Ready Kids › On Your Own, Out There › Badge 1 › Lesson 1.1
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Is a grown-up home?
Ask, in advance and in your own words, whether a parent will be in before you go to somebody's house.
1Watch
Sat, mine, 7
Sat, mine, 7
A group chat on a phone. The invitation arrives, four people reply yes in a row, and the film ends on her thumb over the keyboard.
18 secondsEverybody else has already said yes. Watch what she has not asked.
2The idea
The question nobody in the chat has asked
The plan is probably fine. Most plans are. The question is not whether you can go. It is who else is going to be in the house when you get there, and nobody in that chat knows. Four people said yes to a house without asking who is in it.
You ask, in advance, in your own words. Not your parent, not at the door, and not by assuming. A parent ringing another parent is fine too, but the skill is yours, because you are the one who will be standing in that house.
3The idea
How it goes, in three steps
1. Ask it in the chat, before anything is agreed. Is your mum or dad going to be in?
2. Read the reply for one thing: does it put a named grown-up inside the house?
3. If it does not, ask again, once. If it still does not, that is your answer.
A grown-up home means a parent, a grandparent, an aunt, somebody’s adult in the building, even asleep, even working upstairs with the door shut. A seventeen-year-old brother is not a grown-up home. A neighbour with a key is not either. Out but back by nine is not home.
4Say it
The question, so it sounds like nothing
Say this in your normal voice, the way you would ask what time
“Is your mum or dad going to be in?”
It is one line in a chat. Nobody has ever been uninvited for asking it.
5The idea
Watch it work once
Maya gets the invite. She types: is your mum or dad going to be in? Reply: yeah it’s fine, come. That is friendly and it is not an answer. Nobody is in it. So she asks once more: cool, but is your mum in? Reply: yeah she’s working upstairs.
Now she has a name and a place. The reply that answers the question is the one with a person in it. If the second reply had been another it’s fine, that would have been an answer too, and the answer would have been: nobody is going to be home.
6Decide
You ask. Which of these replies actually answers the question?
Pick one to carry on.
7Build it
Three invitations
Three invitations
Three chat screens. For each invitation you type the question, read the reply that comes back, and decide whether you have an answer or need to ask again. The third one never gives you a straight answer.
The third one is the one to notice. A reply that dodges the question twice is an answer.
8Find them
Which of these count as a grown-up being home?
Tap the ones that count.
Find all 3.
9Do it
Before you leave this page
The next time you are invited anywhere this week, ask who is going to be home. In the chat, in your words, before you ask your parent. Then show your parent the reply.
Tick it when you have done it.
Lesson done.
Ask who is home before you go. You ask, not your parent, and not at the door.
Next lesson: Rooms with doors that closeBadge 1 · Somebody Else's House
1.1Is a grown-up home?1.2Rooms with doors that close1.3Older siblings and their friends★Badge Challenge