All, some and none: A dialogue with young children

HERE IS AN AUDIO CLIP of me talking to a class of mixed four and five-year-olds (reception and year one).

To me, it shows how the introduction of some basic language of reasoning can help to move a dialogue forwards.

The children had been reading about St. George and the dragon with their teacher. If you don't know the story, it goes something like this:

• A town was terrorised by a dragon.
• The dragon demanded a young princess to be given as a sacrifice
• When George heard about this he rode into the village, slayed the dragon and rescued the princess.

I was visiting and we talked about why George killed the dragon. Many of them said 'because dragons are bad' and that 'people who kill dragons are heroes'. I asked 'Are all dragons bad or just some?'. This led into further thoughts about criteria. 'If a dragon is bad, what makes it bad.' I pushed it in that direction and didn't follow up on other comments such as those of one girl who says: 'it might be a bit bad'.

I was interested that some children said that some dragons are not bad if they are your pets. Their reasoning seemed to be that all pets are good so if a dragon is a pet it can't be bad. I could have explored that idea more.

The final comment from the boy is, to my mind, a great example of a 'fair test', although he sets the bar fairly low with his criteria for a 'good dragon'.

We could have gone in all kinds of directions with this little dialogue. I think it shows how useful this kind of language can be in opening up a space for reasoning.

I think there is something children find quite exciting about trying to disprove or confirm an 'all' statement with examples.

Transcript

In the transcript, T=Teacher and C=Child. Each contribution is numbered.

1. T: So here's that phrase again ... Are ALL dragons bad then?
2. C: (Some children shout out) Yea -- Yea -- some are.
3. T: What makes them bad? I don't know.
4. C: Some are
5. T: Some are. So not ALL, but SOME.
6. C: No all (then children shout out some opinions)
7. C: Some might be a bit good.
8. C: All.
9. C: Some might be a bit good, because some people might have dragons as their pets.
10. T: Okay so if a dragon is bad, what makes a dragon bad?
11. C: You don't have them as your pet.
12. C: Yea
13. C: Dragons ... you might find a good dragon in a shop where there are pet dragons. And there might be a good one.
14. T: Okay. And how would you know it was a good dragon?
15. C: Because it might say 'good dragon' with the tag.
16. C: (Interrupting) Dragons can't speak.
17. T: That would be really useful wouldn't it, if you know, 'cause somebody had tagged, 'good dragon, bad dragon, good person bad person.' But how would they know what tag to put on the dragon ... whether it was good or bad? How would they know?
18. C: They would just check if it might have been a good dragon.
19. C: T: Okay ... what ...
20. C: They might have just first got a dragon and then put it in the shop and wrote it down 'cause they knew already that it was good.
21. C: Yes
22. C: Er ... what they would do is they'd check if ... they'd go around the town with it ... they'd see if it don't kill anyone and then, when they'd finished ... how many minutes they wanted it to be, then put the tag on and then give it to the shop. Then some people come and it might not grow up to be a big one.
23. T: Okay that's very interesting. So you're saying that if you observe it and it does bad things, that might mean it's a bad dragon. That's interesting.