Ask big questions about writing

You’ll need

Pens or pencils
Scrap paper

Before you begin

Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples. Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.

There are many ways to spark a conversation or debate within your group. By doing so in a structured way, it allows it to be less intimidating for the person running the activity, and keeps the young people more on track of their topic. Having these debates allow the young people to express their views, while also learning to respect and work with others who may have one different from their own. There are many ways to host a conversation like this and many topics to have them around. The following activity gives some ideas on how to run the conversations and some questions you can have the young people debate.

Sliding Scale

Gather everyone together. Explain that the space you are using has turned into a sliding scale. You will ask them a question, and they will answer by placing themselves along the sliding scale.
Standing one side of the room signifies that you agree with the statement, the other side signifies that you disagree with the statement.
After they have chosen their answer, encourage them to discuss why they have chosen that spot with the people around them. Do you all have the same reasons for choosing a similar spot? After the discussion does anyone need to move or change their answer?
Open up the questioning to the whole room and allow each side to explain their reasoning behind their answer to everyone.

You could allow the young people to continue to move on the sliding scale as they listen to each other's explanations and change their own opinions.

Flip a Coin

Split your young people into small groups.
Provide a list of topics and let your young people choose what to discuss.
Split each group in half and then flip a coin to choose who will be arguing for and who will be arguing against.
- If the young people don't immediately know their view point, the person running the activity could allow them to move between the two groups until they find the viewpoint they feel most confident contributing towards.
Give each group questions to ask themselves when considering how to argue their point of view. Give them 20 minutes to construct their argument.
- Allow groups to record their thoughts in whatever means works best for them. Some examples include recording ideas on white boards or scrap paper.
Gather everyone together and sit in a space. Invite each group up to argue their case. After each topic has been argued for and against, ask everyone to vote for who they agree with.

Questions

When you read words a historical author wrote, are you literally reading their thoughts from hundreds of years ago, like a kind of time travel?
Do we have words for everything, or are there features of the world that we just can’t capture in writing? What words might you use to convey a particular smell, or feeling?
For any given writing system, who first decided what marks on the page should be which word?
Is it a good thing for authors to explore morally bad characters? Or would it be better if books only ever had morally good characters in it?
What’s the point of fiction?

Reflection

In this activity we learned about communicating our ideas, as well as respecting the ideas of others.

Which discussion format did you use? If you tried both which was your favourite? Did listening to other people's opinions make you change your mind? Was it difficult to listen to others who thought differently to you?

How did it feel if you were able to persuade others to think like you? Were some people better at this than others? Why do you think that is?

What skills and abilities did you use to successfully argue your points. What skills have you learned from completing this exercise?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games: The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.