Thursday, March 17, 2011
This morning at Opua, the four writing groups finished drafting their articles and laid them our in “enlarged screen” mock ups, using large sheets of paper.
Then Sergeant Davis joined us, after morning break, and each group explained its article to him and checked to ensure that the safety messages were all correct and fully aligned the road code and the advice that the police give to students travelling to and from school.
He suggested to several groups that they add information about how steep the road outside the school is and how far the truck travelled before it almost hit the students when its brakes failed. He’s going to measure both of these and bring the information back to the students.
It was great to see the students’ reactions when another adult – and a police officer to boot – took their writing seriously and offered considered feedback on its effectiveness in getting important safety messages across to other students.
Tomorrow, we’re going to continue the editing process. Margaret and I are scaffolding how the students can offer one another useful affirmation and good ideas for ways to give the writing even more impact – and we want to do a shot list for the photo shoot for next week.
At Russell, I continued the one-on-one sessions. Gosh, there are some good ideas being worked on. One girl is writing an engaging and funny description of a journey around Russell as told by a seagull – a kind of gourmet tour of Russell’s scraps and throw- aways, with “gourmet” understood from a seagull’s point of view! Another girl is writing about the thirty-second journey involved in a recent swimming race she took part in just off the Russell Beach, which a stingray (accidently) won!
Don Long
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