Student sample for assessment
Written by a Year 6 student in Mornington, Victoria, Australia.
Once there was a school called Ashbury Primary and mostly it was very normal. Students sat in rows, teachers handed out sheets, everyone knew what was going to happen next. Then Maya came in September. She had lived in four countries and spoke three languages and she had read every book in the science section of the library before she even got her library card. When Mr Harrison asked the class about the water cycle, Maya's hand went up. Everyone else just listened but Maya said it was more complicated than that. "In some regions the water cycle is disrupted by the way humans pump groundwater," she said. Mr Harrison looked surprised. Some kids looked annoyed. At lunch, Zoe asked her why she was showing off. "I'm not," Maya said. "I'm just answering the question." But nobody wanted to sit with her much. They talked in whispers and said she was weird and too much. Maya sat in the library. She could have got angry or pretended to be someone else. Instead she brought her book to the table at lunch where Ethan was sitting alone. "Can I sit here?" she asked. Ethan looked up. He had been reading about dinosaurs for weeks and nobody at school cared. "Sure," he said. They started talking about the Cretaceous period and Maya asked him actual questions like she really wanted to know what he thought. Ethan had ideas that were kind of interesting when someone listened. They talked about how maybe the asteroid impact happened different ways in different parts of the world. Ethan had never thought about that before. Soon Zoe came over. Then two other kids. They didn't join because they wanted to be cool. They joined because someone was actually talking about something that mattered. Maya was still the new student who knew a lot. But now she wasn't alone.