Student sample for assessment
Written by a Year 7 student in Coburg North, Victoria, Australia.
I had walked home from school the same way a hundred times. Left out the gate, through the park, past the old oak tree, across the shopping strip, down the alley to my house. The route took twenty minutes if I hurried. I knew every crack in the footpath, every shop window, the exact moment when you stopped hearing traffic and started hearing birds. It was a route I could do without thinking. This day was supposed to be the same. This day was not the same because my grandmother had arrived from Taiwan the night before. My grandmother does not speak much English. She wanted to see how I got to school, so she asked me to show her the way home. I was impatient at first. I wanted to get home and tell my friends she had arrived. But somewhere between the park and the shopping strip, something changed. She noticed things I had never noticed. She stopped to look at the moss growing on the old oak tree and asked me in Mandarin what kind of moss it was. I did not know. We looked together, and I saw for the first time that the moss was bright green with tiny spots of orange. She pointed at the old bookshop with the faded gold lettering and told me it was like a bookshop in Shanghai where she used to go. Then she noticed the small lantern hanging above the red door of a restaurant I had walked past a thousand times without seeing it. My grandmother seemed to see the everyday route as an adventure. She asked questions and pointed things out, and I found myself really looking at the path for the first time in years. When we reached home, she asked me if I noticed how the light changed at the end of the alley, turning everything gold. I had never noticed. I said so. She smiled and said that was why she came all the way from Taiwan—to see the world through my eyes, but also to help me see my world with fresh eyes. We made tea and sat in the kitchen, and she told me about the bookshops of Shanghai and the moss on old trees there. The walk had taken forty minutes instead of twenty. The route I thought I knew was suddenly full of discoveries. Now when I walk home from school, I still move quickly. But before I step through that park gate, I pause and look. I listen. I notice the way the light falls. My grandmother is not there any more—she has returned to Taiwan—but something she left behind is still there. The walk home is no longer invisible to me.