your own sentence, using a comma, a colon, sorry.

Okay, hopefully, you've all had a chance at writing a sentence using a colon.

Now, because you're not going to be in a classroom with a teacher to mark, this is going to be a chance for you to do a bit of editing yourself and checking over your own sentence.

So, looking back at your sentence using colon, were you only thinking, did you use the correct punctuation? Are there any words you want to check that maybe would've been spelled miscorrectly, incorrectly, and maybe just checking over to see if it definitely makes sense.

I'm going to show you how to do this with an example of a different kind of colon rather than a colon in the list, but a colon used to separate clauses within a sentence used instead of a conjunction.

So here, the sentence is, a panda spends 14 hours a day eating colon bamboo does not provide much energy.

So the colon does the job of the conjunction because replaces it, so you don't need both.

And in the first clause kind of introduces and is connected to the second, to the second clause.

So I'm going to check, have I got capital letters at the beginning of the sentence? Yup.

Have I got any proper noun if I need to? I don't have a proper noun, but if you did, you'd check that, if you've got full stop at the end.

Yes, I do.

And then also checking the all-important part of the colon, making sure you don't have a capital letter straight after the colon.

It's a lowercase letter and it is throughout that clause.

If you need to pause the video, have a check over your sentence for all the punctuation to be correct.

So this paragraph, we are going to be focusing purely on the characteristics, the physical characteristics of a panda and the purpose of this.

What is a characteristic? If you want to pause the video now to have a think or maybe discuss it with a parent or carer, you can do that.

But a characteristic is distinct feature or adaptation.

And adaptation is something that is part of an animal that has adapted and changed with time to help them survive in the environment in which they live, All characteristics have a purpose that enables animals to survive in their different environments.

So let's have a look at this as an example of an elephant.

What are the characteristics of the elephant? What are the physical features? And then what is the purpose of each of these? So, hopefully you've had a pause and a think about this.

But one of the characteristics of the elephant is that it has really large ears.

And there was a purpose, and there was a reason for that.

And that is that it's used like a fan, which cools the elephants down.

They tend to live in really hot countries where they need to be cooled down for them to survive and have, lead a healthy life.

A long trunk is another really distinct characteristic of an elephant.

People that, what people always think of when they think of an elephant.

And what was the purpose for that? What's the reason why do they have that? And it's used for smelling, digging, communicating with other elephants and picking up food and water.

You often think of an elephant using its trunk to get stuff out of a water source.

Another physical feature of the elephant or their characteristic is the long tusks, those big ivory tusks that come near their trunk.

What is the purpose of those? And they're used for defence, for lifting objects, and for scraping bark of trees to eat.

All animals need food to survive.

So they use these tusks as a kind of a survival method to get them the food in order to provide them with nutrients to survive.

And finally, wrinkly skin is another key characteristic of an elephant.

It's purpose, why is it, what was the purpose of it? Why has it become and adapted over the years to become so wrinkly? Because it keeps the elephant cool, and as it captures the water when it bathes.

So this idea of every characteristic feature, having a purpose leads us really nicely on to our next writing activity.

What I would like you to write a sentence about this picture of the elephant using causal conjunction.

We spoke about that previously.

A causal conjunction is a type of formal conjunction, which links two ideas together.

Often one idea being the cause of something else.

Have a think, if you can, but, and trying to remember what were the examples causal conjunctions.

Do you remember we spoke about how they, it's really tempting to read that as casual, but it's cause, 'cause something has to cause something.

And once we came up with where as a result, due to this, consequently, for this reason, and in order to.

So these are really great conjunctions to be using in this paragraph.

I've given an example here.

In order to stay cool, comma, elephants have large ears, which they use to fan themselves.

So I'm going to ask you now to pause the video, think back about what you need to flick back and have a reminder of those elephant feature, characteristics, and their purpose, and then write your own sentence using one of these formal causal conjunctions.

You can choose any of those ones from the list.

And any of the facts that you want to mention.

Pause the video now and off you go.

So hopefully you've had a chance to write a sentence using a causal conjunction about the features of this elephant and the purpose for each characteristic.

Now's the chance to check your writing.

'Cause as we've done before, you haven't got a teacher with you.

So you just need to be trying to be a bit more independent and checking your own work.

So, for example, in my sentence below, I'm going to be checking for the correct punctuation and for any spelling errors and just checking sense.

Does the sentence make sense when I read it back aloud? Elephants have wrinkly skin.

As a result, that's my causal conjunction, they are able to stay cool as the skin collects the water when they bathe.

So I've got my capital letter at the beginning.

I didn't have any proper nouns, so I don't need to worry about that.

I've got a full stop at the end and I've also got a capital letter in the second part, in the second sentence at the beginning of my causal conjunction as a result.

As a result is also followed by that comma before it leads on to the rest of the sentence.

If you need to pause the video now and check back through your sentence for correct punctuation.

So we've discussed what it means to be, for an animal to have characteristics and the purpose for each characteristic.

We looked at that as an elephant.

But now we're going to think of it actually in relation to the panda and how we can use that to help us plan our paragraph on the appearance.

So, a panda, what are the key characteristics, the physical appearance of a character? Think back to the research lesson we did, where we got to watch the video and read the text.

Yep, so there was the thick fur, wasn't there? The fact that they have really, really thick fur.

That is a characteristic.

And what was the purpose of this? The thick woolly fur is there to keep the pandas warm in the cold mountains.

They tend to be found in central Asia, which high up in the mountains gets really cold.

So they need that thick fur as kind of coat.

Another characteristic is the fact that this fur is black and white, which is really unique and really distinct, isn't it? It's really, we know, we think of pandas of being black and white.

But there is a purpose behind that.

And it's to camouflage and hide from predators in both the snow and the shadows.

So it's kind of a survival purpose, isn't it? The fact that they can hide from their predators, things that, animals that are trying to attack them.

Another characteristic is they're large, broad, meaning wide, molar teeth.

The reason they have these is that they're carnivorous, meaning the teeth that could actually eat an animal.

Their carnivorous teeth are used to crush the tough bamboo, which makes up 99% of their diet.

Bamboo is really tough and they're tough to break.

So then you need to have really strong jaws to be able to crush it.

Humans probably wouldn't be able to do it.

Another characteristic is their black eyes.

Again, another really distinct characteristic that we think of when we think of a panda.

But there is a purpose, a reason why they are like that, and it's to help recognise other pandas.

Finally, the enlarged wristbone, enlarged means big.

It's a really big, bigger than expected wristbone, that part of your arm.

And the reason they have that, a bit like the teeth, it works like an opposable thumb to crush the bamboo, making it even more digestible for them.

They need to be able to have these characteristics because in order to survive, they need to eat the bamboos.

So they need to have this enlarged wristbone, these really big teeth so that they can get enough food and nutrients.

In a minute I'm going to ask you to pause the video again because we've got another writing activity.

But I want you now to write a sentence using another causal conjunction, but this time about the panda.

So just reminder of what those causal conjunctions are, you could use as a result, due to this, consequently, for this reason, and in order to.

My example sentence.

Pandas have black and white fur.

As a result, they can camouflage in both the shadows and the snow.

So I want you to think carefully about the characteristics we've just looked at and their purpose.

If you need to flick back a slide, that's quite all right.

And write a sentence using a causal conjunction.

Pause the video and off you go.

Okay, key vocabulary.

This is really important so that we are, our non-chronological report is filled with subject-specific vocabulary, which is essential when we're writing a nonfiction text, an information text.

What adjectives could we use to describe the panda's appearance? It's a really distinctive appearance, isn't it? Everyone knows what a panda looks like because of it's black and white characteristic, black and white fur.

What adjectives could be specifically used? I had a little think and I thought of sizable.

Sizable is just a more ambitious word for big.

Yes, it's really big, and you could say that, but if we're trying to make our writing sound more formal and more ambitious, got to think a bit more, use a bit, use different synonyms. Synonyms are words which have the same, same meaning but are different words.

So sizable to describe maybe its stomach.

I also thought recognisable because they are so familiar, the image of the panda, they are recognisable, they are easily recognised.

I want you now to pause the video again, sorry.

And think of your own adjectives to add to your word bank for your plan.

If you'd like to, you can absolutely use a thesaurus.

Maybe you've got one at home or you could go online to online thesaurus.

And think of the words that you think of when you look at this image of the panda and try and find some extra synonyms to include in your word bank.

Pause the video now, off you go.

This leads us on now to subject-specific vocabulary that you could include.

Remember, subject-specific vocabulary is words that are specific to the text and the subject that you're talking about.

And actually we're going to go even more specific and talk about the appearance 'cause we are writing our paragraph on appearance.

So subject-specific vocabulary you could include that if you want to jot down now to add to your word bank, that's a great idea.

Camouflage, the fact that their fur is black and white, so they can camouflage both in the snow and in the shadows.

Bamboo.

Molars, the molars are really, really big, the teeth at the back of their jaws.

And they're really big, so they can actually crush the bamboo, which they eat.

Predators, talking about the fact that they can camouflage from their predators.

They use their fur to camouflage from the predators.

Carnivorous, describing their teeth.

The teeth are actually strong enough to be able to eat another animal, but they eat bamboo.

And then distinctive, kind of like unique or recognisable.

But the fact that pandas have a really distinctive appearance because we can, it's clear that they're a panda when you see a picture of them.

So now our job is to create a plan so that we have a really clear idea of what we're going to be writing when we write the appearance paragraph in the next lesson.

This is going to be your writing task.

And you need to make sure you've got some paper ready for you to start doing this.

What you're going to need to do firstly is to look through your research notes from the video lesson, when we watched the video and read the text, and consider what we have learned today.

I then want you to write down three to five facts about the panda's appearance and the function of their characteristics, of each characteristic.

When you have done that, you're going to write down a sentence using a causal conjunction that could then be used in your writing next lesson.

And then you're going to create a word bank and write down any key vocabulary and subject-specific vocabulary that you want to include.

Pause the video now, and you can get on with this.

Okay, I hope you all have had a chance to do the writing activity and have now got a plan that you're really happy with that you know you'll be able to use in the writing lesson where we go on to write our paragraph on the appearance of the panda.

So, today's lesson, we've done a writing warm-up at the beginning, but I actually would say we did a few throughout the lesson really to keep practising writing sentences.

We then looked at the characteristics of both an elephant and a panda and discussed why each characteristic has a purpose.

We looked at some key vocabulary, some subject-specific vocabulary, and then you all have hopefully created a plan ready for the next piece of writing.

Congratulations.

You've completed your lesson, very well done, everyone.

And I'll look forward to seeing you soon!.