Research process

We wanted to find out where we came from, we wanted to know about the different aspects of our school and community, both its history and the present. Most of these questions initially came from our whole school inquiry unit based on “Culture and Identity”. What is the identity and culture of a Waterloo child? Because of our school's 75th birthday celebrations this year (2013) further questions have been asked especially about the history and the surrounding community.

Inquiry Journey

Jumping In is the beginning of our journey where we start to get excited and interested about our topic.
On Our Way is when we learn about what we already know and find out what we would like to discover more about our topic.
Understanding what we have found out.
Reflecting and Reporting on what we have found out.
Next Steps is when we think about what else we could do with our new knowledge.
Evaluating our learning.
Yahoo Moment! This is our chance to share what we have learnt and show what we have done.

We have:

• Explored the Living Heritage website and looked at the other school stories on the Living Heritage site
• Written down a list of the positive things that we saw on their pages
• Written a list of the things we might like to have on our pages
• Recorded a list of any story ideas that we thought were interesting - brainstorming
• Decided as a group what pages we wanted to create and who would be in charge of creating them
• Drafted our initial ideas
• Used Google and Te Ara to search for information
• Taken photos
• Made artworks
• Asked questions from people who worked at school and our own whanau
• Evaluated what worked and decided what was needed to complete our page
• We got help to put the website together.