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!