Students need access to a wide variety of texts to become proficient critical thinkers. These texts need to be engaging and connected to the curriculum. Finding that mix is often the first hurdle …

Annual 3 (annualannual.com) was created by over forty of Aotearoa NZ’s best writers and illustrators. The result is 156 pages of smart, multi-modal content: short stories, comics, poems, cartoons, essays, songs, historic photos, flash nonfiction, and wordless text. And then there’s the bare-faced satire and parody.

What is a “fact”? What does it look like? How can you tell when a writer is taking you for a ride? And why? Kate and Susan, the editors of Annual 3, will show how you can use this ground-breaking miscellany to encourage critical thinking in the years 4–9 classroom. The workshop will include a quick tour of the content, then use two of the Annual texts (“Gone Girls: The Ones We Almost Forgot” and “Frog Hits Ten Million Followers”) to explore the features of fake news and misinformation.