Lesson video

Hello, it's Mrs. Smart.

Welcome back to this English unit.

Today's learning objective is to write a narrative climax.

We're going to be using all of our preparation, our film analysis, and our narrative climax plans to create an amazing piece of writing today.

Remember, this is the part of the film that is the most exciting, the most tense, and the most dramatic.

I can't wait to see your writing outcomes.

Let's get started then.

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some lined paper, a pen or pencil to write with, and your climax plans from our previous lesson.

If you've got your notes from our film analysis, that would be really helpful, as well.

If you haven't gotten those things with you right now, just pause the recording and go and get them.

In today's lesson, we're going to start by reminding ourselves what we included in our narrative climax plans.

We're then going to write our narrative climax together.

And lastly, we'll finish with your independent task.

We have learnt a lot about the film Whale Rider and its story.

I want you to try and remember three facts about the Whale Rider story.

It might be about the characters, it might be about where it's set, it might be about the buildup that we've already written.

Pause the recording and write down three things about Whale Rider now.

Let's remind ourselves of the Whale Rider story.

It's really important we can remember what happens in the climax, and what happened before, and what's going to happen after, so that our writing is really effective today.

In the opening, a girl was born and named Paikea.

Her brother and mother died, the baby's father moved away, and the girl grew up with her grandparents.

In the build up, we've written this bit already remember, Koro, that's Paikea's grandfather, decided to find the next chief.

He starts a club to teach the first-born boys to be leaders.

Paikea was desperate for her grandfather to see that she could be chief.

Koro wouldn't let her join in because she was a girl.

Now, this is the climax.

This is the part we're going to be writing today.

One night, some whales beached themselves on a local beach.

All the villagers tried to save the whales.

The whales started to die.

The villagers were upset and devastated.

After we've written our climax in a few lessons time, we're going to be writing the resolution.

This is what happens.

Paikea climbed onto the largest whale's back.

She encouraged it back into the water.

All the other whales followed and swam away to safety.

We're going to watch the clip for the climax now.

Before we watch it, I just want to remind you that a whale does sadly die in this clip.

If you think that's something that might upset you, please make sure you've got an adult, parent, or carer with you who can support you with watching this film clip.

After we've seen the clip, I'm going to ask you to retell the events by saying one sentence per picture.

So make sure you are completely focused and you've got no distractions.

Okay, let's watch.

They were dying.

Keep away from the blow hole.

I hope you were focused and listening and watching really carefully because now I want you to retell the events.

I want you to pause the recording and say or write one sentence per picture, so that's five sentences to retell the parts of the story that you've just seen.

Off you go.

Before we write our climax, I want to remind you about this word, atmosphere, that we learned in a previous lesson.

Repeat after me, atmosphere.

Atmosphere.

The atmosphere is the main tone or mood of a place, situation, or piece of creative work.

What atmosphere do you think the film director and the actors create in the climax clip? Pause the recording and write down your ideas now.

Okay.

What did you write? Tell me.

Some good ideas there.

I think the atmosphere in this film clip is really, really negative.

Everyone, all the characters are feeling really sad, and upset, and desperate to try and save the whales.

We also described it as quite sombre before.

That's when something has a sort of really deep feeling of unhappiness or sadness.

Often we call, we describe something as sombre if it's referring to someone dying.

So we would call it sombre because the whales are dying in this clip.

We then want to create that atmosphere in our writing today.

So we need to make sure that all of our language choices are really precise, so that we can try and create that same atmosphere in our piece of writing.

We have done lots of preparation for this piece of writing today.

We analysed the film clip, hopefully you've got these notes in front of you.

If you haven't, feel free to pause the recording at any point, and just jot down some of these ideas.

So we described the setting of the film.

We then describe some of the colours.

We focused on the sounds that we could hear.

And then we focused on the characters.

We described how they were feeling, and what they were doing, but also thinking about things like their body language, and their facial expressions to try and show how they were feeling.

We also then focused on Rawiri, that was Paikea's uncle, and we zoomed in on him, and particularly described what he did, and some of his body language and facial expressions to show how he was feeling.

In our previous lesson, we created a narrative climax plan.

We broke that film clip into three different sections, and wrote down notes for what happened in each section.

This is going to be really helpful for you today.

So please make sure you've got these notes with you.

If you want to pause the recording at any point, and jot down some of these ideas to add to your notes, please do so.

The more ideas you have in your plan, the easier you will find your piece of writing today.

So we described the part where a group of whales beached themselves.

The villagers ran back and forth to the sea with buckets of water.

We then covered the part where the villagers covered the whales in wet sheets and rubbed their skin.

And lastly, we concentrated on the part where Rawiri noticed a whale who died and he embraced his friend.

Remember he was trying to comfort her, and make her feel better because she was really sad that the whale that she'd been looking after had sadly died.

Before we start to write our narrative climax, let's just recap and remind ourselves what the purpose of a narrative climax is.

Can you remember what we said in our previous lesson? What is the purpose of a narrative climax? Pause the recording, and try and answer that question now.

A narrative climax is often the highest point of tension or drama in a story.

We need to make sure that our writing today is really exciting and dramatic.

Conflict, problem, or action often reaches its peak.

And sometimes it's a turning point in the story.

It's where something is maybe resolved or a problem changes in some way.

Here is our success criteria for our piece of writing today.

These are the features we need to try and include to make sure our writing is really successful.

Let's go through them and make sure we fully understand what they mean.

I have described the setting.

Sights, sounds, colours to create the atmosphere.

That's where you're going to need your film analysis, where you thought about what you could see, what you could hear, and what some of the colours were in the setting.

And remember everything you described should be building up that atmosphere of sadness and that feeling of unhappiness and that sombre feeling that we discussed before.

I have you show not tell to describe the characters and their feelings.

That's where we need to use our character film analysis section.

That was when we've described what the characters were doing, their body language, their facial expressions, to try and show how they were feeling.

We know the characters are all feeling really upset, but also really desperate to try and save the whales.

So we need to try and show that through what they do.

I have referred to nouns in different ways.

We're going to have a look at that in a bit more detail now.

How could we refer to nouns in different ways? The two main nouns we need to refer to in this clip are the whales and the people, or the villagers.

But we don't want to use those nouns over and over again.

So we need to try and think of different ways that we can refer to them.

Pause the recording, and write yourself a list of nouns that you could use to refer to the whales, and nouns you could use to refer to the people.

Off you go.

How many did you manage to get? Impressive, well done.

Let's have a look at my examples.

If you want to write any of them down to use in your own writing, then you can.

We've got whales, beasts, that really describes the big, amazing creatures that they're beasts, creatures, animals, mounds, the whales look a little bit like mounds, shadows, because they're quite dark, we could describe them as shadows, and also silhouettes, so a silhouette is sort of like an outline, a bit like a shadow.

So you can't really see much detail, you can just see the shape.

Then we've got villagers, people, locals, because they all live quite locally to the beach, protectors, because that's what they're doing, they all are human protectors, figures, so that's another word that some people, or the outline of a person, and community, we can refer to a group of people that all live together as a community.

If you want to jot any those down on your notes, please do so now.

It's nearly time to write.

I'm getting really excited to try and put all of my ideas onto my piece of paper.

So the first part we're going to write is where the group of whales beached themselves, the villagers ran back and forth to the sea with buckets of water.

I'm going to use my notes here to put into my first paragraph.

I'm then going to describe the part where the villagers covered the whales in wet sheets and rubbed their skin.

And again, I'm going to use some of my notes and try and use as many of them as I can to put them into my first paragraph.

One last check before we start writing, have you got your narrative climax plan? Have you got your film analysis notes? Check now.

Yeah, I've got mine.

Have you got yours? Good, then we're ready to go.

The first thing I need to do when I'm writing this piece is I need to set the scene.

Remember your reader hasn't seen the film clip.

So we need to tell them where this part of the story is taking place, at least describe a little bit about the setting.

So I'm going to start with below a blanket of grey clouds.

That really sets the scene, remember I want to create that really sad atmosphere, and often very grey weather can make us feel quite sad.

So I've got below a blanket of grey clouds, that's my prepositional phrase telling me where something is happening.

A group of motionless whales lay gently moaning on the beach.

So I've told my reader what's happening.

We're on a beach, there's lots of whales there, they're obviously suffering because they're motionless and they're moaning.

So I've introduced the beginning of my story.

I'm going to say a little bit more about the whales now to really exaggerate how much they are suffering.

They were helpless.

They were dying.

Two short sentences, one after the other, it sounds really dramatic, which is exactly the feeling I want to create in this piece of writing.

I then want to start introducing my villagers.

So I'm going to say teams of villagers, now what did they do? They were running back and forth, weren't they? I don't want to say run, so another verb I could use instead of run? That's a good idea.

I'm going to use teams of villagers frantically charged back and forth from the crashing sea.

Now why were they running back and forth to the crashing sea? They just having fun on the beach? No.

What were they doing? Exactly, they were filling their buckets, weren't they? So I'm going to say, to fill their buckets.

I want to create a little bit more description of this weather.

I've got the idea that there's a blanket of grey clouds, but I also want to say something about this mist.

So I'm going to put another prepositional phrase in the beginning of this sentence.

I'm going to say, through the hazy mist.

'Cause I know my success criteria, I need to describe the setting to create my atmosphere, as well as describing what's actually happening.

Let's read back those few sentences, and just make sure they make sense.

Below a blankets of grey clouds, a group of motionless whales lay gently moaning on the beach.

They were helpless.

They were dying.

Through the hazy mist, teams of villagers frantically charged back and forth from the crashing sea to fill their buckets.

I think I've introduced the scene, and I've explained what's happening quite well to my reader now.

I want to add a little bit more detail about the villagers running back and forth, because I don't want to just say one sentence about each thing that's happening.

Remember we talked about their feet pounding on the sand.

I'm going to write, their pounding feet thundered, so they're always making the sound of thunder, in time with their beating hearts.

Now I don't actually know that their hearts are beating really fast, I can't hear that in the film clip, but I'm guessing if they're running back and forth and they're feeling really desperate to try and save the whales, their hearts will be going very very fast.

Now I want to describe my whales in a little bit more detail.

Let's say, what did they do to the whales? What were they doing to try and keep them wet or moist? I could say rubbed, I could say caressed, I can say stroked, those are all really good verbs that I could use.

Now, I've already said villagers, what other way could I refer to the people? Okay, I'm going to say, the human protectors 'cause when they're rubbing, they are protecting the whales.

Knelt, that means they were kneeling, they knelt in the cold, wet sand, and lovingly, now I'm going to go with caressed, caressed the animals suffering skin with foamy water.

This is where my apostrophe knowledge comes in.

And lovingly caressed the animals suffering skin.

Am I talking about one animal? Or am I talking about lots of animals? Is it going to be singular or plural? Good, plural, so I'm going to have my S at the end to show it's animals', and then I'm going to have my apostrophe after to show the skin belongs to all of the animals.

Think I can maybe add a subordinate clause there to add a little bit more detail.

I want to say something about what else is happening while they're caressing the skin.

What are the whales doing as the humans are caressing their skin? I could write that.

I'm going to write, as the peaceful, now I've said whales, haven't I? And I said animals, I'm going to use the noun creatures.

As the peaceful creatures groaned in pain, then I've got my main clause, in fact I've got two main clauses because it's joined with and.

Let's read back that part just to make sure it all makes sense.

So I had, through the hazy mist, teams of villagers frantically charged back and forth from the crashing sea to fill their buckets.

Their pounding feet thundered in time with their beating hearts.

As the peaceful creatures groaned in pain, the human protectors knelt in the cold, wet sand and lovingly caressed the animals' suffering skin with foamy water.

I'm going to say one more sentence now about my villagers, just to finish off that paragraph.

I'm going to write, the community, haven't used that noun yet, were engulfed in despair and hopelessness.

Really getting across how they're feeling.

If you're engulfed in a feeling, it's like all your body can feel it, it's like your body is covered or filled with that feeling, and you don't feel anything else.

Now I used a supporting clause and a main clause in a complex sentence.

Maybe I could try and be really ambitious and use a relative clause in that final sentence.

That's where I'm going to add in some extra information in the middle of my sentence.

I know, I could say, the community, now which relative pronoun am I going to use if I'm talking about people? Can you remember? Yes I'm going to use who, the community who felt a strong spiritual connection to the whales, were engulfed in despair and hopelessness.

Remember the Maori culture really values whales because of that Maori legend about the whale rider, that was the first person to settle in New Zealand.

So they have a really strong connection or bond to the animals, the whales.

Let's just read that last little bit back and just check it to make sense, before I check my success criteria.

So I had, as the peaceful creatures groaned in pain, the human protectors knelt in the cold, wet sand and lovingly caressed the animals' suffering skin with foamy water.

The community, who felt a strong spiritual connection to the whales, were engulfed in despair and hopelessness.

Let's check my success criteria.

Have I described the setting to create the atmosphere? Yes, I've definitely described the colour of the sky, the hazy mist.

Have you shown not tell to describe the characters and their feelings? Yes, I've definitely shown how they were feeling through what they were doing.

They were caressing the animals.

They were running back and forth to the sea.

I've referred to nouns in different ways, yes.

I know I've referred to the whales in a few different ways.

I think I've used animals, I think I've used creatures, and I've referred to the villagers as villagers, and a community, and human protectors I used, as well, didn't I? So I'm doing well there.

Now is your chance to write the first part of your narrative climax.

You're going to write the first paragraph.

Remember, you want to set the scene, and explain what's happening to your reader first of all, because they won't have seen the film clip.

You then want to describe the villagers running back and forth to the water, and gently caressing the whales' skin.

Good luck and enjoy.

Pause the video to complete your task, resume once you're finished.

Off you go.

How are you getting on with your writing? I'm sure you're doing really well.

Hopefully you're ready to write the next paragraph of our narrative climax.

Let's just remind ourselves what happens in this section.

This is the part where Rawiri noticed a whale had died and he embraced his friend.

You'll notice that I've zoomed ahead a little bit and written the first few sentences.

I'm going to read those to you now, and then we're going to write the next few sentences together.

Just then, Rawiri noticed a figure at the edge of the group.

Her shoulders slumped and her head lowered.

Slowly, he approached.

Dread filled the pit of his stomach.

Remember we said that feeling of dread is when you know something bad is going to happen or you're going to get some bad news.

Now this is where I want to include some speech.

Hopefully you can remember your speech punctuation from our previous lesson.

When I'm using speech, it's really important that I start a new line when I've got a new speaker.

So I'm going to start a new line now.

The lady said, "he died." So I've got my open speech marks.

"He died," then I need my comma, close my speech marks.

And then I'm going to use the pronoun she.

Now what verb or synonym for said could I use? Any ideas? That's a good idea.

I'm going to use the verb cried because I know she's really upset.

She cried sorrowfully as tears trickled down her cheeks.

I added a subordinate clause there to add a little bit more detail, and to show not tell, to show that she was really, really upset.

Now what did Rawiri do? He wrapped his arms around her, didn't he? So I'm going to say Rawiri wrapped his arms around his friend and gently rocked her from side to side.

A little bit like she was a baby and he was comforting her, very, very gently rocking from side to side.

Now it's time for my final sentence.

So I want something that rounds everything off, that describes how everyone's feeling at this point in the story.

I'm going to write, everyone was desperate to save the whales.

I want something a little bit more dramatic.

I know, I'm going to add another main clause using the conjunction, but.

But time was running out.

That sounds really dramatic, excellent.

Just the feeling I want at the end of my climax.

Let's read all that back, and just check it all makes sense.

So I started with, he died.

"He died," she cried sorrowfully as tears trickled down her cheeks.

Rawiri wrapped his arms around his friend and gently rocked her from side to side.

Everyone was desperate to save the whales, but time was running out.

Let's check my success criteria one last time.

I have described the setting to create the atmosphere.

Yes, definitely done that.

I have used show not tell to describe the characters and their feelings.

Yes, I've included that.

I had the tears trickling down her face to show she was really upset.

I have referred to nouns in different ways.

Yes.

I've referred to the whales in lots of different ways, and I've referred to the people or the villagers in lots of different ways, as well.

Now it is your chance to write second paragraph of your narrative climax.

See if you can include some speech, as well.

Pause the video to complete your task, and resume once you're finished.

Your task for today's lesson is to use your film analysis and your plan to write a narrative climax based on Whale Rider.

Remember to include all the features on your success criteria that we have discussed.

You might have already written your whole narrative climax already.

In which case, you need to now read it back through and make any edits, so that's changes or improvements or corrections.

And if you haven't written it yet, then I hope you really enjoy writing this exciting, dramatic part of the story.

Congratulations! Well done for all of your hard work today.

I hope you enjoyed writing that part of the story as much as I did.

If you would like to please share your work with your parents or carer, I'm sure they would really love to see your writing from today's lesson.

I will see you in your next lesson.

Goodbye.