To write an opening that hooks

Key Stage 1

English

Persephone: creation story (endings)

﻿Hello everyone, I am Miss Weerasekera and welcome to lesson six in our unit about our created story. In today's lesson, we're going to use the boxing up from the previous lesson to write an introduction that hooks the reader. That means they can't wait to read more of our story, which we'll continue to write over the rest of the unit. There are quite a few books that I can think of that have grabbed me from the introduction, the way they have described the main characters, the way that they've described the setting, or perhaps they've started the action called in media res, which means that the action has already started. And in the introduction, you're just put right in as the reader or the listener. Can you think of any stories you've read that have grabbed your attention from the beginning? What are they? And what did the author do to grab your attention? In today's lesson you're going to need something to write on like a piece of paper or an exercise book, a pen or a pencil and your brain to do some deep thinking about our introduction. If you don't have a pen or pencil and a piece of paper, press pause, go and get it and then press play when you're ready to begin. Today we're going to start off with an oral game called paint a word picture. This is going to really focus on our descriptive language that we're going to use to hook the reader into our introduction later on when we're writing. We're then going to recap our boxing up plan from the previous lesson and think about what events are included in the introduction. We're then going to write an opening that hooks the reader in using our descriptive writing. Finally, we're going to write up to the point where the precious item is stolen. So it might be an item, it might be a person depending on what your choice was for your created story. Our oral game is called paint a word picture. So we're going to really focus on our adjectives and descriptive language to paint a picture in the readers mind about our main character and the setting at the beginning of the story. We're going to to use the sentence stem once there was and these are all the different things we're going to try and describe vividly in the story introduction, so that the reader can imagine the world and they feel like they are right there within it. So we're going to describe Apollo, the harp, the music the harp plays, the sun that he controls and the fact that it's shining and what earth is looking like at this time, because everything is happy and sunny and lovely. Okay so I'm going to model the first part and then you're going to pause the video and have a go at using verbally lots of descriptive language to describe each of these things. Once there was a strong and handsome god named Apollo. He was the god of the sun and the light and the music. Beams of sunshine seemed to shine out from behind his head and his hair fell like golden silk upon his shoulders. He had a beautiful golden harp. It was made of the most precious golden metal and shined in the sunlight. Each of the strings was made with silk spun by spiders. It was the most beautiful harp anyone had ever seen and it was Apollo's favourite possession. The music played by this harp was like a songbird, sweet high notes and deep low notes. It played tunes that no one had ever heard before and made people want to dance the instance they heard it's music playing. Okay so that's how I've used my imagination to verbally describe each of those things. I've used lots of descriptive adjectives, I've thought about some powerful verbs and I've painted a picture using words in the readers mind. You're going to pause the video here and have a go at describing each of the words in the purple box, using as much descriptive language as possible. If you say anything that comes to your mind that you think oh I really want to use that in my writing. It might be worth writing it down so that you can remember it later. Pause the video here and press play when you've had a go at painting a word picture. Oh my goodness I can just see it already, I can see Apollo and his lovely hair, I can picture the harp and I can almost hear that music playing, I can see the beautiful sun shining. And I can imagine how lush and green earth is looking at this moment. Well done for doing that so beautifully. We're now going to have a quick look at our boxing up plan. And we're going to think about the main things we're going to describe to hook the reader in, in our opening. Okay I have grabbed my boxing up from the previous lesson to remind me which bits I'm going to be doing today. Now really as it's the introduction, the only area that we're going to be focusing on is this first bit and actually the events that have causes the harp to end up in the underworld. We're going to focus on the stealing of the harp too. But mostly for this first bit of writing, we're just going to focus on this scene. Now I want to expand on that picture a little bit more. So what I've done, is I've gotten myself another piece of paper and I'm just going to draw a slightly bigger version of that first picture 'cause I want to have it really clear in my mind before I start writing about it. Okay so I'm just drawing this picture a little bit more okay. Now because I have this picture, I'm going to think about some adjectives that I can use to describe each of these things. Now when I did the warm up activity earlier, I talked about his tumbling, golden hair, warm rays sun beams, kind of radiating out from his head. I said that he was tall, strong and handsome. Sun was burning bright, oops sorry. Warm trying to figure out what else I might put there, I said golden already, I think that's fine. Well I'm going to talk about the harp. So this was precious gold I said, didn't I? Strings were like silk, I said spun by spiders, didn't I? I quite like that so I'm going to keep in spun by spiders. Okay and then I've got the sweetest music, unknown melodies makes everyone sing and dance. Okay now remember your object and what your object might do, it's probably going to be different to mine. Okay so you make sure that whatever you're having instead of the harp, it might be a different instrument or item or it might be a person, you're going to draw them here and you're going to describe them okay? There are other things I want to think about is kind of what earth looks like at this time? So I might say bright flowers, sweet scent, I'm going to have luscious green trees, maybe with juicy fruit frying on them okay. Maybe a carpet of thick green grass. Okay so I've taken this one pitch from my boxing up and I've really expanded on it because I want this introduction to really paint a picture in the readers mind and hook them into the stories they feel like they're there. So I need to introduce my main character and perhaps this item is going to be key to the plot. I've introduced the setting, I've talked about the sun and what the earth looks like. Okay so I would like you to have a go at doing your own and making sure that whatever the item is, it's going to be stored and it's in there and you're describing it straight away using lots of amazing adjectives. So I want you to think really carefully about these sentence stems below, before we start writing our introduction. What do you want to use in your introduction to really hook the reader? What is it that you want the reader to imagine? Which characters, which objects, which parts of the setting do you want them to imagine? And what do you want the reader to feel in this first part? You'll remember from boxing up the story that you would have put a mood that you wanted the reader to feel. So perhaps check your boxing up again and think about how you create that mood. It's probably going to be quite positive at the beginning of our story. So what can we do to make it feel positive? How can we use show don't tell to describe how Apollo is feeling so that perhaps that rubs off on the reader? Pause here and have a go at finishing off each of those sentence stems, before we start writing my introduction together. Now I'm going to show you how I'm going to write my introduction. Remember as I'm doing this, that there'll be certain things about your introduction that is different, for example the object that I'm talking about is the harp, whereas you would have chosen a different object that is special to Apollo. So remember to make sure you replace whatever I put about the harp with your own. So that makes a little bit more sense for your story. I also want you to remember that when I ask questions, you need to be ready to answer and to use your own ideas as well as using some of mine. These are three of the sentence stems we're going to try and use. Once there was, what he most loved was, when he was happy. And they're going to help to structure our first part of our story. Okay so we're going to get on with writing introduction to our story, before I start writing, I'm going to write that we are in unit 14 and lesson seven and that our learning objective is to write an opening that hooks okay. Now I have the drawer that I just did, early in the lesson to help me in case I forget any of the ideas that I had. So using the sentence stems that I just showed you, I'm going to start off with once there was and I'm going to say, a tall, handsome and strong god called Apollo full stop, notice I put a comma here between many adjectives. Once there was a tall, handsome and strong god called Apollo. He was the god of the sun, light and music. His golden hair tumbled down to his shoulders and sun beams shone out from behind his head. Okay so remember I'm using this to help me, got my sun beams, my golden hair, tall, strong and handsome. So you might have and used some of these ideas as well, which is fine. But if you came up with some of your own adjectives for describing Apollo then I'd really like you to be putting them in this first bit too okay? Now the next thing I'm going to describe is his harp. Now for you what you're going to describe is going to be different. It might be a different instrument, a different item, it might be a person or an animal, whatever you chose to be the thing that he loves most that is stolen from him. That's what you're going to describe now okay? So we're all going to start off with this sentence. What he most loved was his, now here something, something, something. So it's going to be adjective, adjective, noun. So for me it's going to be precious golden harp okay? Adjective, adjective, noun. You're going to describe what yours is, if it was a different instrument, if it was person, you're going to use two adjectives and then you're going to state what it is. So for me that's going to be . Precious, golden pen's rolling away. Precious, golden, harp. So it's your job to write what yours is. We can write, it was so precious because it, now you're going to use a verb to tell me what it or he or she or whatever it is you've chosen does that makes it so precious. I'm going to say it was so precious because it played, I'm going to have a look at here, sweetest music, the sweetest music in the world and it's melodies made everyone dance and sing. Okay now whatever your item is or person or animal, you can describe here what it does that makes Apollo love it so much okay. Now the next bit we're going to describe earth quickly off setting. Say Apollo's push the S for possession, happiness because the happiness belongs to Apollo meant the sun shone its greatest and warmest beams, so bright flowers grew and gave off a sweet fragrance. I'm going to do a comma here 'cause I'm going to describe a few things, a carpet of thick, green grass covered the ground. And this is the last thing I'm going to describe, juicy, red apples grew on the luscious green trees. Okay so we have, let's just move that down a little bit. Okay so I have described Apollo and what he looks like, I've described the item, so this bit in red is the main bit that you're going to be changing to the item that you are going to have stolen. And then we've got this final bit which is the description of the setting. Now within these, the description of Apollo and the description of the setting, I want you to make sure you are using your own ideas for the description and your own adjectives, as well as using some of mine. Now it's your turn to use those sentence stems to write your first bit of the introduction. Remember that amazing descriptive language so that we know the setting and the character really well and we create an uplifting mood by showing Apollo's happiness. Pause here and then press play when you have finished writing your introduction. We are now going to continue to write about the first piece of action and moving towards the problem of our story. We know the problem in our story is that a precious thing is stolen from Apollo. So whether yours is another object or whether it's a living thing, it is going to be stolen by Hades now. So we're going to make sure we paint the scene where Apollo being really happy with his lovely item, whatever it is that you've chosen, mine was the harp playing music and Apollo was dancing and then Hades is going to appear, his fiery chariot and take it. We're going to change the mood here, aren't we? It's moving from a happy scene, into a problematic perhaps also a bit scary. How do we want the reader to feel, you probably want them to feel a bit frustrated that the lovely scene has been ruined, perhaps a little angry or frightened too. So we're going to think about how we can create that. These are some of the sentence stems you can use when you're doing yours. One day Apollo, all of a sudden. Okay so that's why we start to create that sense of drama as we build towards the problem of our story. Okay for our next section, we are going to continue from that opening hook and description on to that main problem in the story. Okay so we're going to focus now on one moment and we're going to talk about the time that Apollo was happily on earth but then Hades comes and stalls the precious item. So we're all going to start off by saying, one day Apollo, what could he have been doing, he could have been dancing, he could have been singing, he could have been playing his harp to an audience. You can choose what you want Apollo to be doing. But it's going to be a happy scene and a peaceful sunny scene on earth. So I'm going to say, one day Apollo was joyfully using my adverb dancing to the harp's sweet melody amongst the beautiful and meadow of flowers. Instead of that I'm going to change that to a, so just one meadow. Amongst a beautiful meadow of flowers. Now we're going to have all of a sudden, Hades, remember Hades is god of what? God of death, yes god of death appeared from beneath, what can you say the earth, the horizon, the ground, you could choose beneath the horizon in his, how can we describe his chariot? How can we describe his chariot? Yeah flaming, fiery, hideous, perhaps it's really ugly yeah? I'm going to say fiery, in his fiery chariot. He took one glance at the let me say shimmering harp, you might use a different adjective, shimmering harp and knew that he wanted it for himself. While Apollo was, now this needs to link back, this verb to what you said Apollo was doing. Did you say he was dancing or singing or performing? whatever it was that he was doing, we're going to right here. Apollo was dancing, Hades swooped, you can decide if you want to have a different verb, swooped down and grabbed the harp before disappearing back into the underworld. Okay so that is the next bit of our introduction, leading up to the problem of the story. And then in our next lesson we'll be writing on from the problem story to the middle, where we explore what the impact of this action and what happens when we start to work towards the solution as well okay? So remember within this all of the different verbs and adverbs and adjectives, you can use some of mine but I would like you to use your imagination and your creativity to make some of your own as well. You can now have a go at starting to introduce the problem using these sentence stems too. Press pause and then press play when you have finished. This is starting to be a really exciting introduction. Well done, I am very impressed. For your challenge task today, I would like you to look at the final sentence that you have written. Do you think it leaves the reader wanting to read more? This introduction is supposed to hook them in, you created the lovely setting, they know their characters, they know the setting and now they've been introduced to the problem. And hopefully we've left it on something called a cliffhanger, which means we haven't given them all of the information. They know something bad has happened and they're wanting to figure out what happens, by reading on in the story. Do you think your final sentence does that? Or do you think you could improve it? Pause here and then press play when you're confident with your hooking introduction, ready for our next lesson that will be right in the middle that builds drama. I am so impressed with your introduction today and I would love to read as many of them as I can. If you would be happy to share it. Please get your parent or carer to take a picture and share it on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, tagging Oak National and using the hashtag learn with Oak. I can't wait to see you in our next lesson, where we're going to be writing the middle of our story.

To write an opening that hooks

To write an opening that hooks

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UnitEnglish / Persephone: creation story (endings)

English