To plan the setting description

Key Stage 2

English

Macbeth - Narrative writing

﻿Hi, everyone. Welcome to the next lesson. In this lesson, you will be planning a setting description. And this is going to be the opening scene of Macbeth, with the witches and the fog. So we've sort of already looked at it, so you should have a good idea of what that's going to be like. So today, we're going to be looking at some words that will be associated with the heath, the witches, the fog, okay? And before we start, of course, we need to find a quiet space with no distractions. When you're ready, we can start. Okay, quick recap on what you'll need in this lesson, book, paper, pen or pencil, and your thinking heads. Our agenda, we are going to do a writing warmup, and then we're going to move on to planning our setting description. We're going to map out what our setting description's going to be. And then we're going to generate, we'll come up with some vocabulary suitable for a description. So in our writing warm up, what's it going to be? Today, we are going to use figurative language to make our writing exciting. One type, there are many types, and one type of figurative language are similes. What are similes? So a simile is when you compare something with something else. So you might want to say, as mmm as a mmm. For example, as light as a feather. Or you might want to use the word like. Like a mmm. Personification, this is when you give something human-like qualities. For example, I have written a sentence using a simile here. The ragged night sky raged like a stormy sea. So, I'm using, I'm comparing the sky to the sea. My second sentence, the crooked branches pointed towards the heath. So I'm giving the branches human-like qualities by saying that they were pointing. Okay, so you're going to have a go in a minute at writing some similes and using personification based on this film clip of Macbeth. Now, it's going to be really difficult, obviously, to write one straight away. So what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to just watch the video or the film clip, and just have some things in mind that you could write about. So, for example, you might want to write about the witches, or you might want to write about the fog. So if we go back to my two sentences, I wrote about the sky, and I compared the sky to a stormy sea. And I wanted to write about branches, and I used personification. So when you watch the video, I want you to think about some things that you could write about. It could be the sky, it could be the branches, it could be the witches, and I want you to just jot a few things down, write a few things down that you could write about.

Nothing was as it seemed.

When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won.

Where the place?

Upon the heath.

There to meet with Macbeth.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air.

Okay, so hopefully you've had a chance to watch the video. Remember, you can always go back, rewind and watch the video again if you'd like. And once you've had a go at watching the video maybe a few times, or maybe you don't need to, you could just watch it once, I'd now like you to write a sentence with a simile or personification about either the witches or the fog, or you could come up with your own one. Okay, I want you to pause the video and have a go now. So I've got another one that I have written from before. I chose to write about the witches. So I have, the hideous witches screeched like cats. And then I wanted to write about the fog. So, the impenetrable fog wrapped around them tightly. I'm giving the fog human-like qualities of wrapping their arms around the witches. Remember, you can share your sentences at the end with a parent or caregiver. Okay, so let's now look at how we're going to plan the setting description. We can't just write one straight away. We need to think about the structure of a setting description, or in particular, this Macbeth setting description. So, what do we need to include in a setting description? So we need to think about maybe creating an atmosphere. Okay, what sort of atmosphere do you think we're trying to create? Have a think back. We've done this in a previous lesson where we've thought about the atmosphere. What do you think we would also need to create for our reader? Yes, so a sense of confusion, scenes of chaos and impending doom. That is the message that we want to get across to our reader. So how can we do that? Let's look at how William Shakespeare did it, and let's look at the play, the structure of his play. So let's look at the opening scene again. So we've got the opening part. The curtain rises on a wild heath under a dark, ragged sky. Thunder and lightning, three hideous old women, huddled together, screaming with malignant laughter. When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won. Where the place? Upon the heath! There to meet with Macbeth. So, how has Shakespeare done it? So, he set the scene first. So the first thing he did was he told us what it was going to be like. So, he explained what the sky was like. It was raining, there was thunder, lightning. Then he said that the witches were huddled together and they were plotting and scheming. And then later on he introduced the characters, okay? And how they spoke and what they said. So, let's watch the clip again to give us some ideas.

Nothing was as it seemed.

When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurly-burly's done, when the battle's lost and won.

Where the place?

Upon the heath.

There to meet with Macbeth.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through the fog and filthy air.

Okay, so let's use the clip to give us ideas. Okay, so we're going to think about the structure. So we would have, possibly we would talk about the heath and the sky in the first few sentences. Then we would move on to the witches. So that's what we're going to think about. The first paragraph could have the fog, the mist, the lightning, the rain, the thunder, and that would create an atmosphere of possibly something bad is going to happen or impending doom, and that's what we want the reader to feel. In our second paragraph, we want to introduce the ghastly characters. We want to describe what they were doing. We want to describe what they looked like. Okay, so the next part of our lesson, we will be generating vocabulary for our setting, vocabulary for our setting. Now in order to know how to be successful, we need to have a criteria or a checklist to help us, to guide us through this lesson. So, some of the things that we will need to include in our plans in order to be successful, we need to use precise and ambitious vocabulary. So that means picking the right adjectives, picking the right verbs, the right adverbs appropriate to create a scene of chaos and to create a correct or accurate setting. We also want to include some figurative language, such as similes, metaphors, and personifications, because we want to make our writing interesting and to sound sophisticated. Another thing I thought would be really excellent to include are adverbial phrases because they tell us a little bit more about what's happening. For example, a prepositional adverb or phrase tells where something is, so above the heath, in the distance, next to conjunctions. And time conjunctions tell us when something happens, so suddenly, or how something happens, just then. Okay, so we need to make sure we have these in our plans. So, the first thing you need to do is, so the first thing to set up your paper or your page, you need to have a table. Down one side you need to have the sky, the heath, the fog and the witches. And then above that, you need to think about adjectives to describe each of those things. How would we describe how the fog moves? What figurative language would we need to give each of those things? And what about adverbial phrases? Maybe we want to say, above the heath, so then we would say in the sky, so then adverbial phrases above the heath. So it's really important that you set your page or paper up like this, then we can begin so thinking about vocabulary. So pause the video and set up your paper. Okay, so let's have a think about the sky now. We're going to fill in the sky section of our plan. I want you to have a look at the video and a picture that I have found as well of a gloomy, eerie sky. What kind of vocabulary? Would you say it's bleak? One of our Mrs. Words Makes Words. Would you say that the clouds are wispy and eerie? Perhaps we could say that it is ominous, also one of our Mrs. Words Makes Words. We could say that the moon shone dimly. We could describe the sky as ragged, just as William Shakespeare did for his play. We could say that the clouds are ghostly, and here I've included, raged like the stormy sea. I want you to pause the video now and get writing some of these down in your table. Okay, so I've written some of them down. I've said, above the heath, 'cause I'm talking about the sky, and then I've put in my figurative language, which has just got, raged like a stormy sea, and then I've just got some adjectives and some verbs for how the clouds drift. We're going to recap on some vocabulary. So I've got howled, what could be howling? Could it be the heath? No, I think the wind would be howling. We could say generally that it's stormy and we could say that's misty and we could say that's misty, barren, and the fog could be really thick, impenetrable. That means you can't penetrate through it, you can't pierce through it 'cause it's so poked through it. Dreary, which is one of our Mrs. Words Make Words. Okay, so in my table, or your table, you could write some of those words down. Pause the video if you'd like to write some of these words down in your table and then press play when you've finished. And I've written some of them down in my table. We're going to do heath and fog together. And we've got those adjectives, barren, isolated, dreary, misty, vast which means big, grand, great, thick, impenetrable. I have my verbs I have howled, suffocated, enveloped, tightly is my adverb. Then I have left figurative language empty for fog and I've just put in howled like a lone wolf, and that's when I'm talking about in the distance. I might want to use in the distance, I might not, but I just popped that in anyway. You can pause the video and pop down a few of my ideas if you'd like to on your plan but I'm sure you've got some ideas of your own amazing, and then click play when you have finished. Okay, so the next part is the witches. So we're going to think about some adjectives, verbs, adverbs, figurative language for the witches. So I've got, danced manically because in that picture at the bottom you can see them danced in circles. We could describe them as having long, gnarled arms like branches. They've got sharp talons. They screeched, they cackled malignantly, and they are hideous. So again, you might want to pause the video now and pop these in your table. Hopefully you've had a chance to pop some of your own ideas in the table. I've got evil, that's my extra one. I've got sharp as knives when I might want to just describe their talons being as sharp as knives, and then I might want to use an adverbial phrase, suddenly. Okay, so well done. In this lesson you have learnt, your writing warmup, you've also learned to plan a setting description, how to structure, and you've generated vocabulary for a setting description, which you will need to use in your next lesson. So congratulations, you've completed today's lesson on planning a setting description. If you would like to, and I really hope that you do, share your work with your parent. Show them the sentences that you wrote in your writing warmup and figurative language. And share your table, which would hopefully be filled with lots of interesting and exciting vocabulary that is going to be used in your setting description.

To plan the setting description

To plan the setting description

Slide deck

Lesson details

Key learning points

Licence

Video

Lesson appears in

UnitEnglish / Macbeth - Narrative writing

English