If you don't have five past reports to make your voice from, you can write five in Lantern instead. Lantern checks each one against your school's rules, but it writes none of them for you. Once you've saved five, they become your voice.
This suits new teachers, teachers new to a year level, and anyone whose old reports aren't to hand.
Start
Choose I don't have five past reports. You'll find it:
- in setup, on the Set up your voice step
- in the box where you'd paste five past reports
- on the dashboard, beside Set up your voice
If Lantern asks, choose the class the voice is for. If that class has no students yet, add them first. During first-time setup you can start before you have a class: you write about any students you've taught.
Write the five reports
For each report:
- Pick a student. Five different students give Lantern the best picture of how you write.
- Write their report yourself, the way you normally would. Put your school's name placeholder (usually
%name) wherever their name goes. - If you like, select Check against school rules. Lantern lists anything that breaks a rule. Where it has a fix, choose Use the corrected wording or change the report yourself.
- Select Save report. The button shows how far along you are, for example report 2 of 5.
You can stop and come back: Skip for now leaves the wizard, and your saved reports are kept. A class without a voice can't have reports written for it, so the dashboard keeps reminding you until you finish.
When you've saved five
Lantern says "We've learned how you write. Lantern writes your reports in this voice now." If you chose a class, it writes in the new voice. You can use the voice for other classes too.
Why Lantern doesn't draft these for you
Your voice has to come from your own writing. If Lantern drafted the five, your voice would be Lantern's, not yours. That's why this step has no button to draft a report for you.
Later, once you have five reports you're happy with, you can make another voice from them. See Make your voice from five past reports.
Still stuck?
Email support@lanternreports.com.au and a real person will get back to you.