Before I Forget

I considered updating this during the night. Well actually it was early this morning. 3am, cats are in and out, I'm wishing I had a cat door, or a butler to open and close the door for them, and then as so often happens, I start thinking about school.
Yesterday was not working very well for me. I dislike Tuesdays at the best of times, but yesterday sucked. I was trying to get the class to use the criteria we have for writing factual reports, and they had researched kina to write about. There is a reason for the subject but I will get to that later. A future post later. We discussed the criteria and looked at different types of graphic organisers, glossaries, sub headings, matching diagrams etc, and I am not sure what I was expecting when it came time for them to write, but obviously my expectations were way too high and too much, and I got very little. And I struggled to be in the WHAT IF world with them and I was clicking my clicker in and out of role and in the end I gave up.
Feeling guilty about the lack of writing we have done so far, especially compared to how much we usually write, I mentioned it today in the staffroom. Thankfully, I was given a few ideas, and am pleased to say that yay, I am back on track. Why does spell check always underline yay? It is a word isn't it?
As colleagues we worked together to edit other authors factual reports ready for publishing. We used the criteria and pretended the texts were manuscripts (they were actually a variety of short reports from out of the Red Reading Box, all at different levels). My "colleagues" were indeed very good at finding that these authors were sadly lacking in report writing skills, and took great pleasure in writing feedback and feedforward comments all over the assessment checklist about how these authors could meet the criteria.
Out of role the class indicated their new understandings by placing themselves on a continuum, and moved around with each statement I made. I think that next time we attempt report writing, it will be far more successful.
I just had to say all that before I forgot. Also, photos posted below with a couple of successful ideas "stolen" from our cluster meeting on Monday night.

A WHAT IS, WHAT IF world! And Magnomen! I have a few magnomen, but I can't put them on the fridge at home 'cos it's only a little bar fridge and the cats quite like to stalk magnomen.

Izzy and Caitlin, trying to decide if the picture and inset map on the report qualify as a diagram.

Ipads! Leslees idea in her "Number Agency" to use whiteboards as ipads. I only mentioned it to the class. They must have thought it was a good idea, because they got the boards out and started using them as if they really were ipads, all by themselves.

Nahia, Jessica and Erin taking great delight in providing constructive criticism for our fictional authors. It actually looks like quite a serious business judging by this photo!

Advertising

Thanks for the advice Leslee! I went ahead with the advertising and I am glad that I did. I was a little worried that we would run out of time for everything. Until I remembered that it will be OK to carry on into Term 2 with this, and it really won't matter if it takes all of next term because what we are going to do is quite a big task. The children don't know that yet because I still haven't given them the commission.
Maybe they can use the holidays to do a bit of research hehe :)
Now I am getting ahead of myself and the holidays are far away so I shall get back on track...
We wanted to promote our new fancy bookshop where people can come to buy our amazing books that we have written and published. And everyone will want our books because we are famous. During a meeting in the "lounge" we decided to have a grand opening with a special promotion. We talked about how much of a discount we could offer with our opening sale and did a bit of working out with prices (this was actually quite good because they were using percentages and working out amounts for real) and arrived at a 20% discount on all books for 1 week only. Some people wanted only 10% when they realised how much 20% was, but then we looked at our mission statement again and remembered that we wanted to encourage children to read. Our business may become less concerned about profit as we go. I know this wouldn't apply in the real world, but as this is a pretend business, and we are pretend rich already, it's nice that they want to get kids to be enthusiastic about reading, and that is real.
So we recorded ideas for ways to promote our sale in our "business diaries" and as different people wanted to advertise in different ways, they formed their own little groups and created their ads.
Advertising could be a commission for the future, I was playing with that idea before I came up with the one I have now, and I reckon it would be really awesome.

A brochure, includes free bookmark!

A radio advertisement. This group used Garageband, lots of learning took place, from changing the settings to use the microphone, to adding background music. Great results, and they now understand the importance of writing a script to follow too!

This wonderful design is the one that will go on the backs of buses. Yes, they thought of that themselves.

A TV advertisement. It was recorded with the flip camera, but they acted it out for their "colleagues" as well.

Another TV ad, this group used Hyperstudio to create an animated advertisement. You can see the concentration on their faces!

We also had our EMR trip to the Reotahi Marine Reserve on Monday, the class all got to go snorkeling and hiking and took part in the Marine Metre Squared project (where you count all the creatures on the beach in a square metre and enter the data online). It was a very well organised day with a superb facilitator running the programme, and fabulous parents supporting us. Now we are really, really ready for our commission!

Heading out for a snorkel!

Identifying and counting the marine life

Mission Statement

Tales Up

Heaps has happened throughout the last week. We decided on a name, the class all put their ideas together and then voted. We also voted on a logo, and named it! So the company is Tales Up and the logo is Mike the fish.

 Company meeting, around the pool shown in photo further down. The children on the floor are actually on flotation devices in the pool (in case you were wondering!).

 An idea for in the bookshop, the children thought it would be better to have some kind of vehicle to get around the shop, rather than trolleys. There were lots of really "out there" ideas.

 Another vehicle for use in the shop. Amazing how many included labels without any prompting from me - excuse the spelling!

 The "Mike" with the most counters on it was the winner. Jessica's logo, Izzy's colouring.

 The pool where one of our meetings was held. Pretty flash!

 This is another room on the building plans.

Here is the bookshop where our books will be sold. We made it fit the empty area on the ground floor of the building. The orange is the shop, the rest are offices and other rooms that were very necessary to have in our business.


Getting back to our week, we wrote a mission statement. It is a mixture of ideas and was completed after a meeting where everyone brought along their business diaries (inquiry books) and wrote frantic notes during discussion. It was actually pretty neat to see those reluctant writers putting ideas down with such enthusiasm :) The diary idea was one of those things where I just thought I'd call it a business diary rather than inquiry book. Now they bring their business diaries to every meeting without even being asked to! And they are writing in them!

Today we talked about our shop opening and how we might promote it. I didn't even have to prompt them, we had a meeting and I said that the shop was ready, what now? They came up with the idea of advertising to promote their books because how would anyone know we were even open and I was like, wow! We each have 2 books to put on the shelves (pretend books, but they have all shared the imaginary books and discussed what they are about and titles and illustrations etc) so we thought we should price them and work out an average price because being fair, we should all share the profits. So after recording 42 different prices on the board, the class spent a good 15 minutes using every numeracy strategy known to them to add them all up and divide by 42. Results varied, as you can imagine, but eventually we did it together on the board with everyone sharing how to add up such a lot of numbers, and came to an average price of $17.59, which we rounded up to $17.60. And I know there was great learning going on but we didn't even get to how we will promote and advertise because we run out of time. Oh well, it was fun. So what next for us? I am thinking that because they are referring to the company as theirs, and using "us" and "we" that it might be time for the commission. But I still want to do the advertising thing because that will be fun too. Is it OK to do that I wonder? Or is it too much? Advertising could be a whole big thing all by itself. Something for me to think about over the weekend.

What's a Logo?

My class are so funny! We have been having a great time with our company already, and it isn't even fully up and running yet. We had our first "meeting" on the deck. One of the kids (in role) was miming smoking during the meeting. When told the premises were no smoking, he replied, "but we're outside!" Maybe he ought to try vaping :)
Most of the class were very into it, I had a couple of children who were a bit silly to start with, and I had to remind them of what we had agreed when we started.
We decided to come up with ideas for the company name and design a logo to match, and yes indeed, I did have several ask, "what's a logo?" so we discussed logos for a bit (out of role) and looked at many examples. I'm surprised they don't have Logo Quiz on their ipads, I even have it on the class one. Anyway, sometimes I wonder why some things sink in and some don't. Next day... we completed our ideas and put them on the "conference table" ready for some advertising/marketing expert type people (really us being other professional people) to come and judge, and a couple of children had submitted name ideas, but no logo. When asked where their logo designs were, I got the same question... "What's a logo?" 

I have a clicker thing, it's like one of those little bugs you used to get at birthday parties back in the day, but it is a bit more substantial than those used to be. I've had it for years and I remember I bought it because I can't seem to make much sound when I click my fingers. So I dug it out of my box of goodies and that is what I use for going in and out of role, and it is working very well. 3 clicks and were are in role, 3 clicks and we're back in the classroom. It sure beats trying to quickly whip the red wig on and off my head. At the end of last year the kids were horrified to find "Mildred's hair" in my desk drawer!