Lesson video

Hi everybody and welcome to our lesson today.

Today, we are going to be using all of that incredible show not tell and vocabulary about emotions and all of that planning we've been doing to write the opening of our letter.

Our learning objective today is to write the opening paragraph of a diary entry.

This is lesson number eight of 15, and it's outcome number two.

In this lesson, you will need your exercise book or paper, your pen, or pencil, and your very best learning brain.

You will also need all of the planning you've been doing so far in this writing outcome.

Pause the video if you need to take a moment to go and get anything.

So today's agenda for learning.

Firstly, we are going to Read a model of an opening of a letter.

Then we are going to discuss our Success criteria and then we're going to do a Shared write.

So let's start by Reading a model.

So on the top right hand side, I have got my date Tuesday, the 29th of July, 1948.

I am going to read this paragraph alive first, and then you can pause the video if you would like to stop and re-read it again, yourself.

Dearest father, after a rather long and uncomfortable journey on the Empire Windrush, it took 30 days.

I finally arrived in the Mother Country about a month ago.

On the ship, I met lots of people travelling to London and even met the famous Lord Kitchener.

It was hot cramped and crowded on board the ship, but singing with Lord Kitchener and fellow passengers helped pass the time.

England has been an adventure, but a disappointing one.

I can't believe I've been away for so long already.

I miss you all desperately.

I'm filled with emotions, nostalgia, disappointment, and homesickness.

I think it's really important that we note that this poem does seem a little bit more formal than our diary entry.

We've got to remember that this was written in 1948.

So, perhaps tone with written letters would be a little bit more formal back then than it is today.

So I would like you to just pause the video, now while you re-read this paragraph yourself.

And if there's anything that you would like to magpie from that paragraph, jot it down on your planning and take all the time you need.

I'll see you when you're ready.

Okay, everyone so hopefully we've all spent some time magpieing some key words or phrases that we would like to use in our own writing.

Now we're going to discuss our Success Criteria.

We are writing the opening of our letter today and here's our Success Criteria.

So number one, we would be writing with an informal tone.

So we would have some contracted words and perhaps sentence that ends with an exclamation mark.

We would also be describing our emotions using explicit tell and some show not tell.

And finally, we are going to order our events using fronted adverbials of time or place.

Now, we also are of course, going to be using high level ambitious precise vocabulary to describe the windrush and to describe what life was like in Britain.

So that's kind of something we also need to be doing alongside that, but we've already planned for that, with all of our amazing vocabulary, I'm planning we have been doing in preparation for this writing lesson.

So make sure that you've got all of that vocabulary I'm planning next to you to help you write.

I would like you to pause the video so that you can copy down your success criteria and you can press play once you're ready.

Okay, everybody, now I've got a little task for you.

You should have your success criteria written down in front of you, but you can also see it here on the screen.

In the top left hand corner, I would like you to pause the video, while do you spot an example of where I have met the success criteria in my model? You only need to find one example for each success criteria.

So pause the video now, while you do that? Okay, everyone, hopefully we've all pause the video and we've all find an example of informal tone, tell or show not tell and somewhere where I have used a fronted adverbial of time or place.

Now we're going to go through them together.

So the first one, informal tone, so I might skim and scan perhaps for an apostrophe for contraction or for an exclamation mark.

Here's my example, I've gone for, on the ship I met lots of people travelling to London and even met a famous Lord Kitchener, exclamation mark.

You might have chosen a different example.

For example, I can see that there is a another contracted word in there, in fact a couple of contracted words in there, which you could have also gone for or I'm.

Next, we're going to look for an example of describing emotions.

So either tell or show not tell, find yours, you will have hopefully written it down and say it out loud.

Excellent, well done, I went for, I'm filled with emotions.

Colon, nostalgia, comma, disappointment, and homesickness.

So I've used that sentence structure, we talked about a little bit earlier in this unit, using a colon to introduce a list.

This time I've decided to use a colon to introduce a list of emotions, whereas before I'd use a colon to introduce a list of questions.

Now that word nostalgia, nostalgia your turn.

Amazing, well done.

It's the same meaning or it's a synonym for wistful.

Wistful was one of our Mrs. Words miss words, meaning to think back on perhaps a happier memory and feel a little bit sad when you think back on it.

Okay, everybody, and now my third success criteria is to use fronted adverbials of time or place.

Have some thinking time if you haven't find one already, remember, you can always pause the video if you need more time.

Here's my example, on the ship, on the ship comma because we use a comma after a fronted adverbial.

Now, can you help me? Is this a fronted adverbial of time or place? So when or where I met lots of people, you're bright, well done.

Where, so this is a fronted adverbial of place because I met lots of people on the ship.

Okay, so now, we are going to do some shared writing.

This means I'm going to do some thinking out loud and writing on the screen.

And you are going to write with me only for your own ideas and using your own planning.

So before we get started, let's just make sure we all have our planning.

Here is our plan, which we did together in our last writing lesson.

This is going to be on the screen when we come to write, in our next part of our lesson, but do make sure you've got your own planning too, because your planning is going to have loads of your own unique ideas.

And that's, what's going to make your piece of writing really unique and individual to you.

Now I'm going to disappear off the screen during our shared write, but you'll still be able to hear my voice, so let's get started.

Okay, everyone so now we're going to get started with our shared write.

We need to start our letter with a dear and then address it to the person.

So I'm going to write my letter to a friend, remember we're writing as Sonia Thompson.

Now I'm going to write to a friend called Ben, you can decide who your letter is going to be written to.

Dear Ben, comma, pause the video if you want to just take a moment to decide on the name of the person you're writing to.

It could be a friend or it could be a family member.

Remember though, we've got to have a capital letter for dear and for the person's name, we also need a comma after the address.

No, I'm going to take a new line.

So I'm going to open my letter with just a little sort of opening sentence, which shows that I've been meaning to write for a while.

I'm going to go with, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write, now I've got two contractions in that sentence.

So I just need to double check that I've got my apostrophes.

I'm a contraction of I am, yes I've got that one.

And it's it has, yes, I've got my apostrophe for contraction in there.

If you would like to write a similar opening sentence, then you can pause the video, now while you do that.

So for example, I can't believe it's been so long already, or my time in England has flown past.

Okay, once you've written your first opening sentence, then we can get going on own next sentence.

The past few weeks in England have been an adventure.

They certainly have, but have they all been positive adventures? not exactly so I think I'm going to go with something like, the past few weeks in England have been an adventure, comma, but, but not exactly a good one.

That's what I'm going to go with.

The past few weeks in England have been an adventure, comma, but not exactly a good one.

So I'm summarising for my reader that I haven't had an excellent experience so far.

Now, let's just pause and read what I've written so far, and then you're going to have time to write in your next sentence.

Dear Ben, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write.

The past few weeks in England have been an adventure, but not exactly a good one.

So let's just take a moment to look at the success criteria.

Have I used an informal tone, contracted words? Yes I have, I've got two contracted words so far.

Now I would like you to pause the video while you think about what your second, sentence is going to be.

Perhaps to show that a few weeks have passed or perhaps even a few months have passed since you have been in England and you have contacted this person.

Okay everybody, hopefully we've got our first couple of sentences written down.

Now let's always stop and check after we've written one or two sentences for contractions, if we've used apostrophes, making sure we've used capital letters for the starts of sentences.

And if you've written down the proper nouns, England, or London or the Windrush or the person you're writing to his name, then make sure to capitalise those proper nouns.

Okay, so now I'm going to start using my plan a little more.

I'm going to go with the very start, the how was the journey on the Windrush? This is where you need to look at your plan.

Look at what point you've noted down and start to combine those points into full sentences.

Okay, so I'm going to go with, the journey on the Windrush was cramped and uncomfortable.

Okay, so the journey on the.

I've got to capitalised Windrush because that's the name of the ship, was cramped and uncomfortable.

Now why was it cramped and uncomfortable? So what conjunction do I need to use? The journey on the Windrush was cramped and uncomfortable because I need that explaining conjunction because 493 passengers were on the ship, I want to kind of use a word that shows how tightly packed everyone was, were, on the ship? I'm going to go with crammed, were crammed on the ship.

So I'm going to go back and read my sentence again.

The journey on the Windrush was cramped and uncomfortable because 493 passengers were crammed on the ship.

Okay, now I would like you to pause your video and write your first sentence describing what the journey on the Windrush was like.

And you can press play when you're ready.

Okay, everyone, hopefully you've written first sentence.

Now I've got to still note that, the journey lasted for 30 days and that Lord Kitchener was on board, so, how am I going to do that? Okay, so I've just written that it was cramped and uncomfortable.

So now I am going to contrast that with a bit of good news, which was that Lord Kitchener, who was that famous calypso singer was on board 'cause that was quite a positive thing that happened on the journey.

So I'm actually going to use a relative clause.

So I'm going to go with, Lord Kitchener, Kitchener, who cause he's a person that's a relative pronoun, who is one of my favourite singers, comma, I've got to remember my comma either side of my relative clause was onboard though.

When you use that word though, you show that even though it was cramped and uncomfortable, Lord Kitchener was on board so that was one positive of the journey.

And now I'm going to actually tell my reader about how long the journey was.

So during the journey, there's my fronted adverbial of time.

During the journey, how long did it last again? Yes, I'm going to use another relative clause here.

So the journey is not a person, it's a thing, so I'm going to use, which as my relative pronoun.

During the journey comma, which lasted 30 days, comma, many of us, now what could we do while we were on the journey? So many of us passed the time by singing and sharing stories about what we hoped the motherland would be like.

Many of us passed the time by singing and what did I say? Singing songs and sharing stories, about what we hoped the mother land would be like.

Now we know that the motherland refers to England.

And again, I've got to capitalise motherland because I'm using it as the country's name.

So now I would like you to pause the video and make sure that you have written all about the journey on the Windrush.

Okay, everybody, hopefully we've all taken the time to write down what our journey on the Windrush was like.

Now, I'm going to move to the next screen where we can focus a little bit more on what happened when we first arrived.

Okay, everyone so now for the next section of our opening paragraph, we are going to describe what happened when we arrived at Tilbury Docks.

Now we're not taking a new paragraph we are.

I've just switched onto the next screen so that we've got enough space for you to be able to see my writing clearly, but you are not taking a new paragraph.

You're just starting a new sentence of your paragraph.

So now what happened when you arrived at the Tilbury Docks? So I'm going to begin with, when we, when we finally.

Actually, do you know what I'm going to start my sentence with a fronted adverbial, I'm going to go with, finally comma, we arrived at Tilbury Docks.

Now let's just make sure we've spelling that word correct.

So have a quick check on your plan.

Did you remember to capitalise Tilbury and Docks? So finally comma, we at Tilbury Docks at the Tilbury Docks.

The Tilbury docks in London, just outside London.

Okay, finally comma, we arrived at the Tilbury Docks, just outside London.

So I've got my fronted adverbial of time there, finally.

So I've met my success criteria number three, have a quick check through what you've written so far.

Have you used any fronted adverbials of time or place? So when we arrived, there were lots of press, reporters were shouting and taking photographs.

So when we arrived, there were lots of reporters, reporters, shouting and taking photographs.

So when we arrived, is not a fronted adverbial because this is not a phrase, it's a clause arrived as a verb.

So this is actually a subordinate clause, beginning with the subordinating conjunction when, okay? So just make sure we're clear on that.

So when we arrived, there were lots of reporters shouting and taking photographs.

So now I'm going to talk about the emotions onboard the ship.

So onboard the ship, this is a fronted adverbial of place, because I'm telling you my reader where this happened.

People were feeling very merry and excited to arrive in the Motherland.

Now I'm going to use my formal part.

However, there was no accommodation for us.

However, there was no accommodation for us full stop.

What happened next? Many of us spent the first few nights in an air raid shelter.

In fact, instead of using a full stop, I'm going to use a dash to mark the boundaries between those two sentences.

So however comma, there was no accommodation for us, dash.

Many of us spent the first few nights in England, sleeping in an air raid shelter.

Instead of saying, spent the first few nights I'm going to say spent our first few nights, spent our first few nights in England, sleeping in an air raid shelter.

Now I'm not going to go into lots of detail actually about the air raid shelter, because I am going to give a lot more detail on that, when we come to writing the main body paragraph, I've just written the second section of my paragraph.

I've written about what happened when I first arrived, I'm going to read the whole thing through, and then we're going to pause the video you're going to have time to write your second section of your paragraph.

Finally comma, we arrived at the Tilbury Docks, just outside London.

When we arrived comma, there were lots of reporters shouting and taking photographs.

Onboard the ship people were feeling very merry and excited to arrive in the motherland.

However, there was no shelter, there was no accommodation for us.

Many of us another space there.

Many of us spent our first few nights in England, sleeping in an air raid shelter.

I'm actually going to use an exclamation mark here because it's quite surprising, isn't it? It's quite a shocking statement, so I'm going to emphasise how my shock at this by using an exclamation mark.

Now, I would like you to pause the video while you write your second section.

What happened when you first arrived? Take as much time as you need and make sure you read through your writing after you have finished.

Make sure that your sentences are linked to your success criteria and I'll see you when you're finished so that we can write the final couple of sentences of our paragraph.

Okay, everybody, I bet you're feeling so proud of what you've written so far.

Hopefully you've all read through your entire paragraph and now we're going to write the final section.

So I'm going to use my planning to help me write the final section of my paragraph.

I'm sad to write that England is not what I expected, I want to have a little bit more of a high level vocabulary.

I'm going to go with I'm disheartened.

I'm disheartened to right that life in England is not what I expected.

I feel so homesick.

I'm going to go with an exclamation mark there at the end.

Okay so I'm going to read through all of my writing so far.

Dear Ben, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to write, the past few weeks in England have been an adventure, but not exactly a good one.

The journey on the Windrush was cramped and uncomfortable because 493 passengers were crammed on the ship.

Lord Kitchener, who's one of my favourite singers was on board though.

During the journey, which lasted 30 days.

I wrote last not lasted.

I've got to go back and edit that, which lasted 30 days, many of us passed the time by singing songs and sharing stories about what we hoped the motherland would be like.

Finally, we arrived at the Tilbury Docks, just outside London.

When we arrived, there were lots of reporters shouting and taking photographs.

Onboard the ship, people were feeling very merry and excited to arrive in the motherland.

However, there was no accommodation for us, many of us spent our first few nights in England, sleeping in an air raid shelter.

I'm disheartened to write that life in England is not what I expected, I feel so homesick.

I would like you to pause the video while you read through your whole piece of writing and double check for little mistakes.

For example, when I had forgotten the -ed suffix on last, I went back and re-read it and I edited my little mistake.

I would like you to just quickly re-read your writing, checks that it makes sense, check that you've remembered your capital letters and full stops and commas where they need to be.

And check for contracted words to make sure you've remembered your apostrophe.

Spend a couple of minutes doing that now.

So now I would like you to pause the video and check for evidence of where you have met your success criteria and you can press play when you're done.

Well done everybody that brings us to the end of our lesson, what a fantastic shared write.

And I hope you're feeling really proud of what you've achieved today.

I'm really looking forward to our next lesson, well done.