Lesson video

Hi, it's Miss van Vliet here, ready for lesson number nine of this unit.

We are going to finish writing our biography on Harriet Tubman.

I hope you're as excited as I am because I think this has been pretty brilliant writing so far.

So, let's get writing.

So, our learning objective for today is to write a biography on Harriet Tubman.

So, our agenda is we're going to do a writing warmup, we're going to recap our plan, we're going to do a shared write, then you're going to write as your independent task, and then we'll do a quick shared write for the conclusion, and then you'll write your conclusion.

So, in this lesson, you will need exercise book or paper, lined paper is best; a pencil or a pen; and then you need your notes from the research lesson; and a plan from the planning lesson; and it's also good if you have the writing from your writing lesson, so you can continue on from that.

So which of these sentences make sense? Have a think.

"At the age of six, Harriet was working for another family looking after their baby." Or, "Happily, Harriet, who was only six, was working for another family looking after their baby." Have a think.

Now, if I'm looking at punctuation, I think both of those sentences are punctuated correctly.

So I don't think there's anything wrong with punctuation.

But what do you think might be the problem with one of them? Have some thinking time.

You can tell me if you want.

So this is the sentence that makes sense.

Why does the other sentence, "Happily, Harriet, who's only six, was working for another family looking after their baby," not make sense? Happily.

Is that a happy thing? Is it a happy thing that Harriet was working at six? No.

So remember to choose your words really carefully.

It's all about word choice.

It is punctuated correctly.

And if I were to read it, I could say, "Hmm," but that word choice of happily isn't quite right.

So make sure that you check your word choice.

That's really important.

Okay, so let's just remind ourselves how we write our biography.

So we have an introduction.

Then we have the main body with those 1, 2, 3 paragraphs.

And then we have a conclusion.

Now in the previous lesson, we wrote an introduction and we wrote two of our main paragraphs.

So today, we need to write the last paragraph and our conclusion.

So here we are, we've done our introduction, we've done the paragraph on early life, and we've done leading others to freedom.

So today we're going to write the Civil War and our conclusion.

So just a quick recap, what do we need to be successful in our writing today? So we need to use a range of sentence starters, I'd love to see you use who/which relative clauses, and of course we want to put in some formal and/but conjunctions.

So keep that in mind and think about that when you're writing.

Maybe take a mental image now of this screen and just think, "Oh, when I'm writing, just think back to that." So let's do our shared write for our Civil War paragraph.

So before we do that, let's think about what we need to put in our paragraph.

It's the last paragraph of our main body.

What do we have in our plan? When you look at your papers in front of you and you look at your planning lesson, what does it say on your plan? I'll remind you of what I had in my plan.

So I had something about the Civil War breaking out in 1861.

I had a few sentence starters that I'm going to try and use, so despite having, in addition to, during, although.

And then my linking sentence was, "Harriet continued campaigning for the equality and justice of African-Americans and women." So something about the end where she continued, even though the Civil War was finished.

So, let's have a look at that.

Remember our checklist, we're going to have an introductory sentence, we're going to do those three facts, so either three sentences or three good facts, could be four sentences, but at least three facts.

And then that linking sentence.

So that's how I want to structure my paragraph.

Okay, so as you can see, I've already put my subheading, the Civil War, so I'm going to start writing.

I'm going to write, "In 1861, the American Civil War broke out." Let's just check that sentence.

"In 1861, the American Civil War broke out." Are you happy with all my capital letters there? Ooh, well done if you spotted, the does not need a capital letter.

I'm going to put that.

The American Civil War was the name of the war, so I am capitalising that cause that's a proper noun.

Okay, then we're going to say, "Despite," cause this is linking back to my previous paragraph.

I'm going to say, "Despite having risked her life many times during Underground Railroad expeditions," remember I'm capitalising that cause it's kind of like, it's a proper noun of an actual thing that happened.

So, "Despite having risked her life many times during Underground Railroad expeditions.

." Well, hold on, that's my subordinate clause cause I've got my subordinating conjunction despite.

So if my subordinating clause comes first, then I need a comma, well done.

So I put my comma and I'm going to say, "Harriet Tubman.

." "Harriet," there it goes, "Tubman volunteered," volunteered, "as a nurse and spy for the Union." Full stop.

Can you just check that sentence for me? And just see, "Despite having risked her life many times during Underground Railroad expeditions," comma, "Harriet Tubman volunteers as a nurse and spy for the Union." Ooh, well done if you spot that.

What do I need for the U? I need a capital letter there.

For the Union.

Okay.

And then I'm going to say, "Interestingly," "interestingly," and then I need a comma.

Well done.

What do I need? A comma.

The Union was made up of what? "The Union was made up of Northern states." "The Union was made up of Northern states that wanted to.

." What did the Northern states want to do? They want to do something to slavery.

What was that word that we looked at in our previous lessons? To formally end something.

To abolish, abolish, abolish.

"They wanted to abolish slavery." Okay, full stop.

Ooh, now I'm going to use a formal and conjunction cause I'm going to say, "In addition to working as a spy, she," what did she do? She also led that really important military raid.

Remember a raid is a surprise attack.

Well done if you remember that.

And wanted to abolish slavery, okay.

I'm going to to say, "In addition to working as a spy," comma, let's see.

"In addition," remember I need a capital letter and then after my clause I'm putting my comma.

Sorry.

"In addition to working as a spy," comma, "Harriet also led a successful." Successful double C.

Double S, F-U-L, one L at the end.

"Successful military raid." Oh, and let's just check my sentence there.

"In addition to working as a spy, Harriet," ooh, whoops, I made a little error because I forgot to put double R for her name.

"Also led a successful military raid." So we can just fix our mistakes and that's no problem.

If you're handwriting, just cross it out and write it above or below.

During this raid what does she do? So let's use, "During this raid," comma, "She guided over.

." How many people? It was 300 troops.

"And they rescued.

." Do you remember how many people they rescued? It was 800 slaves, yeah.

So, "During this raid," comma, "she guided over 300 troops and rescued 800 slaves!" Now I'm going to finish that sentence with an exclamation mark, because I think that is pretty amazing.

So I'm going to add that emphasis there.

"She guided 300 troops and rescued 800 slaves!" And then I'm going to say something about the war ending.

So, "Although.

." But I want to say that, "Although it ended, she didn't stop fighting for equality and justice." I'm going to use although.

"Although the war," remember I used it after my whole clause, "although the war ended in 1865,." What do I need after that? "Although the war ended in 1865." I need a comma, comma.

Oh actually, let me just think.

Although the war ended in 1865.

I'm actually going to add, I'm going to take my comma away, I'm going to add, "And slavery was formally abolished.

"And slavery was formally.

." "And slavery was formally abolished." Abolished meaning that end to it, abolished.

Now I'm going to put my comma.

I say, "Harriet continued campaigning." Do you remember that word campaigning that we came across? When you're working towards a goal, doing it officially.

Campaigning.

"For the equality and justice of African-Americans and," Women or woman, which one is it? If I'm talking about multiple females, then I say women, so it's the E-N ending.

"And women," full stop.

Okay.

That last sentence, is of course also my linking sentence.

Let's just check and read our whole paragraph.

So, "In 1861, the American Civil War broke out," full stop, capital letter, "Despite of risked her life many times during Underground Railroad expeditions," comma, "Harriet Tubman volunteered as a nurse and spy for the Union," full stop.

"Interestingly," comma, "The Union was made up of Northern states that wanted to abolish slavery.

In addition to working as a spy," comma, "Harriet also led a successful military raid.

During this raid," comma.

And that "During this raid" is a really nice sentence starter because it links to my previous sentence.

"During this raid," comma, "she guided over 300 trips and rescued 800 slaves! Although the war ended in 1865 and slavery was formally abolished," comma, "Harriet continued campaigning for the equality and justice of African-Americans and women." Love it, well done.

Okay.

Okay, so now it's time for you to write your paragraph on the Civil War.

So just like I did, I'd like you to think of an introductory sentence, three facts, they don't have to be three sentences, it could be four or five sentences, but just uses three facts that linked her and the Civil War.

And then have that linking sentence at the end.

Remember, our success criteria and things that we can include to be really successful in our writing today.

Once.

So, pause the video and write that final paragraph of your main body now.

So you should have finished writing your main, the paragraph on the Civil War.

So well done if you did.

Then the last thing we need to think about is our conclusion.

So remember what is the conclusion? It's that last bit of writing and it summarises everything in the text.

Remember, we don't include any new facts.

We can repeat some things, we don't add in new information.

And we can use concluding conjunctions to start our conclusion.

So, in summary, to summarise, in conclusion, to conclude, are all examples.

And you should have one or two of those written on your planning document.

Okay, so for my conclusion, I'm just going to show you what I've done.

I haven't put a subheading because we don't do that for a conclusion.

So, this is my conclusion.

"In summary," comma.

"In summary," is that concluding conjunction, what is it a? Concluding conjunction.

Well done.

So, "In summary," comma, "throughout her life," comma, "Harriet Tubman revolutionised human rights for African-Americans leading to the freedom of many slaves," full stop.

"She will forever be remembered as one of history's most important and influential civil rights activists." So I've got two sentences in my conclusion, I've got one kind of summarising what Harriet Tubman, who she was and what she did.

And then I've got one sentence just to say how amazingly inspirational she was.

And so that is my conclusion.

So, let's read it one more time.

"In summary," comma, "throughout her life, Harriet Tubman revolutionised human rights for African-Americans leading to the freedom of many slaves.

She will forever be remembered as one of history's most important and influential civil rights activists." Okay.

So now it's time for you to write your conclusion.

Okay? So use a concluding conjunction and make sure that you pause the video and write your conclusion.

So pause the video and write that now.

Wow, so you have finished writing your whole biography on Harriet Tubman.

In today's lesson we did a writing warmup, we've recap the plan, we did a shared write, you did some writing, and with the last lesson and this lesson we have now written in the whole biography on Harriet Tubman.

So you've written an introduction, three main paragraphs, and a conclusion.

That is the brilliant so well done.

Congratulations, you finished today's lesson and I look forward to seeing you in the next lesson.

So well done, big thumbs up from me again.

Good work.