Lesson video

I'm Mrs. Crompton.

Welcome to today's English lesson.

Our focus today is revisiting our writing skills, by responding to a setting stimulus image.

You will need a pen and paper.

Take a moment to make sure you've cleared any distractions away, and have everything you need to hand.

Welcome back to our writing work.

So the first thing we have is an instruction, and we are going to be looking to write a description as suggested by this image.

So remember the phrasing there, as suggested by.

It's a springboard for our descriptive writing.

And the first thing that I would like you to do, is to think about the vocabulary you would use to describe the setting you see in front of you.

And the initial task is quite nice warm up task.

Just make a list of 10 words or phrases, that you might be able to use to describe this image.

Control over to you.

Just pause until you've completed that, and then we'll take to our next step.

Welcome back.

So first things to consider in the list of 10 words and phrases, we need to think about the precision and the quality of the words that we are using, how they match, what we're trying to create in terms of tone or atmosphere and response from our reader.

And on the screen, you can now see a few words that we have encountered before, as well as some new words.

So the word unsullied has been added.

Something that hasn't been touched by any other human is the idea that I was thinking of there when looking at that image, and I'm making a connection back to our reading of "Heart of Darkness", that this is a landscape that is being explored for the first time.

We've also got the word burdened to describe the greenery that's all around us.

And perhaps even the idea of it being quite a stifling atmosphere.

There was lots of description from Conrad in particular about how everything was quite suffocating in the centre of the image.

And that idea particularly comes to mind when you look at the way in which the trees are enclosing the whole setting.

So just to think about your vocabulary choices and making sure that within the list of words that you are generating, you might not use all 10, but you are starting to think about the ones that are the most precise for your purpose.

Let's work with those words now, and remember our next step in our planning, we're going to respond to our image in more detail.

And in a moment you will see the pause point for this.

I'm just going to go through a reminder of our planning techniques before handing control over to you.

And then we'll see a repeat of this screen.

So please, don't worry about trying to get all of this down as I'm speaking, I will give you that break.

So if you remember, when we were looking at descriptive writing, we talked about thinking about our planning around place, sights, sounds, smells, sensations, and atmosphere.

And then from that list, not necessarily trying to use every single box, but knocking certain ones out, bringing other ones to the foreground that we're really going to concentrate on, because that is the primary sensation and focus of our descriptive writing.

The next step we looked at, was how we're actually going to move around our image.

And if you remember the box planning technique, how will you move from one box to another? And when I put the line here, imagine yourself in the scene or outside, I'm suggesting to you that you might be a narrator, describing the scene, or you could be a character that positioned yourself within the scene.

And I've just made a couple of suggestions about how you might move around thinking about the wide shots.

And we have the box all the way around the outside, and then really zoning into that central image because it does feel like we are being guided to something in the distance within this landscape.

Pause it's your turn now, Box Planning and Generating Vocabulary.

You are now going to get an opportunity to see the two screens again, as well as reconsider your vocabulary.

Review the image, draw your table and consider how you are moving around the image, and list your sequence 1-5.

That was the step that we took with the box planning, and then decide by using the table, which of the descriptive details are going to be the dominant ones within your piece of writing.

So not getting a cluttered piece of writing, but we're getting a very strong response from your reader.

So the design choices, are now over to you, once you have completed restart the video and we'll go to our next step.

Welcome back, so before we move on too far now, we've got a few ideas.

We've got a few things written down and we're starting to shape our creative response.

We're not going to write the whole piece today.

But we're just going to have a reminder of some of those techniques and in particular, how to apply them to a setting task.

The final screen that you saw before you got to this next point was the success criteria.

And I relabeled this as creative writing success criteria because actually it is the same, the descriptive or narrative writing in terms of what we are trying to achieve.

It's the organisation I'm focusing on.

In today's session, we've really been concentrating on vocabulary selection.

And then we would also be considering our technical control.

But we're going to concentrate on the first two elements, the sequencing of our ideas and the choice of vocabulary, particularly decided of tailoring our choices, not trying to cram too many things, being settled in what we're doing and deciding how we're wanting to make our reader feel, at any given moment within our writing.

And we're going to do that now, by looking again at our text of the week, "Heart of Darkness".

So what I would like us to do is to consider the choices that Joseph Conrad has made.

And I'm going to hand it over to you, to reread the opening of the extract.

This time, however, you are thinking about it as a writer.

So you're assessing what Conrad has done in terms of his choices and thinking how they can help you out with your own paragraph.

Think about how he tries to capture and author world feeling in his descriptions.

That would be my prompt for you as you're reading through.

Think about the way that he's being very precise in his vocabulary building patterns, so that he's signposting to his reader, exactly how he wants them to feel.

As you're doing this control is very much to you.

You will notice things you might think I'd really like to include that, pause, restart the video when you're ready, I will be waiting for you at the other side, with our next step.

And welcome back.

So hopefully you've had opportunity, to get some ideas together.

Maybe a few phrases, maybe even the word choices were particularly useful to you.

What I'm now going to do as our next step, is to use that passage.

We're going to use the passage as a style model.

We're going to recast some of the ideas to create your own opening to our stimulus image.

What you're going to see in a moment is the screen again, with the picture as well as the opening line.

So I'd like us to use that opening line as a jumpstart, to our own creative work.

Take on board, all of the planning ideas that you have generated so far.

And we're just going to write the opening.

Remember to focus on your intention.

What do you want your reader to think or feel? And it's all about creating that connection and a particular response from your reader.

So there is your screen.

Am going to hand control over to you at this point and you are going to write the next part of the opening paragraph after the first line.

So, "Going into the jungle was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings." Continue that from there, see where your opening goes.

Welcome back.

So just a little bit of a dip into using the setting stimulus image, in order to generate a description.

So we just focused on the beginning and we used Conrad's piece as a style model, just to jumpstart our writing.

You can carry that piece on you, have your planning.

However, it's not necessary.

What we're really trying to do is to consider different effects and how we can use different techniques when we have a setting stimulus today.

So am actually going to switch, talk a little bit now, and I've altered the image, not massively different.

So a lot of the vocabulary that you generated at the start of the lesson is equally applicable.

However, maybe a little bit brighter.

So there might be maybe more of a hopeful tone to this piece of writing and this time I've switched the styles.

So we are now writing a story as suggested by this image.

And on the right hand side, you can see a reminder of the planning, generating prompt that we used when we covered this within our responses.

I am also just going to briefly show you this so that you can then take control of the video yourselves.

Once we've actually looked at the stimulus image, thought about a storyline in terms of character, setting, the problem, that key question we're asking.

The attempt to resolve the problem, and then whether we're going to write to the climax or the conclusion.

Let's just have a little bit of focus on beginnings.

So it's going to be on the beginnings that I'm looking again.

And just a reminder of the different ways that we can start a story in terms of description of setting, description of characters, action, opening media res, unusual sentences, et cetera.

So the planning now is going to go over to you, starting with the image, moving on to thinking about the beginning.

I will hand over to you.

Take control of the screen from this point, and I will see you in a moment.

Welcome back, So going back to the beginnings, that's the last thinking point that I have left you with, and you may have noticed, I picked two things out in orange, the bottom two bullets.

So description of setting, description of character, or characters, and action events to establish the plots or perhaps quite familiar to you as starting points.

Our challenge today in the next step is going to be to look at trying to start our piece of writing with either a mid-action point or some sort of unusual intriguing opening in terms of sentence construction or detail.

Let's have a look at this as a task in a little bit more depth.

So for our opening paragraph, I want you to consider your narrative starting in the middle of an action.

Or using an unusual sentence construction to start your paragraph off.

Or starting with an unusual detail.

So we're not going to necessarily have very full and developed paragraphs, but we are going to generate three alternative openings.

Okay? So we're writing the opening of our paragraph in theory.

However, we're concentrating on that initial line.

I want us to either open in the middle of an action, try that out.

I want you to try doing something a little bit unusual with your sentence construction.

Think about maybe a short sentence or maybe using punctuation in an interesting way, or by starting with an unusual detail.

So there's a great instructions starting the same narrative.

As you go into this then, your aim is very much to play around with those ideas.

I will give you on the next slide, the screen again, with the instruction and an opportunity for you to review the image.

Soon as you finished that, restart the video and we'll have a look at the next step.

Welcome back.

Now I have given you the criteria that we were looking at in terms of vocabulary and the overall organisation and the technical control quite a few times to assess ourselves, but for this particular activity, because we're only looking at a short fragments of writing, we're going to do something slightly different.

So what I would like us to do is to critique our writing and to start thinking about the effect that has been achieved.

So if you follow through with me at this point, being able to critique your own work is crucial.

When we're writing, there are so many mini choices that you're making.

Where you take your pen and you cross the word out and then you add it and move on, and you do it quite automatically.

But sometimes we forget to stop regularly and check.

And this is a really important skill.

So we've only written the opening lines.

You now have three options for your story.

I would like you to consider which you prefer and why, and in order to make your judgements, I want you to think about the effect that you want to have on your reader.

Let's share the task slide.

So you are about to re-read each response and think about the following.

Around each one, you might actually, if you haven't got much space do start underneath and pause.

Starting sentence number one.

What do you like about it? What mood do you think you've managed to create? What is the reader going to be thinking when they're reading this? What will they understand? And it might be that you say, well, they're not going to understand exactly what's going on.

And that is perfect because that is the effect I wanted to achieve, that sense of disequilibrium.

So you're going to go through each of them.

So sentence number one.

Sentence number two.

Sentence number three.

So it's looking at the midpoint action.

We are looking at the ones where we have started with an unusual sentence construction.

And then we're looking at the one where we have an unusual detail.

So for each of those, you are going to assess them on the three points that you can see.

I would then like you to select one.

And again, the more you articulate your reasons as to why you are choosing the world that you do, the better.

Choose the one which best fulfils your intentions as a writer.

And I think this is a really next step for us to be moving on to.

Start thinking about your design choices and start thinking about whether you have achieved those.

Once you get to that point, we've really moved on to an exciting part of your writing development.

Over to you then, reading through, assessing, making those choices.

And it might be that you want to do a little bit of editing at this stage.

That's absolutely fine.

Put that in your final reflection.

This one best fulfils my purpose, but I'd still make the odd alteration, okay? Over to you, time for you to take control.

When you have completed your task, please resume the video.

And welcome back.

So today we have looked specifically at how we can work with a setting stimulus.

And it's quite common for us to get an image, where it is a setting, a landscape.

Something where we have to make our design choices.

You might have decided that you preferred to do the descriptive tasks over the storyline task.

All of these things you are beginning to learn about your own writing style and preferences.

But hopefully no matter which style of task you get, you have now got painting strategies that you can use to help you be successful in your outcomes.

To finish the learning for today.

You have a recap quiz to complete.

All that remains for me to say is thank you for your focus and enjoy the rest of your learning today.