Video: To activate prior knowledge and consider the historical context

﻿Hi, my name is Ms. Hennman and I'm going to be your teacher for today. In fact, I'm going to teach you every guided reading lesson in this unit, which is really exciting. And I just wanted to take you through something that I do fairly regularly, which is my turn and your turn. So when we come across a new piece of vocabulary, I will say it. And then I want you to practise saying it out loud to the screen. And that really helps us with our pronunciation when we come across new words, but also in the future, it helps us with our fluency when reading independently. So should we do it with a word that we're really familiar with? Okay, playground my turn, playground, your turn. So this is my symbol, so you know that you have to copy it. Should we do it with another word, water bottle. Good job, I think we're ready to learn, let's go. Let's start looking at the texts that we're going to study I'm lowly, going to show you parts of this text. And I want you to read and have a look at them as I do so. What sort of text, do you think this is? I reckon you've had a really good thing, now. I'm going to narrow it down to three options. Is it a diary entry, a newspaper article or an interview? What do you think? Well, it's sort of two. We know it's a newspaper article because we can see the name of the newspaper. What do you think the name of the newspaper is? That's correct, The Independent. And what do you think the headline is? Yeah, it's the biggest bet. It's the Blitz. And then as a colon, and then it says Survivors' Stories. Now this newspaper article, then the content of it is people's stories and those people have been interviewed. And so it's a mixture of a newspaper article, which includes people's recounts, where they've been interviewed. When do you think this newspaper article was written? Have a look at the text on the screen. Now I'm going to give you some options. During a war in 2010 or last year. What do you think? Correct, it's 2010! And the clue is that this newspaper article is a digital one, you can read it online. And when something is written online, you can go back and see when it was written. So that's really useful. This is another when question, when do you think The Blitz occurred? So the article was written in 2010, when do you think that The Blitz occurred? Was it during a war, in 2010, last year? It was during a war. I wonder which war and I wonder what The Blitz was. Well, let's find out. This is what is in the newspaper article. So it's the contents of one of the interviews in the article. I'm going to read it to you, are you ready? Len Phillips 80, of Bloomsbury, London, sheltered at night in Holborn and now the defunct Museum Tube stations. Do you think you can pause the video and read the rest of it? The rest of it is written in the first person. So it was actually the words of the man who wrote this or said it, Len Phillips, pause the video and read the rest of the paragraph out loud. Excellent reading, well done. We've got the question here. What does the name of the person being interviewed? Is it Holborn Tube? Is it Mr. Bloomsburry? Or is it Len Phillips? It's Len Phillips? I tried to trick you. I chose other proper nouns, other nouns with capital letters, but it is Len Phillips. How old was Len Phillips when he was interviewed? This is another retrieval question, which means the answer is in the text. Let me give you some options. We don't know, 80, the interview happened in 2010. The answer is 80. The difference is, is that in the text is written with digits. Whereas in the answer it's written in letters. It is true that the interview happened in 2010, but that doesn't tell us his age, when he was interviewed. Right, now we can start the second part of the lesson. We're now going to consider the historical context. Before we do that, we actually need to understand some of those words. Let's focus on the word historical. What words do you associate with the word historical? Have you thought of any? I have, one word that I associated with the word historical was history. Could you please now write the word historical in the middle of your piece of paper, just like in my screen and then write all the words that you associate with history or historical around the outside. I think this is a two minute task. Off you go. Wow, I bet you did a really good job. I'm going to share with you some of my ideas. So with the word history, I also broke that up. So I've got history and you hear the other word? Story, so I think history or historical is going to be about telling stories. And with that, I thought of these words, narrative your turn, narration, great. So a narrative is a story. And if you narrate something, then you are telling the story. I think history is the past or the study of the past. And I know all of you will have studied some type of history in primary school. Okay, this is a new word. You might not have heard it before. Etymology, your turn, I'll practise that again. Etymology, Etymology. Etymology, great. So etymology is where we find out where words are coming from. So the actual history of the words itself. So I could it be interesting to find out the history of the word history. So it is derived from a Greek word "Historia," which means to inquire into, or to learn through research. So a lot about English words are derived. So come from Latin or Greek, which each of the languages and the word historical and history do in fact derive from this Greek word, "Historia." Can you think of an antonym for the word historical or history? What did you think of? An antonym is a word that has the opposite meaning. I thought the future. Finally, we've looked at the word history or historical. Now we just need to look a little bit about the word context. I can hear the word text in it, which makes me think of something. The context is the setting of an event. So we're going to be looking at when something was set and what was happening at the same time. What about prior knowledge? Prior means before, so what prior knowledge do you already have, The Blitz? What do you already know about the Blitz? I'm going to put up the beginning of the newspaper article again. I want you to pause the video and to write down everything you think you already know. Off you go. Okay, really well done. I'm going to show you what I think I already know. So The Blitz happened during a war. I've inferred that from the extract above, I've inferred that bombs were involved because in the extract above it says unexploded bomb in the garden. I've inferred that people survived because the headline includes the phrase "Survivors' Stories." And I've inferred that there were shelters from there were places for people to shelter from the bombs, because in the extract it says, "air-raid shelters." Finally I've infrared that bombs were sometimes placed or put somewhere during the night because in the extract it says, "Waking up to find unexploded bomb." So the person was asleep, they woke up. And so we can infer that the bomb was put there or ended up there during the night. So what would you like to find out? Can you pause the video and write down any question that you have? Off you go. I reckon you've come up with some amazing questions. I'd like to share mine with you. I'd be interested to know which war the Blitz happened in. I'm assuming it's a war that involves England, but I'd like to know which war it was. Was it world War I or world War II? I'd like to know where the bombs came from. I'd like to know if lots of places were destroyed. I'd like to know if people survived and how many people survived. I'd like to know what the shelters looked like and what they were made of. I'd like to know or ask someone how they felt during the bombings. I imagine those explosions were really loud and quite scary. So I'd be really interested to read or hear about people's feelings about the bombs. Now we're going to make some inferences by looking at photos from the war. What can you see? Can you pause the video and say out loud, everything you can see? Okay, so I can see a river meandering through the photo. This is an aerial photo taken from the sky, and I can see that snake like shape, which is a river. In fact, I know that's the river tendons. Another thing I can see is an aeroplane flying over this city, London, and I can see that infrared roads of London and all the different types of architecture. What can you infer from this photo? Pause the video and say out loud? I think I know, from this photo, because, off you go. All right, I'm going to tell you what I think I know. I think I know that London was one of the places that was bombed during the war. And I think that the bombs were dropped by aeroplanes flying over the city. That's what I have inferred from this picture. Here's another picture. I would like you to pause the video and say out loud what you can see, off you go. Okay, now it's my turn. I can see people sleeping on tracks, tracks that look like a train would go on them. I can see men and women. I can also see people lying down on the platform to the left hand side of the tracks. And I can see some people in uniform. On the left hand side, I can see a sign that says, "Old witch," which is a place in London. What can you infer from this photo? So you can pause the video and say, "I think I know because I," off you go, Okay, now my turn, I think I know that, that underground, that these railway stations were used as shelters during the war, because I can see lots of people lying down and resting there, which isn't usually what people do at a railway station. I can also see a woman who looks like maybe she's knitting at the front. So I think I might infer that people took activities down to the railway station to keep themselves entertained. What can you see in this photo? Pause the video and say it out loud. Okay, now it's my time. On the left hand side of the picture, I can see some houses which look like they have been destroyed. I can see smoke, which I believe maybe, this is an inference, I believe it's from a bomb. I can also see lots of people walking on the street and I can see some vehicles. Can you make any inferences from this picture? So for example, what time of day it is, whether people are used to seeing things like this. Pause the video and say your inference is about, off you go. All right now, it's my turn. So one inference that I am going to make is that people are used to seeing buildings being knocked down or destroyed or on fire, because there are lots of people walking past, and they're not doing anything about it. And I if think they never seen this before, they would react differently. But this seems like it might be something they see every day. I am also going to infer that it is daytime and possibly morning time because it's light and people are going somewhere. So maybe they'd go into a place in the morning. Like we go to a place in the morning. That was one of my inferences. Now we are going to make some inferences by listening to a sound, while you are listening to the sound, I would like you to have a think about these questions. What is this sound? Do you recognise it? Is it familiar? Does it sound like anything you've heard before? Why do you think the sound may have been used during The Blitz and during the war and the bombing of London? Why do you think people may have made the sound and how does this sound make you feel? So when you hear the sound, you might feel a little bit nervous, I'm just warning you, you might feel a little bit intimidated. It's quite a loud sound and it is similar to some things you've heard before, but I don't think you will have heard this one before. Wow, what was an interesting sound. It reminded me of some of the sirens that I have heard from ambulaces and police cars and the fire brigade. So it sounded like an emergency services sound, but not one that I've heard before. So why do you think this sound may have been used whilst London was being bombed? It was a warning sound. So if England knew that planes were flying over England and they were going to drop bombs, they would sound this sound in the cities so that people had a warning signal and had time to go and shelter. How did it make you feel? The first time I heard this, I felt a little bit shocked because I hadn't heard anything like it. Then when I found out what it was for, it made me feel a bit apprehensive and a bit worried because the idea of hearing that in my own personal life and thinking I had to shelter would be something I would be a bit scared about. If you want, you might want to relisten to the sound, and then you could reflect on some of those feelings as well. This is our final task. I would like you to write down three new things you have learnt this lesson, pause the video and off you go. I wonder what three new things you wrote down. I'm going to show you three that I thought might be new pieces of new information for you. Number one, cities, including London were bombed by air during world War II. people sheltered and protected themselves from the bombs by using the underground. So they went underground into the tube tunnels or into the train tunnels to protect themselves. A siren was sounded to warn people to shelter. Congratulations, you have finished your first lesson in this unit. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed teaching it. You've learned a lot of new information. One thing I thought you might want to do is to ask your parents or caregivers, if they know anything about how their relations, spent their time in world War II, have a lovely rest of your day. And I hope you enjoy the rest of your lessons, bye.

Completed: To activate prior knowledge and consider the historical context

In this lesson, the children will look at an extract from a newspaper article. They will think about what they already know, what they can infer and generate questions to help reflect upon what they don't yet know.

English

Y6 English

Key Stage 2

Year 6

To activate prior knowledge and consider the historical context

The Blitz Survivor Stories

Reading

THEME

UNIT

To read a recount and answer retrieval and inference based questions

To understand the key information in a text and consider the author’s perspective

To read a new text and consider the author’s use of language

To consider how reading can provide people with a way of learning new things

To activate prior knowledge and consider the historical context

Video

Lesson Complete