We might be on holiday, but a car trip with the VCOP Kids is always an opportunity to throw them an activity to keep them amused and stop any bickering. Today we tested Charlie’s opener skills. I threw him ‘deep’, and he came up with – Deep in the caves, there were shiny diamonds. Jaz up-levelled to add ‘gleamed’ and ‘that twinkled’. Oscar quickly finished with ‘in the torchlight of the flickering flames.’ Jaz – Someone had been in these mines before. Oscar added treacherous. Then there was an argument that, of course, someone had been in the mine before, it was a mine, not a cave… this caused them to change mine to cave. I asked them, ‘ Well, now how do we know someone has been in them before?’ Charlie added the sentence about the pickaxe, with Oscar adding damp and musty. When I asked Oscar to email it to me so I wouldn’t forget, he reordered to the description you have here. Then we arrived at the Chocolate Factory, haha. Start this year by introducing new guided talk challenges and get the kids practising their VCOP skills straight away. Also perfect for remote learning for our poor colleagues that have already made that decision I would ask the students to write these neatly (handwriting practise) on the blue card to start an ‘Openers Bucket’ and create a new classroom resource.