To analyse the opening scene

Key Stage 2

English

The BFG - Narrative Writing

﻿Hello, everyone. I'm Miss Saab, welcome to your English lesson. Today we're moving on to lesson number eight in our BFG unit. Today, we are going to analyse the opening scene of the BFG. The plan is for us to first look at some vocabulary, that means we're going to learn some new words, then we're going to analyse the opening scene, that means we're going to look really closely at the opening scene to see what is going on. And then finally, we're going to develop vocabulary for writing. That means we're going to think of lots of ambitious words that we can use in our writing later on in the unit. In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or paper, a pencil, and your brains to be switched on. So pause the video now to grab your pencil and your paper. We're going to start with our vocabulary section. I have got three Mrs Wordsmith words for us today. So can you repeat after me. My turn, eerie, eerie, silvery, silvery, dazzling, dazzling. Great. So I want you to look at these pictures very carefully and have a think about what you think these Mrs Wordsmith words mean. So can you pause the video now to say your, to say what you think. To help you, I have got the definitions on the slide and I would like you to make a clever guess to match the three words to their definitions. So can you pause the video now to say out loud, which definition you think matches which word? Okay. Let's check together. So eerie means weird, ghostly or creepy, like a dark spooky room full of skeletons and cobwebs. And you can see the bunny has just opened the door and there's a skeleton hiding behind the door, there are some cobwebs in the corner, so that looks really spooky and creepy, it looks eerie. The next word we had was silvery. Silvery means grey and sparkling, like an old woman's hair on a frosty morning. And in silvery, there's a smaller word inside the bigger word. We can see the word silver, and we know that is a shiny grey, so that can help you to remember what silvery means. And finally, we had dazzling. Dazzling means sparkling or amazing, like the glittering lights of a hundred cameras. So these words will come in handy when we start analysing the scene in our next section. So time to analyse the scene. Today, we will focus on generating vocabulary to help us when we are writing the opening scene. We will watch our opening clip in two sections and think about everything that we can see and hear. Let's start with part one. So on your piece of paper, I would like you to sketch four boxes and write the numbers one to four. So my white board, I have shown you what you would need to do on your piece of paper, so I wrote part one of the opening at the top, and then I've got four boxes and I've put the numbers one, two, three and four in them to represent each image. So number one, represents the image with the tree. Number two, the image with the owl and the moon. Number three, represents the houses, and number four represents Sophie waking up and sitting up in her bed. Now, if you would like to, you can sketch a very quick drawing inside each box to remind you what happens in each image, but it needs to be super quick. So look, this is how quickly I can draw my images. So I've drawn a little tree then I'm going to draw the full moon and the owl flying, then I'm going to draw the houses. Doesn't have to be perfect, it's just to help me remember, and then I'm going to draw Sophie waking up, and this is her hair and she's waking up in her bed. Okay. It doesn't have to be perfect. If you want to, you can write down a word to help you remember, so you can write waking up, if you don't want to draw the picture, okay. So now it's your turn, can you pause the video to sketch your four boxes on your piece of paper? Great. So you now have your four boxes sketched on your piece of paper. We are now going to watch part one of the opening and for each picture, I would like you to write two things. So you can describe what you can see, what she can hear or the setting. So remember the setting is where the story is taking place. So you can describe the village streets, you can describe the orphanage where Sophie lives or the dormitory where Sophie sleeps. I have put in pink, some of the letters that can be tricky when you're spelling the words, village, orphanage and dormitory. So have a quick look, and make sure that you copy them down correctly if you are using those words when you're doing your task. So here's an example of what I am expecting you to complete for this task. So for example, for picture number one, remember we're doing, we are writing two things for each picture. You can of course, challenge yourself to add more, but aim for two things for each picture. So you might say that you can hear loud, crashing thunder at this point in the opening scene. So you would write down on your piece of paper, loud, crashing thunder, and I've remembered my comma between my two adjectives, loud and crushing. So remember, whenever we have more than one adjective to describe a noun, we need to put a comma to separate them in the E and P. And then another thing that you might write for this picture is twinkling stars, because that's something that you can see in that part of the opening scene. So you would write twinkling stars. Okay. And then you will do the same for the other pictures, so two things, at least for each picture, let's watch part one of the opening scene. Great. So now I would like you to pause the video and finish writing your ideas for part one of the opening scene. Okay. Here are the things that I thought of, I wonder what you came up with on your piece of paper. So for image number one, I wrote loud crashing thunder. I wrote twinkling stars, that is something that I could see, and I also heard some heavy breathing at the beginning of the opening. For image number two, I read that I could see a dazzling white full moon, so remember, dazzling is one of the words we looked at at the very beginning of our lesson. Dazzling means sparkling, amazing. And then I read that I could hear a screeching owl flapping its wings. So a screech is a very loud, high pitch sound that is quite unpleasant to hear. It's not something you want to hear. So can you pause the video and steal anything that you want to write down on your piece of paper. Okay. Let's go through images three and four. So for image number three, I said that I could see the pitch black midnight sky. Pitch black means is completely black, completely dark and I chose the adjective midnight because I know that the opening scene is happening during the witching hour, which we know is around midnight. I said that I could see ghostly-white pale houses. So I said, ghostly-white, because I thought the houses were so white they looked like a ghost and pale means very light in colour. For image number four, I said that I could see a dirty old dormitory. We can see that Sophie's dormitory is quite dirty, there are cobwebs in the corners, it's quite old and run down, you could see the walls look very, look in very bad condition. And then I said that I could hear a squeaky bed. So as Sophie sat up in her bed, we could hear the bed squeaking. So pause the video now to steal any vocabulary, any words that you would like to write down on your piece of paper, to save them and use them in our writing lesson later on. Great work everyone. So now we're going to move on to part two. So again, on another piece of paper, I would like you to sketch four boxes and write numbers five to eight in the boxes. So this time it's part two of the opening, I've drawn the four boxes and I've put five, six, seven, eight, and you can draw like we did earlier, a little picture to help you remember what is happening in image five, six, seven, and eight. Can you pause the video now to you sketch your four boxes for part two of the opening. You are now ready to move on. So we are going to watch part two of the opening and for each picture, I would like you to write at least two things to describe what you can see, what you can hear and the setting. So that's the village streets, the orphanage or the dormitory. So let's watch part two of the opening.

Oh no.

Who is that out of bed?

Sophie, miss.

You get back at once, can you finish in the morning.

Yes miss.

I would like you now to pause the video so that you can finish writing your ideas for part two of the opening. For image number five, there was a point where we couldn't hear anything. It was completely silent. We can say it was deathly silent, inside deathly we have the word death, and if we say it was deathly silent, that means it was silent like death. And if something dies it doesn't make any more sound. Then I could see, Sophie's round metal glasses. I also, saw a slanting moon beam slicing through the room like a silver blade. Roald Dahl used some of these words to describe the moon beam in his book, in the opening of the BFG. Now slanting means sloping and Roald Dahl, likened the moon beam to a knife, slicing and cutting through the room. A blade is a part of a knife. So I've got a knife here, but you must ask an adult before using a knife because it's is sharp and it can be dangerous. Okay. So the blade is the flat bit of the knife and it has the sharp cutting edge as well. So Roald Dahl is saying the moon beam is like a silver blade, this is silver, and it's slicing, it's cutting through the room. And then for image number six, we could hear Mrs Clonkers bellowing. To bellow means to shout using a loud, deep voice. We could also hear the creaking floorboards as Sophie tiptoed across the room to the window, and we had Mrs Clonkers stamping footsteps in the corridor. So I would like you now to pause the video, to steal all the words that you would like to write down so that you can use them in our writing lesson. Okay. Let's move on to the next two images. So for image number seven, I could see the dusty tattered curtain, so if something is tattered it means it's quite old and in poor condition. I could see the luminous silvery moonlight, and so luminous means very bright and silvery is the word that we saw together. The Mrs Wordsmith word that we saw together at the beginning of the lesson. So silvery means grey and shiny. So my watch is, we could say is silvery. And I could see Sophie's ragged white shoes. So ragged and tattered mean very similar things. They both mean that something is quite old and maybe damaged, in poor condition. And then for image number eight, I could hear the raging lightning and I could see the dim eerie streets. So dim means it's quite dark, it's not well lit. And eerie is one of the Mrs Wordsmith words that we saw together, it means creepy. So the streets were dark and creepy. It's now time for you to be a word thief, so can you pause the video to steal and write down any words that you like. We are now going to analyse the colours that were used during the opening scene. So have a look at the pictures, what colours are used during the opening? Can you pause the video to say which colours you have spotted? Okay. So I spotted lots of dark colours. We can see lots of dark blues and blacks, and we can also see some ghostly white and some silver. How did these dark colours make you feel? Can you pause the video to tell your screen. These dark colours make me feel? I wonder if these dark colours made you feel the same way as me. So these dark colours made me feel quite anxious and frightened and I felt a little bit on edge because the whole opening had a bit of an eerie feeling. It had a bit of a creepy feeling, and we don't really know what's going to happen next. When we are writing, we need to make purposeful language choices to make the reader feel this way. So when we are writing, we need to really think carefully about which words we want to choose because we want the person reading our writing to feel anxious, frightened, creeped out, spooked out, and we want to do this to make the reader really curious and get them to keep reading our work. We want to hook the reader in. Well done everyone. We have now reached the end of our lesson. So let's recap everything that you have achieved today. So first, we learned some new vocabulary. Can you remember the three Mrs Wordsmith words that we learned today, can you tell me. The Mrs Wordsmith words were eerie, which means creepy. We learnt silvery, which means grey and shiny, like my watch and then we learned the word dazzling, which means sparkling or amazing. We then analysed the opening scene and described what we could see and what we could hear. We also described the setting and we analysed the colours that were used in the opening scene to help us think about how we want the reader to feel when they are reading our opening. And finally, we developed our vocabulary for writing. So we thought of lots of ambitious words that you can use in your writing lesson. Super effort today. If you would like to, please share your work with a parent or carer or someone at home so that you can show off all of the ambitious language that you came up with today, I cannot wait to see all of your language choices in your writing later on in the unit.

To analyse the opening scene

To analyse the opening scene

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UnitEnglish / The BFG - Narrative Writing

English