Lesson video

Hi everyone.

Welcome back to our unit on creative writing about memoir writing.

Now last time we started the opening to our memoir, creating a sense of where we are and therefore who we are.

And today I'm going to be thinking about really early memory that we've got.

So I'd like you to think back to your earliest memory, where were you? Who did it involve? What do you remember about it? Now for me, I don't know if it's my earliest memory, but it's certainly a very early one.

I remember that when my little sister was born, so I was three and a half, four years old.

And I remember going into the hospital and everything being really strange and really big.

And then going through to the room where my mom was and my dad picking me up and showing me my little baby sister in the crib there.

And it's a really special memories to me.

And I'm always interested in hearing about other people's early memories as well.

So today's lesson is going to be about how to recreate this memory with beautiful language to form the second part of our memoir.

You're going to need a quiet space to work, a piece of paper and a pen.

So remove any distractions so we can get started.

But let's start by reviewing what we learned last lesson.

We learned that memoir is a pieces of writing written from real past experiences.

They're written in the first person.

Now, what does that mean? Well done if you remembered, that first person means you use the pronoun I.

Memoirs use powerful language to recreate memories and when writing them memoirs we learn that we need to vary our sentence lengths.

So some short and some long and we need to incorporate sensory language, what we can smell, what we can taste, what we can hear, what we can feel, and what we can see.

Good.

Let's check your understanding.

Press pause and answer the four questions on your screen, please.

And let's check your knowledge.

What are memoirs? They are a piece of writing based on real past experience.

What pronoun do they use? They use the pronoun "I" What kind of language do they include? They include powerful words and phrases and often sensory language.

And what kind of sentence structures should we use? We should use a variation of sentence structures.

Good.

So last lesson we learned all about how to describe where we are and therefore give an impression of who we are as a person.

And today we're going to be writing about our very first memory.

So think back to an early memory you have.

If it can be your first memory, great, if not, then don't worry.

Just an early memory.

Choose one.

Where are you? How do you feel? What emotions are there in this memory? Because in the example that we're going to read first, the memory is actually quite a scary one for the writer.

The extract comes from this memoir is called "Cider With Rosie" and is by Laurie Lee.

And it's a lovely memoir that explores his childhood and his adolescence growing up in the countryside.

And in this extract, the writer remembers his first memory of being brought to a new village moving house and being put in a field while his family got on with unpacking.

And very quickly he feels lost and absolutely terrified.

And he uses incredible language to allow us to picture his surroundings and his terror.

Let's read the extract now.

He says, " I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror, my life in the village began.

The June grass amongst which I stood was taller than I was, and I wept.

I had never been so close to grass before.

It towered above me and all around me, each blade tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight.

It was knife-edged, dark, and a wicked green, thick as a forest and alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chatted and leaped through the air like monkeys.

I was lost and didn't know where to move.

A tropic heat oozed up from the ground, rank with sharp odours of roots and nettles.

Snow-clouds of elder-blossom banked in the sky, showering upon me the fumes and flakes of their sweet and giddy suffocation.

High overhead ran frenzied larks, screaming, as though the sky was tearing apart.

For the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans.

For the first time in my life I was alone in a world whose behaviour I could neither predict nor fathom: a world of birds that squealed, of plants that stank, of insects that sprang about without warning.

I was lost and I did not expect to be found again.

I put back my head and howled, and the sun hit me smartly on the face, like a bully." Let's check your understanding of what we've read.

Where does this memory take place? Was it in a countryside village, a jungle, or a city? Say it aloud to your screen? Well done if you said a countryside village.

Now it sounds a bit like a jungle, doesn't it? What he is doing is he's creating this sense that the fields that he's been plugged in is like a dangerous and exotic jungle, but it's not actually a jungle, it's a metaphor.

How old is the writer in this memory? Say it aloud.

Well done if you said he's three.

How does he feel? Well done if you said he is terrified by what is all around him.

And how does he present his surroundings? Choose your answer.

I want one of you said, "He presents his surroundings as dangerous and threatening." So let's summarise what we've read.

The writer is remembering being three years old.

He's just moved to a new house in a new village.

He's been put down outside in the grass and he feels lost and frightened.

He uses powerful language to present his surroundings as dangerous, as a dangerous and threatening jungle.

Right, we've got some nice vocabulary that we've just read.

We've got bewilderment, giddy, frenzied and fathom.

What might these words mean? Let us do the first one together.

Bewilderment means feeling confused.

Press pause, write out the rest of the words and match them to the correct definition, off you go.

And let's check your work.

Giddy means feeling dizzy or disoriented.

Frenzied means uncontrollable and wild behaviour.

Remember he described the birds as swooping in a frenzied way.

And fathom means to understand.

So if you say, "I can't fathom it," it means I can't understand it.

Okay, we understand the definitions of the words.

Now, let's practise using them.

Here I've given you a paragraph all about Laurie Lee earliest memory.

I'd like you to write out the paragraph and complete it with the missing words.

Off you go.

And let's check your work.

In his earliest memory, Laurie Lee remembers the bewilderment he felt as a three-year-old child in a new place.

He felt completely lost and couldn't fathom where he was or what he was doing there.

He remembers the giddy movement of nature all around him, including the frenzied behaviour of the swooping birds above his head.

Well done if you got four out of four, and I'd really like to see you use some of these words in today's lesson.

Now, in Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie, he's describing a memory.

Therefore, do you think he uses the present tense or the past tense? Choose your answer.

Well done, if you said he chooses the past tense.

Now last lesson we learned about that extract from when Cassandra is sitting in the sink and I capture the castle and she's writing her own memoir.

Now, that was written in the present tense.

And we practise writing in the present tense during that lesson.

But today, because we're describing a memory, we're going to be writing in the past tense.

Let's see how Laurie Lee does it.

He starts his extract with, "I was set down from the carrier's car to the age of three, and there was a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began." Are we in the past tense? Yes we are.

We've got two verbs and they're both in the past.

We've got was, and we've got began.

So if I was describing my memory about going to the hospital and meeting my little sister for the first time, I'm also going to need to use the past tense.

And this is what I might write.

I was taken to the hospital to meet my new sister at the age of four.

When I arrived, I noticed the towering glass building and the violently swinging automatic doors.

And I'm going to check all my verbs in the past tense, was, arrived, noticed.

Yes, they are.

Now it's your turn.

I'd like you to describe your earliest memory please, and I'd like you to make sure that all of your verbs are in the past tense.

Just write one or two sentences to start you off.

Press pause and right now.

And when you're ready, just check your work through.

Make sure that all of the verbs are in the past tense because we're writing about our memory.

Next, we're going to learn all about Laurie Lee's incredible use of imagery.

And you might remember that imagery means when you use words to paint pictures for the reader.

It's incredibly important that we think carefully about how to use imagery in our writing, because it allows our readers to see what we can see in our imaginations.

So Laurie Lee uses amazing imagery in his extract.

Here's a few of my favourite examples.

He describes the grass as it towered above me.

You can almost picture that piece of grass growing like a big tall tower leaning over him.

He describes each blade as tattooed with tiger-skins of sunlight.

Two things are wonderful here.

First of all, tattooed really gives an impression of what the sunlight is doing on those pieces of grass and the imagery of the tiger-skins makes it seem wild and dangerous as well.

The grass was knife-edged.

This is an amazing image, because it shows that the grass was really sharp and therefore felt very dangerous and threatening for Laurie Lee as a small boy.

And he describes it as alive with grasshoppers that chirped and chattered and leaped through the air like monkeys.

Amazing imagery that conveys the sense of fear and danger and noise and chaos that Laurie Lee really felt when he felt he was lost in the grass.

Now, when I wanted to create my own imagery for my own memory, I had to think quite carefully about it.

I had to really select the words and phrases that would help my readers picture what I remember.

Here's what I came up with.

The polished floor glimmered like marble.

Overhead lights flicked on and off crackling with electricity.

Bouncing echoes of murmured voices and sharp footsteps surrounded me.

Now, I hope through my choice of words here, you're able to kind of picture my memory, and I hope that my imagery does a good job here for you.

Now it's your turn.

I would like you to picture your earliest memory, and I'd like you to write three bullet points of imagery to describe it and make sure each one creates pictures with your words.

Write your three bullet points and press pause now.

And look over your bullet points.

Did you carefully choose your words and phrases to create vivid pictures for your readers? Will they be able to picture what you can picture when you remember your memory? Lastly, we are going to look at Laurie Lee's use of repetition.

And some of you might have spotted it already.

He says, "For the first time in my life I was out of the sight of humans.

For the first time in my life I was alone in a world," and then he continues.

Now I love this use of repetition here, for the first time, for the first time.

Because in repeating I, we're really getting a sense of the newness of the situation and how difficult it feels for him as such a young and vulnerable boy.

So we're going to use the same phrase and we're going to repeat it in a similar way.

The my example, it might be, "For the first time I was going to meet my new sister.

For the first time I would see her laugh and cry.

For the first time I would be able to protect her." Now it's your turn.

I'd like you to use the same phrase repeated three times to describe your early memory.

Press pause and off you go.

Good job.

Now we've done a lot today.

Let's review what we've already learned.

We have chosen an early memory to write about in our memoir.

We've read an example from Laurie Lee's memoir.

We've understood that we need to use the past tense.

We've learned some new vocabulary, for example, giddy, frenzied, bewilderment.

We've learned how to use imagery and how to choose our words and phrases really carefully.

And we've learned how to include repetition.

Now we're going to put everything together in writing our piece of memoir writing all about our earliest memory.

Here's my example.

I was taken to the hospital to meet my new sister at the age of four.

When I arrived, I noticed the towering glass building and the violently swinging automatic doors.

The polished floor underneath my feet glimmered like marble and overhead lights flipped on and off crackling with electricity.

As we walked through the corridors, I was bewildered by the bouncing echoes of murmured voices and sharp footsteps.

But I felt giddy with excitement.

For the first time I was going to meet my new sister.

For the first time I would see her laugh and cry.

For the first time I would be able to protect her.

Now let's have a quick look at what I've done here.

The first thing that I've checked, double checked, and triple checked is that I'm in the past tense.

It's very common for us to start in the past tense, then accidentally switch to the present tense.

So I've actually underlined all my verbs there, was, arrived, noticed, clicked, walked, et cetera.

And I've checked that they're all in the past tense.

Next you can see my use of imagery to create pictures of my memory, the towering glass building, the violently swinging doors.

And you can see them there in purple.

I've also incorporated some of the new vocabulary in pink, bewildered and giddy.

And I've got my repetition, for the first time, for the first time, for the first time.

Now it's your turn.

You're going to put together everything we've learned to describe your early memory.

You need to use please the past tense, include some new vocabulary, definitely use the imagery that we've already drafted and incorporate that repetition that we've already written.

You're going to be writing for about 10 minutes now.

So press pause, and off you go.

Well done for completing the second lesson in our creative writing memoir unit.

The first time you start to creating a sense of where you are.

This time, we created a very early memory.

Next time we're going to be learning how to describe someone who's really important in our life.

So I look forward to seeing you then.

Don't forget to take the exit quiz to check your learning from today, and I will see you next time.

Bye bye.