In one of my sessions this week, I wanted to write a paragraph with my year 2 student. At the start of each session, I like to spend time getting to know the student. This week I learnt that he liked playing basketball and piano. I believe it is important for students to write about topics that are interesting to them, so I asked if he wanted to write about why he likes basketball. He said no, so I said, ‘what about piano?” – no again. Then something clicked for me, I wouldn’t want to write about that either, how boring! He has probably written and spoken about that same thing plenty of times before. So instead, I asked him if he believes unicorns a real. Then I could see some emotion. “No!” he said immediately. I asked him why and he gave several reasons to support his case:
– If they were real why had he never seen one
– He has been told that they live amongst the clouds, but the clouds are made of air, so there is no way for the unicorns to stay up there.
– Unicorns are colourful so you would be able to see them from far distances
No matter what his arguments were, what I liked about this question, was that he had a clear opinion that he WANTED to write about. I aided this by challenging him slightly “Well I believe they are real, what makes you say they aren’t”. Then all he had to do was write it down.
A topic like this may not be something that he generally gets the chance to write about, and it was also such a random question that he seemed genuinely excited to share his opinion.

Riva Burkett