Reindeer Break-In

8/12/2017

I love a good Christmas lesson, so when I heard that I could use the FX Guru app to create a video clip of reindeer dancing through my classroom, I just had to use it! It's so easy: you just film your room for 30 seconds, it shows you an outline of where the reindeer will appear and then, voila!
Take a look at mine:

Lesson Plans

I decided to use the video as a stimulus for the children to write a witness statement for the police. This is something I've done before and I particularly like it to show Greater Depth with Year 6. (I used another here, with the Greater Depth elements explained)

All resources used can be found in the free PDF download at the bottom of the post.

Lesson 1 – Hook & feature hunt

Children come in to find the classroom in a mess (chairs upturned, paper strewn around, you could go nuts and add hoof prints…) Think Pair Share: What could have happened?
Pretend to check emails while they discuss. Display an email from the headteacher asking for help. Attach ‘CCTV video clip’ of reindeer dancing in the classroom (made using FX Guru – a free app). The email asks for help – we need to write a statement for the police.
Look at an example police report (one each and one displayed for class). Pairs discuss and orally decide what makes a good statement. Pairs Compare: pairs pair-up and share their thoughts. Come together as a class and discuss. Guide towards the following:
- Formal language
- Openers of time and place (fronted adverbials)
- Facts & details but few opinions
- Structure: title saying the date, paragraph 1 explains what was seen, paragraph 2 describes their own investigation, paragraph 3 tells what has happened since (in our case, finding out it’s happened in other classes), signature of witness.
Note: there are tense shifts in the intro, between what he ‘always does’ and what he did that day – good for Greater Depth

Plan as a class using flowchart plan. For each section, discuss and form notes orally, then all record. I like them to do this in their books, but I’ve created a sheet in case you want to use one.
- Emphasise notes, not sentences
- Key events in order
- Could note down some openers at the end of the lesson if time allows

Support: careful peer partnering, teacher checking understanding, scaffolded sheet for planning
Stretch: questioning – why is this what we find in a statement? Look at the tense shifts.

Lesson 2 – Write

You can structure this however you like. You could use paired writing, guided or independent. Below is a plan for independent writing.

Watch the video clip again
Look at the plan we made yesterday. No content should need adding. Today, we are adding detail and building great sentences.
Give out a tick-list, based on what we spotted yesterday and what you want the children to focus on. Mine is below and in the PDF. Read it together.

I have a bank of openers (included in the PDF at the end of the post) that I will display to help out those who struggle to start.

Play some background Christmas music. I have an album of Christmas piano pieces. Let them write independently.
As they write, look over their shoulders. Try not to interfere too much, but allow them to write. Guide them towards using fronted adverbials followed by commas and anything else you’d like them to focus on.
Half way through the lesson. Stop and ask them to highlight 3 examples of each item on the tick list. If they can, they tick it. This gives them opportunity to do it in the second half. It draws the focus back to the features you want them to include. The highlighting means they actually look for it, rather than just ticking.
Give time prompts to help them to manage their time when writing. I work on around fifteen minutes per paragraph.
At the end, ask them to repeat the tick-list check.

Lesson 3 – Editing Stations

Give children time to read their work from yesterday. They should have a pencil in their hand as they do this, so they can make changes if needed.

Editing: You could structure this as just a series of guided tasks, but I like to use stations. Set up 4 tables. Put a station on each. The children have ten minutes on each station. (Once you’ve done this a few times, they could move freely from station to station). They edit their work using a variety of techniques, different colours etc. These are very flexible and you may want to make your own to match your class targets. I like to have 2 stations to check for errors and 2 stations to up-level. Mine are below and in the PDF.

We use ‘polishing pens’ for all of these activities – a coloured pen used for editing, so we can see the changes.

After using the editing stations, end the lesson with children reading their partner’s work aloud to them. This will help children to spot if their work is missing punctuation, making it difficult to read. Note: children only write on their own work.

NOTE: after this lesson, it’s nice for the children to ‘publish’ their work. You could ask them to write it neatly, set it as a homework task, let them use pen if they don’t usually, ask them to type it... I don’t do this for every piece of work, s it becomes tedious for some, but it’s a good way to apply and embed the changes.

Full plans and resources here:
Use freely in the classroom, but if you'd like to share this online, please share the link rather than the file.