To explore how writers create satisfying endings

Key Stage 1

English

Persephone: creation story (endings)

﻿[Miss Weerasekera] Hello everyone. Welcome to lesson nine out of ten in our unit about our created story. So far in our unit, we have boxed up our created story, written an introduction that hooks them in and a middle that creates drama. Before we write our ending in the next lesson, I thought it would be a good idea to explore what make endings really satisfying for the reader. We did this a bit in a previous unit and it was really helpful for me, so I thought it would be helpful to do it again. To do this, we're going to look at a new ending from a different story and think about how it compares to the one that we are writing. Does it do the same things as we have done? Are there any ideas that we can steal from it to make our ending more satisfying and exciting for the reader too? I've been looking out my window again today and I've seen lots of birds flying around. And it just made think how lovely it would be to be bird on a sunny day like this; soaring through the sky and seeing everyone below. If you could be any animal, what animal would you be, and why? In our lesson, you're going to need something to write on and something to write with, and you're going to need your brain, ready to think deeply about the endings of our story. If you don't have a pen or pencil or a piece of paper, pause the video here and then press play when you're finished. In our lesson, we're going to start with an oral game. This game is called "I would most like to be..." We're then going to listen to a new story ending and we're going to use that ending to dig deeper into endings in general and we're going to go back to the toolkit that we looked at in a previous unit, to think about how endings can be made really satisfying, surprising and engaging for our readers. We're going to finish off today with a challenge task to really push ourselves. Our oral game then is called "I would most like to be..." You're going to have to use your justification skills to explain. You can choose whether you would most like to be Apollo, Zeus, Hades, or even the Harp. I know it's not a real character, but it's a very important object and actually, maybe you'd rather be them. So, you have to choose which one you think you'd most like to be and you have to use the sentence stem, plus the word "because" to extend your sentence and give your justification. You really need to convince me. I'm going to model mine before you the go at yours. I would most like to be the Harp because I am so beautiful and have such a beautiful music. I bring happiness to everyone and everybody wants to spend time with me. I'm not really responsible for my own actions in the story and I am the one that can bring back solution at the end by being returned to Apollo. There's no sunshine without me. Even though Apollo in in charge, I am the one who really brings joy to the world. Okay, so that's my justification for why I'd most like to be the Harp in the story. You might agree with me, but I would still like you to give your own justification. Or if you would rather be a different character, you can pause the video here, and say your justification using the sentence stem, then press play when you're ready to continue. That was a fantastic justification. Let's recap our endings toolkit. We've looked at this in a previous lesson but you might not have seen it or you might not be able to remember it quite so we're going to go through it again. It tells us, endings that satisfy us as the reader or listener of a story, will: have a solution that rewards the main character, so that would be Apollo in our story. Include a solution which surprises or satisfies the audience, so let's have a think about the lesson and the solution at the end. Is it satisfying? Is it surprising? Show how the good qualities of the main character lead to the problem's solution. Is is Apollo who causes the solution in our story? Or is it one of the other characters? You're right, it's Zeus. So I'm not sure this one quite applies to our story. Show the consequences of solution for the characters. Do we see how the compromise of the 12 hours in each impacts the other characters and the Earth? Yes we do, don't we? We know that we have day and night because of the compromise that was happening. Also it says, end with a memorable scene or event. The scene of 12 hours of day in the Underworld, and therefore, it's night time and 12 a day on Earth, and then it's day time. That sticks in my mind and is quite memorable. It might not just be one event, but it is a memorable scene. So, before we start reading the ending to our other story, I want us to remind ourselves of our strategy check for when we're being read to. I want you to make sure that you are looking at the screen and you're looking at me for the facial expressions and hand gestures that I use to help tell the story. I also want you to be listening for my tone of voice and to think about what important words jump out to you. We're now going to listen to the new story ending form the story, "How Coyote brought fire to Earth!" Before I tell you about the ending, I'm going to give you a little bit of a recap of this story. You might have heard it before, but if you haven't, you would want to know what was going on. This story takes place a long time ago, and at this time, it was when humans and animals were first roaming the Earth. Humans had a lovely time during summer when the sun was shining. But soon noticed as the seasons changed and it became winter, that they didn't have the same fur on their bodies as the other animal to protect them from the cold. Soon enough, they were so freezing at night and in winter that it became a real problem. They gathered a meeting of all the different animals and asked them for help. In fact, they said: "Please can you get a small bit of the sun's fire that we can use to keep us warm." The Coyote was the first one to volunteer himself to help. He went up through the mountains, up into the sky and into the Sky World. He went to go and get a piece of the fire from the sun. Unfortunately, there were lots of giant guardians standing in the way, protecting the fire and they were very fierce. The took it in turns to go and get lunch cover each other and it was very hard to find a time when he could sneak in and go and get the fire without being noticed. Therefore, the Coyote went down back to Earth and to the animals to ask them for help. He asked the white squirrel, the white crow, and the singing frog to help him and they all agreed. So the Coyote went back up to the Sky World again and this time, just when one of the guardians had turned around, he ran and took a small bit of the fire and ran off. Soon enough, one of the guardians noticed this and that the fire from the sun had been stolen and started to chase after him, out of the Sky World, down the mountains and into the forest. As he was running along, the Coyote had the fire in his mouth but it burnt his entire coat of fur until it turned black. Soon enough, he saw the crow, and threw the fire to the crow and the crow caught it in its beak and continued flying away from the guardians who were running quite close behind him. The crow's feathers soon caught fire and turned a dark shade of black. The guardians had almost caught up with the crow when the crow threw the fire to the squirrel. The squirrel carried on running, running, running with fire and soon the fire turned its fur to an ashen grey. Just as he was about to be captured by the guardians, he threw the fire to the frog, this is the part that we get up to with our story. So we're going to continue with the ending now. It's quite an exciting story, isn't it? And we're going to see what differs and what is similar from our story but also to think about the toolkit and how this author has used the toolkit to create this satisfying ending. Remember to be listening and looking at me whilst I tell you this next bit of the story. So, just this bit, the frog remember, has just swallowed the fire and it is going and jumping along and the guardians close behind him, okay? The guardian was about to reach him when Frog called out to Tree, "Here! Your turn!" Frog coughed out the fire, which flew through the air towards Tree, which opened his trunk and let fire go inside, then closed up again so that the guardian couldn't find the fire. And from that day, fire has lived inside of wood. If you don't believe me, look at where a bonfire comes from! And from that day until now, the frog lost his lovely singing voice. All he can do is croak. And from that day, crows are black and squirrels are grey. And as for guardians of the sun, they are still up in the sky guarding the sun. Sometimes they look down at the fires on Earth and grumble about the time Coyote stole their fire. That's where thunder comes from. Okay, let's have a think about this ending in relation to out endings toolkit. Does the solution reward the main character? If the main character, I guess, is the Coyote, then yes it does. He manages to steal the fire, he manages to hide it from the guardians and that means that humans then had it so it was successful. The Coyote did his job. Did you find the solution satisfying? I found it satisfying. Number one, because the Coyote managed to get away with the fire. And number two, because it had a really interesting lesson. We learned about how different animals got the colour of their coat or their feathers. We learned about how fire comes from wood and we learned about where thunder comes from; it's the grumbling of the guardians up in the sky. Does the ending show how the good qualities of the main character led to the problem's solution? I think it does because it shows that the Coyote is brave and resourceful and he is willing to help others and work as a team. And because of all of those things, he is able to take the fire and to hide it. He knew he couldn't do it by himself and therefore he did it with a team instead. Does the story end with a memorable scene or event? Does the ending show consequences of the solution for the characters? It shows us, doesn't it? What happens to each of those animals, whether it's the fact that the frog can no longer use its lovely voice, its croaky because it swallowed the fire, whether the fire burnt the coat of the bird and the squirrel and the crow. But also, I guess we can imagine that because fire came on Earth, that humans then had fire to keep them warm because it comes from wood. Does this story end with a memorable scene or event? It doesn't have one scene or event right to the end but it does sum up the ending of the story really nicely at the end, doesn't it? Now we're going to dig a little deeper into the ending. I want you to reflect on these questions as I go through and read them. And when I press pause, you can choose to either write your answers down or to think about them in your head. You might even be able to discuss them with someone else that you're with. The first question says, What does the ending of this story make you think, or make you feel? The second one says, What lesson or lessons did you learn? Is the ending satisfying to you? And fourthly, How is it similar or different to our created story ending? So I would like you to pause here, have a go at either saying your answers out loud or writing them down and the press play when you're ready to continue. Fantastic! Thank you so much for taking the time to dig deeper. Doing all of this thinking is going to really help us when we write our own ending. For your challenge task, I would like you to do something a bit creative and imaginative; can you think of a creation story style reason for why? So, so far, all of our stories have told us about how something on Earth came to be. Whether it's the seasons, whether it's night and day, whether its the colour of those different animal's fur or feathers. Whether its why the frog has a croaky voice, whether why that's where thunder comes about. There's lots of different imaginative stories behind different things that happen on Earth. I would like you to try and think of a creative reason that these things might have happened. What could a creative reason be for why rainbows exist? And what could a creative reason be for why hedgehogs have their spikes? Remember, this doesn't have to be realistic. The more creative, the better and it makes a better story to tell to other people. Pause here and have a go at thinking about that or writing some notes about how you think those things could have come to be. Those are some fantastic ideas! I've been super impressed by you work today. If there is anything that you would like to share, please ask a parent or carer to share it on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. You can tag @OakNational and use the hashtag, #LearnwithOak. I hope to see you in the final lesson of this unit where we will be using what we came up with today, to write our own amazing ending to our created story. I can't wait!

To explore how writers create satisfying endings

To explore how writers create satisfying endings

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UnitEnglish / Persephone: creation story (endings)

English