Lesson video

Hello! It's Mrs. Smart.

Welcome back to this English unit.

If you haven't done the previous 10 lessons, I suggest you go back and do the first 10 lessons of the journalistic writing unit before you start on this lesson.

If you've completed the first 10 lessons, well done.

Today's lesson, we are going to be using our plans to write the chronological recount paragraph of our newspaper report.

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

In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some lined paper, a pen or pencil, and your chronological recount plan from our previous lesson.

If you haven't got any of those items with you right now, just pause the recording and go and get them.

In today's lesson, we're going to start with an introduction where we will recap the purpose of a chronological recount paragraph.

Then we will explore the features and success criteria for this paragraph.

Next, I will model right a chronological recount paragraph for you.

And lastly, for your task, you will be writing your own chronological recount paragraph.

If you remember, this is the newspaper report structure that we are following as part of this unit.

We have already written our opening.

And today, we are going to be writing our chronological recount paragraph.

In the lessons to come, we'll be planning and writing our quotes paragraph and our closing paragraph.

So today we're just focusing on the chronological recount paragraph.

We looked at this example in one of our previous lessons.

This example is written about Goldilocks, so it's slightly different context from our newspaper report.

I'm going to read it through to you to give you a little bit of a reminder of some of the features.

If you want to pause the recording and read it through yourself, you can.

Otherwise, follow on the screen as I read.

"Yesterday afternoon, the bear family left their residence at 4:00 p.

m.

for approximately an hour.

This is supported by an eyewitness, the postman, who knocked on their door at 4:20 p.

m.

, but got no response.

Therefore, the evidence suggests that Goldilocks unlawfully entered the Bear premises between 4:30 p.

m.

and 4:45 p.

m.

When the police arrived at the scene they found two smashed bowls and two broken chairs.

In addition, a substance thought to be porridge was spilled all over the kitchen floor.

Reports indicate that Goldilocks' vandalism was interrupted by the Bear family returning home and subsequently a fight ensued.

However, it is thought that neither parties obtained any serious injuries." Now you've had a chance to hear a chronological recount paragraph again, can you remember what is the purpose of the chronological recount paragraph? Remember, chronological means in time order.

So this paragraph is recounting or retelling the events in the order that they happened.

Pause the recording and try and answer this question now.

Okay, so the purpose of this paragraph is to provide detailed information about the event.

It goes into a lot more detail in this paragraph than it does in the opening.

It recounts the events in chronological order, or in the order that they happened.

And it helps the reader to understand exactly what happened.

We're basing our newspaper reports on the film "Hoodwinked", which is a retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood." In a moment, we're going to watch the clip again to remind ourselves of the events.

And afterwards, I will be asking you to put these stills in order and retell the events.

Okay.

Let's watch the clip.

This is "Hoodwinked", directed by Cory Edwards, and the production company is Kanbar Entertainment.

Granny! It's me, Red.

Is everything okay? Oh yeah, sure thing, come on in.

What? Who are you? I'm your grandma.

Your face looks really weird, Granny.

I've been sick, I, uh-- Your mouth doesn't move when you talk.

Plastic surgery.

Grandma's had a little work done.

Now, come on over here.

Let's have a look at you.

So, what's going on, Grandma? Oh, this and that, doing a lot of quilting.

So, you got the loot? Whoa.

What big hands you have.

Oh, all the better to scratch my back with.

And what big ears you have.

All the better to hear your many criticisms. Old people just have big ears, dear.

And Granny, what big eyes you have.

Are we just going to sit around here and talk about how big I'm getting? You came here for a reason, didn't ya? So tell old Granny what ya got in the basket.

Granny, what bad breath you have.

All right.

You again? What do I have to do, get a restraining order? Settle down, little girl, I'm onto you.

Hi-yah! Save it, Red Ru.

You've been dodging me all day, but now you might as well give up.

You crazy wolf.

What have you done to Granny? I've taken Granny down and you're next.

Granny! Right, hopefully, you were listening and watching really carefully to the clip so that you are able to put these stills in order and retell the events.

Remember, I want you to try and say or write one sentence per picture to retell what happens in this part of the film.

Pause the recording and off you go.

Here is the correct order.

So you can check to make sure you've got the stills in the correct order to retell the story.

We're now going to think about the features that we need to include in a chronological recount paragraph.

Firstly, we're going to consider the language and the sentences that we might see in a chronological recount paragraph.

Can you pause the recording and write down anything you can think of in terms of the language that you might see or the sentences that might be included in this paragraph? Pause the recording and off you go.

So the features we would expect to see, in terms of the language, would be formal language, referring to nouns in different ways.

So remember, not saying "Wolf" repeatedly throughout your report, but thinking of some other words, like "the perpetrator" or "the suspect." Prepositional phrases to show when or where events happen, journalistic phrases, and formal conjunctions.

I'll remind you of some of those features before we start to write today.

In terms of sentences, we should be including a range of simple, compound, and complex sentences.

And today I really want us to focus on complex sentences, which include a relative clause.

That's a clause that we can add in to the middle of our sentence, often starting with a relative pronoun, who or which, to add extra information to our sentence.

Let's have a think about the features in terms of the layout and the punctuation.

How should the paragraph be structured or organised and what sort of punctuation would you expect to see? Pause the recording and write yourself some notes now.

So the layout would, of course, include chronological recount order.

So we would recount the events in chronological or time order.

We need to make sure we've got an opening sentence at the beginning of the paragraph that almost summarises the whole paragraph or introduces what the whole paragraph is going to be about.

And then we would have a closing sentence to bring the paragraph to an end.

In terms of punctuation, we would, of course, expect the normal full stops, capital letters, commas, but brackets are a punctuation feature that we see a lot in newspaper reports as they allow the writer to add in extra information.

Well done, if you've thought of some of those features.

Here's is the success criteria we're going to be following for today's writing.

There are four different features that we're going to try and include in our writing today.

And hopefully, I'm going to model those four different features to you and then you'll be able to go away and include those features in your writing.

I have used formal vocabulary and journalistic phrases.

We spent a whole lesson on that a little while ago, practising some of that key vocabulary.

I have used formal conjunctions.

So it could be and conjunctions, but conjunctions, or causal conjunctions.

I have used prepositional phrases.

So those phrases that show us when something happens or where something happens, time and place.

I have used a relative clause and brackets to add extra information.

Let's just remind ourselves of some of the formal vocabulary that we explored in a previous lesson.

We thought of lots of synonyms, that's words that have a similar meaning, for the word "suspect" that we could use instead of "Wolf." So we had suspect, accused, defendant, assailant, offender, and perpetrator.

All of these nouns mean the person who committed the crime.

And you can see an example in a sentence there.

"The assailant tied up Granny Puckett and locked her in a cupboard." So that's clearly referring to Wolf.

We also thought of some synonyms for the word "victim." So that's the person that the crime happens to.

So in this instance, we're thinking about Red and Mrs. Puckett.

So we had victim, target, and injured party.

In a sentence, we could use it like this: "The victims were traumatised by the violent incident." We also thought of some different words, some nouns that we could use instead of "witness." Remember, witness is the person or people that see or hear an event happening and often journalists will go and speak to those people to find out more information.

So we had witness, bystander, passerby, local resident, onlooker, and observer.

And in a sentence, we could use it like this: "The bystander overheard voices coming from Mrs. Puckett's house." So remember, the three witnesses that we found out information from were the nextdoor neighbour, the dog walker, and the delivery man.

So we could use one of these six nouns to refer to any of those three different witnesses.

We also explored some different words we could use instead of "house" to describe where this event took place.

We thought of residence, property, and crime scene.

And you can see an example here.

"The suspect broke into Mrs. Puckett's property." So rather than her house, it would be more formal and more appropriate to say property.

What is a journalistic phrase? This is another feature we need to include in our writing today that we've covered in a previous lesson.

Can you remember what they are? Any examples or why we might use them? Pause the recording and write down your ideas now.

So, journalistic phrases are a phrase or a sentence starter that are often used in newspaper reports.

They can show where the information has come from.

So remember, we are journalists and we have to find out our information to include in our report.

And often we do that through speaking to witnesses or speaking to people involved in the event.

So we might use words like "reports suggest that" if we get our information from a police report, for example, or "police reports indicate that".

If we want to show the information has not been confirmed, that means we're not completely sure if something is true or factual, but it's something that we've heard people saying, then we can use the phrases, "it is thought that," or "it is believed that" and also the sentence starter "allegedly".

So that's to show that we're not completely sure if something's true yet.

Now, we also need to some types of formal conjunction in our writing.

Lots to think about today.

And we covered these in a previous lesson.

Can you remember any examples of and conjunctions? Remember, they add more information.

But conjunctions, they show that contrast or opposite between two sentences.

And causal conjunctions, they show cause and effect.

Pause the recording and write down any conjunctions that you can remember.

Well done.

I'm sure you thought of lots.

Here are our and conjunctions.

In addition, furthermore, moreover, and also.

You'll notice that they all start a sentence, they all have a capital letter at the beginning, and they are followed by a comma.

Our but conjunctions, we can use however, nevertheless, despite this, and we can also use although, which is a subordinating conjunction.

So it wouldn't have a comma immediately after it.

It would have the comma after the subordinate clause.

And lastly, our causal conjunction, showing that cause and effect.

We could use as a result, consequently, therefore, and we can also use in order to, which goes in the middle of a sentence, rather than at the beginning.

Hopefully, you can try and use one of each of those types of conjunction in your writing today.

Hopefully, you have got your plan for your chronological recount paragraph in front of you.

Just make sure you've got it now.

Quick check? Good, well done.

So your plan might look like this, or you might be using your flow chart that we completed in an earlier lesson.

So this is going to really help you with your writing today so that you know what to include.

And you might also want to tick it off as you write.

Okay, I think we're ready to start writing.

So let's think about our opening sentence.

Remember, we want to introduce what this paragraph is going to be about.

So I'm going to write "Police have revealed further details of yesterday's," and I need an apostrophe here because it belongs to yesterday's incident.

The incident belongs to yesterday.

That introduces what this paragraph is going to be about.

I'm going to give the reader more information about this event or incident.

Now I want to start at the beginning.

Remember, I'm writing in chronological order.

So I think the first thing that happened was at around 3:45, one of the witnesses saw the Wolf approach Mrs. Puckett's house.

So I'm going to start with a prepositional phrase to tell my reader when it happened.

"At approximately", that tells my reader that I'm not sure exactly what time, but around 3:45 p.

m.

Now, when did this happen? I'm going to make up the date.

The 1st of September.

It doesn't matter what date you use.

It's up to you.

"At approximately 3:45 p.

m.

on the 1st of September," and I followed that with a comma to show that that's a prepositional phrase to start my sentence.

"A witness", I'm going to use that noun to start with, "saw a suspicious individual." What was he doing? He was outside the Puckett.

No, I don't want to say house.

I know, I'll say residence, "outside the Puckett residence." Now, I think I could add in a bit more information here.

So rather than just saying "a suspicious individual", I'm going to explain that he was later identified as Wolf.

So when the witness saw him, he didn't know his name was Wolf, but later on police worked out that that's who it was.

So let's read that sentence back, or those two sentences back, and just check they make sense.

"Police have revealed further details of yesterday's incident.

At approximately 3:45 p.

m.

on the 1st of September, a witness saw a suspicious individual outside the Puckett residence." Now, I want to give a bit more information now before moving on to my next witness.

So I'm going to say, I'm going to describe how the witness described him.

So, "He was six foot tall with thick," comma, "grey fur." So that's my expanded noun phrase there to describe his fur, thick, comma, grey.

And he was wearing, "and was wearing a blue," comma, "zip-up", I'm going to use a hyphen to join together zip and up.

What was he wearing, he was wearing a sweatshirt, wasn't he? That's it.

Right, so that adds a little bit more information.

"He was six foot tall with thick, grey fur and was wearing a blue, zip-up sweatshirt." Now, what did the witness say he did? I'm going to start with, "It was reported that".

That shows that I've got this information from someone.

"It was reported that he", I know, "he repeatedly peered in the window".

Now here, I'm going to use a complex sentence.

So I'm going to add a subordinating conjunction, before, and extend my sentence with a subordinate clause.

What did he do? "It was reported that he repeatedly peered in the window before entering through the front door." Excellent.

"It was reported that he repeatedly peered in the window before entering through the front door." That's looking really good.

Now, maybe that's a good point to include a formal conjunction.

Now, although we know he entered through the front door, we don't really know how he got in, whether Mrs. Puckett let him in, whether he broke in, whether the door was open and he just let himself in.

So I'm going to use a but conjunction there.

I'm going to use "however", and I'm going to write, "it is unclear how he got in".

Hmm, that doesn't sound very formal, does it? "However, it is unclear how he got in." I know, I could change it to, "how he gained entry." That sounds much more formal.

Okay.

Let's read that sentence back.

"However, it is unclear how he gained entry." Yes.

That sounds much more formal.

Right, let me read the whole paragraph and just check I haven't made any silly mistakes.

"Police have revealed further details of yesterday's incident.

At approximately 3:45 p.

m.

on the 1st of September, a witness saw a suspicious individual outside the Puckett residence.

He was six foot tall with thick, grey fur and was wearing a blue, zip-up sweatshirt.

It was reported that he repeatedly peered in the window before entering through the front door.

However, it is unclear how he gained entry." I now want you to have a go at writing the first parts of your chronological recount paragraph.

Remember some of the features that I just included in my section, formal language, journalistic phrases, and brackets for extra information.

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

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

Hopefully, you're ready for the next section.

So in the next part, and then going to describe the second witness's information provided.

So the second witness told us that they saw Red letting herself into Granny's house.

So I'm going to start again with a prepositional phrase to say when this happened.

I'm going to write, "A short while later at 4:00 p.

m." And remember, I need to finish that prepositional phrase with a comma.

"A delivery man described seeing a young girl let herself into the property." Now, this might be an appropriate place to add in a prepositional phrase with a bit more information.

The man described her as a young girl, but we know that she's actually known as Red.

So I'm going to add in here, "A delivery man described seeing a young girl, who is known locally as Red, let herself into the property." Okay.

Let's check that whole sentence makes sense.

"A short while later at 4:00 p.

m.

, a delivery man described seeing a young girl, who is known locally as Red, let herself into the property." Excellent.

I can see that I can take out that relative clause and the sentence would still make sense.

So it's just adding a little bit of extra information to my sentence.

Now, he then saw two figures moving around inside and that's how we know that Red and the Wolf had a fight.

So I'm going to write, "He then noticed two figures moving around inside, and", let's add a bit more information.

What else did he do? He saw them moving around, but he also heard something.

"And heard raised voices." Now, could I add a little bit more information about the raised voices? Can you remember how he described the two voices that he heard? Let's add in some extra information in brackets there because one of those voices was deep and the other voice was more high-pitched.

Close my brackets, and then I have my full stop afterwards.

Okay.

So what happened next? I know, we could say that it is thought, "It is thought a fight broke out between Red and Wolf." We know this because the two figures were moving around inside and they were obviously shouting at each other.

So therefore, we can work out, we can think, that a fight broke out between Red and Wolf.

Now, why might it have happened? Probably, "when she discovered his presence in the house." Excellent.

Now, there's one other thing that witness said.

He said something about there being a stick involved.

So I'm going to add another bit of extra information.

This is a perfect opportunity to use an and conjunction.

"Furthermore," I'm going to say, "the evidence suggests that a large stick was used as a weapon." I know that because I've seen some evidence and the witness told me that he thought that someone was holding a large stick.

So I'm then presuming that that was part of the fight and used as a weapon.

Right.

Now, I would like you should write the next part of your chronological recount paragraph.

Remember your formal language, journalistic phrases, brackets, and this time, try and add in a relative clause for extra information.

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

You are doing so well with your writing so far.

Well done for all of your hard work.

Now, you might've noticed I've zoomed ahead a little bit and written the next section of our chronological recount paragraph.

I'm going to read it through for you now, and you can follow on the screen.

And I've highlighted some sections in pink that I want to draw your attention to.

These are some of those key features on our success criteria.

"Next, a local resident, who was walking her dog at the time, witnessed a large man with a bobble hat fly towards the window while waving an axe.

This was followed by smashing glass and piercing shrieks.

As a result, the emergency services were called and two squad cars were immediately dispatched to the scene.

Reports indicate that Mrs. Puckett was found tied and gagged.

Consequently, the police apprehended the suspect and Wolf is currently in custody, awaiting questioning." Let's have a look at some of those features highlighted in pink.

Firstly, we've got the word "next." This tells us when something happened.

Then we've got the relative clause, "who was walking her dog at the time," that adds extra information to "local resident." In this sentence, we can see I've extended it to make it a complex sentence using "while." So it says, "Next, a local resident, who was walking her dog at the time, witnessed a large man with a bobble hat fly towards the window while waving an axe." We've got a subordinate clause in there as well as a relative clause.

"This was followed by smashing glass and piercing shrieks.

As a result, the emergency services were called." So we can see there, we're using a causal conjunction to show cause and effect.

And again, I've extended that sentence, this time with an and to make it a compound sentence.

"And two squad cars were immediately dispatched to the scene." And then you can see, again, I've used another causal conjunction.

"Reports indicate that Mrs. Puckett was found tied and gagged.

Consequently, the police apprehended the suspect." So because she was found tied and gagged, that's why the police apprehended or arrested the suspect.

And again, you can see I've extended that sentence a little bit more with an and conjunction to add some more information, making it a compound sentence.

So, "and Wolf is currently in custody, awaiting questioning." So that last part of that sentence tells us what's happening right now.

So it brings the paragraph to an end.

Let's check through the success criteria.

I have used formal vocabulary and journalistic phrases.

Yes, I definitely did that.

I have used formal conjunctions.

Yes, I managed to include an and, but, and I think two causal conjunctions.

I have used prepositional phrases, yes.

I have time and place to tell my reader where and when events happened.

And I've used a relative clause and brackets to add extra information.

Yes, I managed to include a couple of examples of both of those features.

For your independent task for this lesson, I would like you to write a chronological recount paragraph of your newspaper report.

You may have already started it in sections as I was writing.

Otherwise, you need to start from the beginning and write the whole paragraph now.

Remember to refer to your plan and to try and include all of the features on the success criteria.

So this is what we've covered in today's lesson.

We started with an introduction, a recap of the chronological recount paragraph.

We then explored the features and success criteria of this paragraph in more detail.

I modelled an example for you.

And now it's your turn to try and write your own chronological recount paragraph.

Congratulations! You have completed your lesson for today.

Well done for all of your hard work.

If you haven't written your paragraph yet, I wish you the best of luck.

When you've finished it, you might want to share your work with Oak National.

If you'd like to, please ask your parents or carer to share your work on Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I'm sure people would love to see the writing that you have produced as a result of today's lesson.

Well done for all of your hard work and I will see you in our next English lesson.

Goodbye!.