Lesson video

Hello everyone, it's great to see you again.

I'm Mr. Brown.

It's our English lesson.

Let's go for it.

So our learning objective for this lesson is to identify the features of a diary entry.

In this lesson you will need an exercise book or a piece of paper, a pen, a pencil, something to write with and your brain.

We're going to start with the writing warmup.

Then we're going to look at what is a diary entry.

Then we'll be identifying the features of a diary entry so we know how to write one ourselves.

But our warm up today comes from the wonderful Mrs. Wordsmith.

So these are the Mrs. Wordsmith words that are linked to this unit that were taught to you in a lesson earlier in this unit.

So if you haven't seen these, I suggest you go back and do that lesson, but commotion, unruly, and havoc were three of the words that you learned.

What I want you to do is match the word to the correct definition.

And the first definition I have for you is, this word is wild, rowdy, or rebellious, like long, frizzy hair at the beach.

The next definition I have for you is describing a word that means chaos or uproar, like animals set loose in a kitchen causing a crazy mess.

And the last definition I have is for you a word that means great damage or chaos, like the mess caused by a giant bear smashing through a city.

So your job is to match the words to the definitions.

You can pause the lesson now and have a go at that.

Why don't you write down on your page the word with the definition next to it just to help you remember too, off you go.

And welcome back.

Let's see if you were right.

The first word is commotion, and commotion means chaos or uproar, like animals set loose in a kitchen causing a crazy mess.

The next word is unruly, and unruly means wild, rowdy or rebellious, like long, frizzy hair at the beach, which of course must mean that havoc means great danger or chaos.

Like the mess caused by a giant bear smashing through a city.

Remember those words.

They are great additions to your vocabulary.

So, what's a diary entry? That's where we're going to start.

And I thought I would read you an entry from my diary.

Dear diary, it's been a strange couple of days.

I've been teaching the children about a book called The Viewer, which is really interesting.

However, I found myself thinking about the story nonstop.

The images in this book are pretty unique.

Last night it was hard to sleep because I couldn't switch my brain off.

Those pictures kept running through my mind.

My eyes just frantically darted, back and forth across the room as I tried to relax, so frustrating.

Today I am filming my lessons, and I feel very excited to get writing about The Viewer.

I can feel my heart beating wildly in my chest.

It's definitely a book everyone should read.

So that's a diary entry written by me.

That's from my diary, all about the last couple of days of my life.

Now, when we're analysing any texts we're always remembering PALLP, and you might've seen this in other English units on the OAK National Academy website.

Here's what it stands for.

Purpose, audience, language, layout, punctuation.

Okay, so the purpose means why it was written.

And we're going to look today at diary entries, but this can be anything.

This can be an information text.

It can be a narrative.

It can be an instructions, a recipe, absolutely anything.

Why it was written.

That's the purpose.

The audience is who it was written for.

Language is all about is it formal or informal, the tone of it.

What language choices have been made? Layout, how has it set out on the page? How do you actually put the words down? Are they put in specific places? And then punctuation, any key punctuation we would expect to see.

So let's start thinking about this in terms of a diary.

I want you to pause the lesson now and have a think through about a diary entry, answering these questions, thinking about the purpose, the audience, the language, the layout, and the punctuation.

If you're not sure, just have a bit of an initial prediction or guess and then we're going to look at this in much more detail.

Okay, pause the lesson, off you go.

Okay, welcome back.

So the purpose, why was it written? A diary entry is written to write down your thoughts to help you reflect on what is or has happened in your life recently.

So people write diary entries to be able to look back and reflect.

And that word reflect is really important.

It means you're looking back, but you're also looking back in a reflective, critical way.

You're thinking about what you have done, perhaps what you would do differently, if you had a chance to do it again.

And that's really important, all of us should be reflecting on everything we do all the time, because you're always looking to improve.

Whether you're a sports person who's reflecting on their performance in the last match looking at what they could do to improve, or whether you're a writer who's reflecting on their last draught to see what they can edit and improve.

That's why we reflect, and that's why people write diary entries to be able to reflect and go back through what's happened.

Okay, the audience.

Who is a diary written for? Yeah, it's just yourself.

Diaries are personal and are not written so that others can read them.

They are for you.

They are exclusively for yourself, which is really nice because there's not many things that we do in life that are just for us.

So it's really nice to have a diary entry that's just for you.

Okay, language, is it formal or informal diary? If you need to, you can pause, take a bit more time to think.

Diaries use an informal tone.

They are personal, so you have no need to be formal.

It's not like reading the news where you are tied or buttoned up.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the news.

You don't need to do that with a diary because you're talking to yourself, so you can relax.

You can be in formal.

Okay, layout, how's it sets out on the page? Diary entries look a little bit like letters, but without the formality such as writing addresses.

They do have things like dear diary.

And when we've written the letters before you'd write, you know, dear whoever it's to.

So it's very similar to that.

And then punctuation.

As a diary entry is informal you might see more exclamation marks, uses of an ellipsis, dot, dot, dot, block capitals and rhetorical questions.

Questions that don't require answers.

They're just questions to yourself.

So now we've got a bit of an idea about a diary entry.

Let's look in detail at the features of a diary entry.

The first thing that's really stands out to me is dear diary.

All dear diary entry start with dear diary, all diary entry start with dear diary.

You'll see that lots and lots.

And I did it.

You can see at the top there, dear diary with a comma afterwards.

Dear diary comma.

The next feature is chronological order.

A diary will be written in chronological order.

It will start the furthest back that you're going to go.

And that might be two days, might be three days a week.

It might be all the way back to your previous diary entry, which might not have been for a while or it could just be, you know, if you wrote a diary entry at lunchtime and you're writing another one in the evening you're going to go back to lunchtime, but you'll start there and work your way forward in chronological order.

You'll see adverbials of time.

Okay, so sentence starters that tell you when things happened, that adverbials of time, and of course, past tense.

If you look in my diary entry, last night in purple there, and today, they're adverbials of time.

They say when things happened, and then the ones I've highlighted been, found myself, was, tried, past tense of course.

Now, another feature for diary entry is that you are telling, you are telling yourself things.

You are explicitly writing about your feelings.

You're not holding things back.

You can be open and honest because it's just for you.

So in my diary entry, I said, it's been a strange couple of days.

I said things were really interesting about The Viewer.

I was saying how I felt about The Viewer.

I said how I found myself thinking about the story nonstop.

This is the kind of information I probably wouldn't tell other teachers at school, but I can put it in a diary entry because it's for myself, isn't it? Just for me.

I said that I couldn't switch my brain off.

And can you see there in blocks of capitals? So frustrating, you can see that I was getting really frustrated by it.

And that's why I put that word in block capitals, and then feeling very excited too.

Okay, show not tell.

In a diary entry you might write about the actions which give away how you feel.

Because again, you don't need to say I felt so happy because you know you felt happy, because the diary entry is for you and you are you, if that makes sense.

You just need to give the actions, say what you were doing.

So I did, my eyes just frantically darted, back and forth across the room as I tried to relax, and I can feel my heart beating wildly in my chest.

These things say how I were feeling, without me having to go I felt anxious.

I can say my eyes darted frantically back and forth, and you know I felt anxious.

I can say I was excited, but I wouldn't do that in a diary entry.

I can just say, I can feel my heart beating wildly in my chest.

Great, now of course it must be in first person.

I am writing as me, aren't I? So I've, I've, my, my, I, I, my, my can see the same way as it coming up again and again.

Now this was easy for me because I was genuinely writing a diary entry as myself.

It might be a bit trickier for us and we'll get onto that soon.

Informal, and you can see I've got explanations, and look at that word there, contractions.

I'm not writing I have, or could not.

I'm writing I've, couldn't, it's instead of it is, contracted words because it's informal.

If I was reading the news I would say, because I could not switch my brain off.

It is definitely, but you don't need to do that.

It's a diary entry, capture the tone.

Okay, let's look at our diary entry that we're going to be writing.

Here's a passage from The Viewer.

These sights left Tristan terribly afraid.

After removing the third and final disc, he put the machine away.

In bed he descended into a restless sleep, all the while unable to dismiss the feeling of another presence in the room.

The next morning, Tristan could not stop glancing towards the machine, even as he left to go downstairs, it sat upright on his desk as if staring back at him, surely just as he had left it the night before.

Now, the reason this is so important is because at this point we will write a diary entry as Tristan.

And that's why I said earlier, it's going to be a little bit trickier to remember to do that first person, because you're not writing it yourself.

You're going to be Tristan.

You're going to write as if you are Tristan.

And this is the point in the story when we're going to write it.

When he has looked through The Viewer he seen all three discs and all those haunting images and he's gone to sleep, a restless sleep, we should add.

He's woken up, he's uncomfortable.

He feels like there's something else in the room with him, is the next day he can't sleep anymore.

He can't stop looking at the machine.

He feels as though that's where he left it, isn't it? And he's got this question.

That was where I put it, wasn't it? Or has it moved? That's where we're going to write a diary entry, okay.

So I'd like you to get warmed up for this, which we're going to do next lesson.

And to do that, you're going to prepare for writing a diary entry as Tristan but let's first practise writing in the first person.

So you're going to write as if you are the character, and you're going to be using me, I, we.

I want you to write a short diary entry about what happened yesterday in your life.

This will give you a good chance to practise because you are going to be writing as you.

You're not going to be Tristan, for this activity you are going to be you, and it will give you a good insight as to the language you need.

That first person me, I, we, us, mine.

All you need is to a writes a short diary entry about what happened yesterday in your life.

Don't forget to start with dear diary, and write in chronological order.

If you'd like to you can pause the lesson, go back, look at my diary entry for inspiration.

You can look at the features of a diary entry to help you too.

Remember you're writing about your life yesterday.

If you went to school yesterday, you can write about that.

If you stayed at home, you can write about that.

If you went to, I'm actually even happy for you to make something up, to even pick a day that might've been a long time ago but is one of your favourite days, and you want to write about that as if it is happened yesterday in your diary entry.

Okay, over to you.

Good luck everyone.

I think you're going to absolutely smash this and be great.

So today we've done our writing warmup.

We've looked at what is a diary entry, and then we've identified the features of a diary entry.

Congratulations, another lesson done.

Brilliant work today, well done.