New Brighton Catholic School Early Canterbury

Research Process

This is the process we used to complete our inquiry.

Luggage

We began our unit with a brainstorm to find out what we already knew about Early Canterbury, and what were we bringing to this unit. We discovered that we didn't really know much so it was going to be exciting!

Discoveries

For just over three weeks we were completely immersed in our discoveries. We had a fantastic trip to the Canterbury Museum in town and an eventful bus trip out to the Northbrook Museum in Rangiora where we dressed up in old clothes, met Jane and John Deans, had a fosic around Richard and Dawn's incredible collection of memoriabilia, and made some yummy cream. We looked in books, visited the library and looked on the Internet to find our information.

Wonderings

Out next step was to think about what we wanted to find out next. What were our wonderings? Well, we had so many! We used the Question Matrix and Keys to ask our questions. From there we divided into our Exploration Groups.

Exploring

This is where we found our answers. We brainstormed the places that we could find the answers to our questions and away we went. We used various learning tools to find our information.

Recording

We used large sheets of scrap paper to record our findings. We had these stapled to our walls so that we could all share in the process and the learning trail. Again we used various tools to collate our information. One group used a PMI, another used Venn Diagrams to display and arrange their information.

Organise

The next stage was to organise the information for the website. We spent a lot of time learning how to input information and the various tools needed to design a website. Mrs Stewart and the class decided on the basic look of the site and each group made the decisions as to where the information was going to be put and how it would look. We made lots of mistakes and changed our site a lot! But it was great fun and a huge accomplishment.

Review

We have celebrated our sucess as a class on our efforts to date and when the web site is launched we will have a big celebration with our parents and the rest of the school. We have completed an evaluation sheet of the unit and the process we worked through.