Describing an elephant...

...you know, like you do. Some Year 6 pupils and I had a go at describing a pachyderm today. The KS2 SATs will require them to do some writing and we had been discussing the problem of not knowing anything about the subject that you're asked to write about. That's not a problem, I said, because you can always make it up. So we shut our eyes for a while and pretended that we were in a room with an elephant.
Everybody did a good job but I was especially impressed with Kane's description of the elephant's colour being as grey as the sky when it's about to rain and Harry's description of the elephant moving from side to side like an old man in a rocking chair gently throwing his weight about.

Good luck to anyone doing their SATs in May - just remember to try and make it real when you write.

I've not posted for a while because I've been teaching more and writing less but that will change after Easter when I plan to start a new book. I've already started it in my head - in fact I've been thinking about it for ages.