Lesson video

Hi everyone, and welcome to today's lesson.

My name is Miss Smith.

In our lesson today we will be revising speech punctuation, and we'll practise writing some speech for next written scene.

So when you're ready, let's get started.

In today's lesson, we'll begin with a sentence level task before looking at the rules of speech punctuation, and reminding ourselves of how to write speech accurately, which we'll practise and write some speech sentences for this scene.

So you'll need something to write on and something to write with, and make sure you have a quiet space where you're able to concentrate and use your brain this lesson.

If you need to go and collect anything before we start, you should pause and do that now.

So let's begin by improving the sentence.

My simple sentence reads, "Mrs. Coulter sat on the sofa," and there she is on the sofa in our image on screen.

Can you add an adjective to describe Mrs. Coulter? Pause and do that now.

Okay, I hope you had a great adjective in mind to describe her.

My adjective, a suspicious Mrs. Coulter sat on the sofa.

I described Mrs Coulter as suspicious.

She certainly is in the scene.

What should we do next? We've got, a suspicious Mrs Coulter sat on the sofa.

Let's look at that verb.

Can you improve the verb and choose more a ambitious than sat.

Pause and do that now.

Take a look at my improvement.

I replaced sat with the verb reclined.

A suspicious Mrs. Coulter reclined on the sofa.

Let's make one final improvements.

We have, a suspicious Mrs. Coulter reclined on the sofa.

Can you add an adverbial phrase or clause this time? Pause and make one final improvement to the sentence.

Let's see my final sentence.

A suspicious Mrs. Coulter reclined on the sofa with her evil companion by her side.

No verb in mind, so it's an adverbial phrase at the end, I don't need a comma before the with.

So in this scene, Lyra and Mrs. Coulter engage in a very heated conversation.

And so we're going to be writing speech sentences that include direct speech.

So we're going to start today's lesson thinking about our punctuation for speech, and how should we punctuate speech? Can you just pause and have a think, you might even jot down something that you know about how we punctuate direct speech? So I've got a really helpful visual for us that we'll use throughout our lesson and it's the speech sandwich, and this really is a punctuation reminder.

Because we know when we're writing direct speech, we need inverted commas before the speech.

We need a capital letter for the first word of speech, and the speech itself.

The words the character actually says.

We need a piece of punctuation before the final inverted commas, and that's what our diagram shows us and will be really useful.

So you'll see that on lots of our learning pages in the lesson today.

Let's just check the, this sort of against a piece of direct speech.

So we've got, "Oh I know about particles like Dust," Lyra stated.

We need inverted commas before and after the direct speech, the word said, and we've got those in the example.

And we need a capital letter at the beginning of speech, and a piece of punctuation before the final inverted commas.

And you can see that in our example as well.

So what else do we need to think about when including speech in our writing? Just have a think, what else do we need to think about other than the words in the speech? Well we need to think about the rest of the speech sentence.

The direct speech inside the inverted commas is only one part of the speech sentence.

And we're going to think about the rest of that sentence now.

Because really excellent speech conveys character, and advances the action in the scene.

Two tricky phrases there, convey character and advance the action.

Can you have a think, have you come across those before? Do you know what that means? Okay, let's have a look.

We've got our speech sandwich just to remind ourselves of punctuation rules.

Let's have a read of two speech sentences.

The first reads, "Oh I know about particles like Dust," Lyra stated.

And the second, "Oh I know about particles like Dust," Lyra confidently announced.

Let's think about those two phrases at the top of this page.

What is the difference between those two speech examples? Just pause and have a think now.

You're right.

One of these does a much better job of conveying character, and it's the second one.

It gives the reader a lot more information about how that speech is said, and also indicates how Lyra, our character, is feeling.

So she's confident character at this point, and she announces that she knows about Dust.

So the other part of that key phrase was around advancing the action.

It needs to convey character, and advance the action in the scene.

So let's look at two more examples and think about that, and think about how these examples differ.

"Oh really," Mrs. Coulter replied.

And the second, the hairs on Mrs. Carter's neck stood on end, "Dust? Where did you hear about Dust?" So just pause and think, how do these two examples of speech differ, what's different about them? Okay, big think.

Well, in the first example, we have direct speech, that it's just a response to Lyra's initial announcement that she knows about Dust.

It doesn't help to move the conversation forward and it doesn't tell us anything about Mrs. Carter's character at this point.

"Oh really," is quite a bland response.

The rest of our speech sentence also doesn't communicate any additional information about the character.

We have Mrs. Coulter replied.

In the second example, we know that the hairs on Mrs. Carter's neck stood on end.

That's an excellent show not tell describing what the characters feeling and what's happening to them, can communicate their feeling and emotion.

When the hairs on the neck stand on end, something has really caught your attention.

And she then probes Lyra in the speech that we've written.

"Dust? Where did you hear about dust?" And that moves the conversation on, its advances the action.

So our second example does a much better job of communicating character, how Mrs. Coulter is feeling, and moving the conversation on the speech itself has a real purpose.

Something else you might have spotted is that the speech, the direct speech in that second sentence comes second.

This is speech second sentence.

We have the detail about Mrs. Coulter's hairs on her neck standing on end, and then we have the speech.

So it's important to spot that comma before the inverted commas begin.

So the comma after end before the word Dust, to introduce our speech.

So we're now going to watch a clip that is the conversation about Dust.

And as you watch the clip, can you note down at least two pieces of speech from their conversation about Dust? So write down something that Lyra says and something that Mrs. Coulter says, and you might wait until Lyra says, "Oh, I know about Dust," and then find some speech after that point.

Not allowed into.

Perhaps we shouldn't have invited Professor Docker.

He's such a bore, isn't he? And he had sauces in his bed.

But he is one of the foremost experts on particle metaphysics.

Have I taught you what a particle is? Oh I know about particles, like Dust.

That's a particle, isn't it? Dust? I mean the Dust from space, that Dust, like in the north.

Where did you hear about that? It must have been one of the scholars at Jordan.

Wise person knows Lyra, that there are some things that we best ignore, subjects that you, well you never speak about.

But I didn't.

Yes, you didn't know so I forgive you.

Just don't mention it again.

Now darling, will you take off that childish shoulder bag.

I don't like to see you wearing it indoors.

Please Mrs. Coulter, I do love it.

But I do not.

Put it away.

Lyra put it away now.

I don't want to.

If you do not obey me, you will have an argument which I will win, now put it away at once.

It's absurd to be carrying around a shoulder bag in your own home.

Jordan is my home.

Lyra! Don't! Please it hurts.

Lyra! Pause the video and complete the task.

If you need to go back and watch the video again, that's a really great thing to do as well.

So speech sentences are our focus today.

And hopefully you managed to copy down two pieces of speech from that conversation.

Here are the two that I collected.

One from Lyra, "It must have been one of the scholars." And one from Mrs. Coulter, "There are some things that you never speak about.

Now take off that childish shoulder bag." So we have our direct speech.

And we're going to think about the rest of the speech sentence in our writing and our task today.

So let's take the Mrs Coulter speech sentence and we got our speech sandwich prompt just to check that our punctuation is accurate.

That we have inverted commas before and after the direct speech, a capital letter to start and punctuation before the inverted commas at the end.

Now our focus is going to be on the rest of the speech sentence.

The how that Mrs. Coulter says these words and what is she doing.

Because those two things communicate character and help our conversation and the narrative to move forward.

So in my example, the rest of my speech sentence reads, instantly suspicious, Mrs. Coulter continued to stroke her evil daemon and with authority replied, "There are some things that you never speak about.

Now take off that childish shoulder bag." So I thought even more about the introduction of the direct speech to communicate Mrs. Coulter's feeling, that she's instantly suspicious from Lyra's response.

And to communicate to explain to the reader what she's doing, she's still stroking that evil daemon, and she speaks with authority.

And both of those things communicate her character at this point.

The speech is well, I can now read more effectively as a reader.

I can speak with authority as I read because I'm given that information in the run up to the direct speech.

So your task today is to write speech sentences for this clip.

You should use the speech from the clip that you noted down earlier in the lesson today.

Remembering speech should convey character and advance the action.

So the words that you've copied from that conversation, those are the words you're using in your direct speech.

And you're really spending time crafting the rest of your speech sentence.

And if you need some more examples, where you haven't managed to get two examples from the film clip, then there was some more speech sentences on the bottom of the page that you can use.

One from Lyra, "But I love it." And one from Mrs Coulter, "But I do not.

If you do not obey me, we will have an argument which I will win." So you can use that direct speech and really focus on conveying character and advancing the action in the rest of your speech sentence.

You should pause and complete your task now.

Okay, let's have a look at an example.

What might you be looking for in your speech sentences that you've written in your activity today? So we're writing speech sentences thinking about character and advancing the action.

And I've written one using the Mrs. Coulter sentence, "But I do not.

If you do not obey me, we will have an argument which I will win." And the rest of my speech sentence reads, her temper rising, Mrs. Coulter responded firmly, "But I do not.

If you do not obey me, we will have an arguments which I will win." So things you want to look for in your speech.

Have you got inverted commas before the direct speech and at the end of the direct speech? If you have give yourself a tick for both.

Did you start with a capital letter, and did you put punctuation before the inverted commas at the end? So I've got full stop here.

Again, either fix it or give yourself a tick.

And now make sure our punctuation is accurate, we need to make sure all direct speech is punctuated accurately.

Because my direct speech is second, I need to check that I have a comma before the inverted commas to introduce the speech.

So you should check that if your speech is second.

And my sentence, her temper rising, Mrs. Coulter responded firmly, I think that does an excellent job of conveying character.

The reader understands this conversation is getting more heated, the temper is rising.

And her response is one that is firm because she's losing her temper ever so slightly.

She's becoming irritated.

So congratulations, that is the end of today's lesson.

We've reviewed sentence level writing, improving a sentence, before we reviewed speech punctuation, particularly focused on accuracy of punctuation, as well as how we can write speech sentences that convey character and advance the action.

And you've written some sentences for this scene that are going to be particularly useful as we come to write the narrative later this unit.

So well done for completing the lesson today.

Keep those speech sentences safe with other planning so that you have them for later in this unit.