In the hot seat: Forming balanced arguments and experiencing a debate

Our current class novel is Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo. In the story Michael's family have decided to leave their home, town, normal lives and everything they know to go on a once in a lifetime trip sailing around the world. This sparked an exciting cause for discussion as we weighed up the pros and cons of such a huge decision. We shared very carefully considered responses and worked together to produce a balanced argument, providing reasons for and against dropping everything and sailing around the world. Some children felt very strongly about their points of view and this inspired us to host a great class debate.

Following on from this, we revisited our debate to reflect on how our thoughts on certain topics can change over time. Unfortunately for Michael's parents, things didn't exactly work out as planned therefore we explored their new thoughts through a hot-seating style interview.