To generate vocabulary for character description

Key Stage 2

English

The Borrowers - Narrative writing

﻿In this lesson, you will need an exercise book or some paper, a pencil or something to write with, and your brain needs to be switched on, ready for our learning. For today's lesson, we will start with a writing warm up. We will then move on to recap each of the characters from The Borrowers. Then we will generate vocabulary and then we will do a character description for each of the characters. And finally, we will do a plenary task. Okay, for your writing warmup, I would like you to write these adjectives with the character you think they describe best. We have Pod, Homily and Arrietty. And I have a group of adjectives that I would like you to match with the character you think they describe best. Let's do my turn, your turn and go through each of those adjectives. We have fearful, brave, determined, curious, frightened, fearless, and anxious. I would like you to match those adjectives with the character you think they describe best. Pause the video and have a go at this task. So let's see how you got on with the writing warmup. I asked you to match the adjectives with the character you think they describe best. So for Pod, I decided to match him with the adjectives, brave and fearless. This is because Pod goes upstairs and he is the only Borrower to provide for his family. He's very brave at borrowing and he's quite fearless because he doesn't really care about the human beans. For Homily, I wrote that she is frightened, fearful, and anxious. Homily is very anxious about upstairs, and wouldn't dream of going borrowing with Pod. For Arrietty, I decided that she is curious and determined. Arrietty asks lots of questions and is always asking Pod about borrowing. So she's very curious. She's also quite determined because she wants to go borrowing with Pod. I think you could also match that Arrietty is fearless too, as she doesn't seem to be bothered about the human beans upstairs. Well done for matching those adjectives with the character you think they describe best. Let's move on to the next part of our task. So, let's recap what we already know about our main characters. Here are our three main characters. We have Pod, Pod is Arrietty's father, he's Homily's husband, and he's the only borrower to go upstairs. We then have Homily, Homily is Arrietty's mother and Pod's wife. She's extremely fearful of upstairs and worries a lot about the human beans. And then we finally have Arrietty. Arrietty is the daughter of Pod and Homily. She's desperate to follow in her father's footsteps and wants to become a borrower. She wants to venture upstairs. Okay, so we're going to have a look at a character's description for Pod. I want you to watch the clip and have a think about how we can describe Pod. What are the different ways that we can describe him? We know that he's brave, he's fearless and determined, but are there any other ways that we can describe what he is like? We also need to think of different ways to refer to Pod, rather than just calling him by his name. How else could we call him? Maybe the tiny borrower or the mischievous man, have a think about it while we're watching this clip. Okay, so now we're going to have a look at a character description for Pod. In the video, we could see him showing off his brave and fearless side underneath the enormous sink, scaling those pipes. He's trying to get to the pocket watch that he later gives to Homily. We are going to think about the different ways we can refer to Pod other than his name. And we're also going to think about the adjectives we could use to describe Pod and ENPs. ENPs are expanded noun phrases. My turn, your turn, expanded noun phrases. And expanded down phrases are adjective, adjective noun. My turn, your turn. Adjective, adjective noun. Your turn. Okay. So not only are we going to have a look at adjectives by themselves, but we're also going to have a look at some expanded noun phrases. So let's have a look at the different ways that we can refer to Pod. We could refer to Pod simply as a man. He is a man and we could refer to him in that way, other than his name. We can also refer to him as a borrower. He goes upstairs to borrow. We can refer to him as a provider he's providing for his family. We can refer to him as a father he's Arrietty's father. And we can refer to him as a husband he's Homily's husband. Let's have a look at some adjectives and expanded noun phrases that we can use to refer to Pod. We could look at him as miniature, tiny, or microscopic. We could use one of these adjectives to describe him rather than using his name. We could say, he's the miniature man, or the tiny borrower or the microscopic provider. We could also call him brave, fearless provider. We're using our expanded noun phrase there, we have adjective brave, adjective, fearless provider. Okay, we've got our adjective adjective noun. We could also describe him as little and mischievous. He's quite mischievous. He goes upstairs to borrow all these things from the human beans. And we can also use the expanded noun phrase, bold, courageous man. He's very courageous. He goes on to those pipes and he, he falls off, but he manages to get himself back up. So he's a very courageous man. What I would like you to do now is pause the video and have a look at what adjectives you would add to describe Pod's personality. I want you to add some more adjectives to describe his personality, to the character description. Pause the video and have a go at this task. Okay, so I hope you manage to write everything down for Pod's character description, along with the extra adjectives that you came up with. We're now going to write a sentence about Pod. We're going to have a look at those adjectives and the ways that we can refer to Pod and write a sentence. Here is my example sentence. The bold, courageous man enjoyed borrowing from the human beans. I would like you to have a go at coming up with a sentence, using the character description for Pod to describe what he is like. Pause the video and have a go at this task. Okay, now we're going to have a look at a character description for Homily. We're going to watch the clip. And I want you to think about how we can describe Homily, what adjectives and ENPs could we use and what different ways could we refer to Homily? Let's watch the clip.

Always worry.

There's no need, you know, I do know what I'm doing.

What's that tear in your jacket?

Nothing, it's just, I got caught in a piece of pipe, it's nothing.

Where? What happened? What have you borrowed? There's something you're not telling me. It looks so heavy.

It is heavy.

Look, it's nothing, I'm fine.

I knew there was something, I had a feeling. One of those that starts at the knees and starts moving up until...

Okay, so now let's have a look at a character description for Homily. In the video, we can see that she says that she's always very worried about Pod and she spots a tear in his jacket, and she questions where it came from. She says that she has a feeling in her legs that makes her feel like something was wrong. We can see that she's always anxious and worried. Now we're going to think about the different ways that we can refer to Homily and the adjectives and ENPs that we might want to use in our writing to describe Homily. So if we're thinking about Pod, Pod was described as a man, a borrower, and a provider. How could this be different for Homily? Let's have a look at the different ways we could refer to her. We could refer to her as a woman. We could also refer to her as a borrower, even though she doesn't go borrowing, she's still part of the borrower family. We can also describe her as a mother. We can refer to her as a mother. She is Arrietty's mother. And we can refer to her as a wife, she is Pod's wife. Let's have a look at the adjectives and the ENPs that we could use to describe her. We could describe her in the same way as Pod. She's a miniature, tiny or microscopic woman. Okay, we can still describe her as very, very small. She's also a scared, fearful mother. She's very worried about Pod and Arrietty. She's also very panicked. We can see that she's panicking. She's saying that she's got these feelings that are going on, that are making her feel nervous and anxious. And she's very panicked about the situation. We could also describe her as anxious and we could describe her as a nervous, worried woman. She's very nervous about Pod being upstairs and she's very concerned and worried about Pod and Arrietty. I now want you to have a go at thinking about different adjectives that you could add to the character description for Homily. I'd like you to pause the video and have a go at adding some adjectives to this character description. Okay, so let's have a look at writing a sentence about Homily. I hope you manage to add some adjectives to the character description for Homily, as well as all of the ideas that we came up with, have a look at your adjectives and the ways that you can refer to Homily. And I want you to have a go at writing your own sentence about Homily. Here is my sentence. The panicked, fearful mother was always worried for her brave husband. I want you now to have a look at your character description for Homily and write a sentence, using the ways to refer to her and the adjectives and ENPs that you came up with. Have a go at doing that now. Pause the video to have a go at this task. Okay, so now we're going to focus on Arrietty and looking at a character description for Arrietty. I would like you to watch the clip and think again about the ways that we can describe Arrietty and the different ways that we can refer to her. Let's watch the clip and find out.

Harpischords, where do they live?

In the harpsichord,

She means where in the house?

They were in the morning room, them upstairs couldn't play a note. So the borrowers were able to live inside, you see,. Oh, stuck up, not those harpsichords.

Are they still living in it?

No, moved away.

Soon as Aunt Sophie took to her bed. You see upstairs had no call to use the room after that. So there was no pickings for the harpsichods anymore. Mrs Driver and the gardener stick to the kitchen.

So they had to emigrate.

Like Uncle Hendreary and Aunt Lupy?

Yes, that's right.

And cousin Eggletina?

Poor little Tina.

why, what did happen her?

Well...

Soup.

I asked again about Eggletina, what did happen to her?

Okay, so now we need to think about the character description for Arrietty. We need to think about the ways to refer to Arrietty other than her name and we to think about the adjectives and ENPs that we could use to describe her. In the video, you could see that she was asking lots and lots of questions. And she was very curious about what was going on. She was asking about Eggletina, who was one of her cousins. And then later on, she writes in her diary that she really wants to find out who Eggletina is. She's one of the only borrowers who can read and write. So what does this tell us about Arrietty? This time I want you to have a go at writing out a character description for Arrietty. Then we'll have a look at some ideas together. Pause the video and have a go at writing a character description for Arrietty. I want you to think about the different ways to refer to her and the adjectives and ENPs that you could use to describe her. Well done for coming up with your own character description for Arrietty. I hope you managed to come up with lots of adjectives and ENPs and different ways to refer to Arrietty. I'm going to show you what I came up with. And if you missed any of these, you can absolutely write these down and add them to your character description. So, first of all, I want to think about what different ways we can refer to Arrietty. I came up with, we can refer to her as a girl. We can also refer to her as a daughter. She is Pod and Homily' daughter. We can refer to her as a borrower, even though she doesn't go borrowing, she is a part of the borrow family. The different adjectives and ENPs I came up with were miniature, tiny and microscopic , exactly the same as Pod and Homily. I've decided to describe her in the same way. She is all three of these things. She is very, very small. She's also a young, carefree girl. She doesn't have much care in the world. She just wants to go upstairs and explore borrowing and see the human bean world. She's also very bright. She is one of the only borrowers who can read and write. And you can see in the video that she's writing in her diary. So it shows that she is very bright. She's also very determined. She wants to go upstairs and she wants to go borrowing with her father. She's also sheltered and restricted. She's sheltered by her parents and they don't want her to go upstairs and explore the upstairs at all. They don't want her to go borrowing. So she's quite restricted in doing so. She's also very adventurous. She wants to go on an adventure and she wants to explore the upstairs. And finally, she's a very curious, naive borrower. Naive means she has a lack of experience and she hasn't experienced the borrowing world. So she's very naive and she doesn't understand exactly what it's like to go upstairs. You can carry on with writing down some adjectives and some ENPs, and you can use these ideas to add to your character description for Arrietty. Okay, so now we're going to think about writing a sentence about Arrietty. So, much like we did for Pod and Homily, we're going to think about the different adjectives and the different ways we can refer to Arrietty and write a sentence about her. Here is my example sentence. Arrietty was a determined, little borrower, but she was sheltered by her mother and father. Okay? You can use those ideas to write down a sentence for Arrietty. Look back at your character description and use the adjectives, the ENPs, and the different ways you refer to Arrietty to write a sentence about her. Pause the video and have a go at this task. Okay, so before we finish, we're going to think about the human bean that we were introduced to in the blurb. We're going to meet James. So we're going to meet James who is from upstairs. I want you to watch the clip and I want you to have a think about what is the main difference between James and the borrower family. Let's watch the clip and see if we can find out So thinking about the main difference between James and the borrower family, can you say it to your screen if you think you know? So the main difference between James who is from upstairs and the borrower family is the fact that he is a human bean. Which would mean compared to the borrowers, he is enormous. Okay? So that is the main difference between James and between the borrower family. Well done, if you managed to figure that out. Congratulations, you have finished the fourth lesson in this writing unit. In the next lesson, you will be looking at generating vocabulary with Ms Bert.

To generate vocabulary for character description

To generate vocabulary for character description

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UnitEnglish / The Borrowers - Narrative writing

English