George and Angus, St Thomas Aquinas, Year 4-6. Teacher: Summer Wilton.

Social Sciences students ask questions gather information, ideas and examine issues
Understand cultural practices and the impact on peoples daily lives
Present information in your own words so others are able to understand it.
Students were introduced to the topic with Room 3 students sharing their findings. Room 2 students then decided which community event or area of their community they would like to research further. They watched and sourced information from visitors, internet, parents, grandparents, books, libraries. They were to use their homework time, Reading , writing and inquiry learning to support them to present their findings. Students were required to think about the layout and balance. As well as write the information into their own words for other students their age to be able to understand.

Josh and Maddie, St Thomas Aquinas, Year 1-3. Teacher: Summer Wilton.

Social Sciences students ask questions gather information, ideas and examine issues
Understand cultural practices and the impact on peoples daily lives
Present information in your own words so others are able to understand it.
Students were introduced to the topic with Room 3 students sharing their findings. Room 2 students then decided which community event or area of their community they would like to research further. They watched and sourced information from visitors, internet, parents, grandparents, books, libraries. They were to use their homework time, Reading , writing and inquiry learning to support them to present their findings. Students were required to think about the layout and balance. As well as write the information into their own words for other students their age to be able to understand.

Samantha, Jonty, Libby and Greer, St Thomas Aquinas, Year 4-6. Teacher: Summer Wilton.

Social Sciences students ask questions gather information, ideas and examine issues
Understand cultural practices and the impact on peoples daily lives
Present information in your own words so others are able to understand it.
Students were introduced to the topic with Room 3 students sharing their findings. Room 2 students then decided which community event or area of their community they would like to research further. They watched and sourced information from visitors, internet, parents, grandparents, books, libraries. They were to use their homework time, Reading , writing and inquiry learning to support them to present their findings. Students were required to think about the layout and balance. As well as write the information into their own words for other students their age to be able to understand.

Ethan, Aleck and Krisha, St Thomas Aquinas, Year 4-6. Teacher: Summer Wilton.

Students were learning local history and present findings of local history in an interesting way using Ibook author.
Students were to find out about local history within their community. Room 3 students shared their findings with these students. they then took interest of the area of the entire Southlands history. Students researched through watching movies, using internet. We had local visitors visit the school. Students wrote down questions with a guide from the teacher in how to ask good questions. The students researched information in their time during homework as well as during class time. This was their reading, writing and Inquiry Learning throughout the term. Students needed to think about the layout of the pages, are their pictures linked to the information. Is the page balanced.

Briar, Shann and Damien, St Thomas Aquinas, Year 4-6. Teacher: Summer Wilton.

In social sciences students ask questions, gather information, ideas and examine issues.
Understand cultural practises and impact on peoples daily lives
Present research and findings using ibook AuthorStudents were introduced to the topic with Room 3 students sharing their findings. Room 2 students then decided which community event or area of their community they would like to research further. They watched and sourced information from visitors, internet, parents, grandparents, books, libraries. They were to use their homework time, Reading , writing and inquiry learning to support them to present their findings. Students were required to think about the layout and balance. As well as write the information into their own words for other students their age to be able to understand.

Room 10, Winton School, Year 7&8. Teacher: Tania Carran.

By making this Ebook I learnt how to add links, fade or blacken photos and place photos behind text. I also learnt a lot about the school too. The learning intentions of this project were to help other people understand parts of the Winton School history and help any other students that have to do a report on Winton School as well. On Ebook I learnt a lot of new skills. They involved getting to know Ebook, finding good photos, fading them or putting it in black and white also adding links to the pages and the Winton School website. www.winton.school.nz.I really enjoyed making this Ebook. It started when we had to write a report on Winton School. Miss Carran (my teacher) said I should enter it in the Media Mash. I started it about Week 8 of Term 3. I had typed it up and found my photos by the holidays, all I needed to do was organize it and do the finishing touches. Ms Mynes helped me by teaching me how to add links and fade photos. I did all of this by myself and I just got a little help with the editing.

Nate, Halfmoon Bay School, Year 4-6. Teacher: Kath Johnston.

In term one Stewart Island residents and invited guests celebrated 90 years since the Norwegian whaling factory ship Sir James Clark Ross entered Paterson Inlet, Stewart Island. The whalers ended up setting up a repair and maintenance base at Prices Inlet, Stewart Island and as they say the rest is history. After researching extensively, interviewing experts and visiting Whalers Base the students presented their work in a variety of ways for the Norsk Feiring exhibition.
Nate drew a series of pictures to retell the process of the Norwegians whaling in the Ross Sea. He photographed and cropped his pictures and imported them into Comic Life. Nate wrote captions and explanations to go with each picture and put those into Comic Life too - adding speech bubbles, comic titles and backgrounds for extra effect.

Room 3, Thornbury School,Year 4-6. Teacher: Rachel Peters.

We have been exploring report writing and specifically what detail our reader needs to know to keep them interested and engaged. We combined this with our favourite event of the year - PET DAY! The reports were presented with our pets to show what we knew about our favourite bundles of fluff, everything from their characteristics to the care they need to keep them healthy. Our aim was to make them accessible to all visitors coming to pet day, this meant they needed to include a range of informative text and images to help the reader better understand what we were talking about. We deliberately adopted an informal tone because of our audience and we made the books bright and colourful to attract their attention. We did lots of reading of other people's reports to understand the different features of reports, then we (the children) created a list of criteria we wanted to achieve. Each of the children in the class picked a way to present their report, some hand-wrote booklets, others created digital posters or power points, and we made ebooks. We drafted each section and then proof read our work, it took about a week to write and check each of the sections we wanted to include. Once we'd done that we got started, a page at a time creating digital images that would form the book. We used Strip Designer to do this, but we avoided the preset page layouts to make our books more individual, and more skilful. There were lots of edits as we tried different colour themes and fonts to keep it interesting but maintain consistency for our readers, in the end we agreed on a pallet of colours that we used in different combinations across the pages. 

Room 3, Thornbury School,Year 4-6. Teacher: Rachel Peters.

In class we have been learning about the information a reader needs to keep them interested when they are reading a report. Pet Day was coming up and we wanted everyone to be able to see how much we knew about our pets, so we decided a pet report would be a good idea as a topic. We identified our audience as the adults and older children attending pet day so knew we needed to make our books informative but at the same time informal. We also used images to make our reports more eye catching and to add meaning to our words. Overall, we wanted to make sure our writing gave lots of information about our pets by using connectives and extended sentences.After lots of analysing of other people's reports, we felt we understood the features of a good report. As a class we created a list of the different sections a good report would have as well as some of the features we'd need to include. We didn't all pick to make an ebook, in fact some created booklets and posters, and some made power points. We drafted each section of our writing and then proof read our work, it took about a week to write and check each of the sections we wanted to include. We used Strip Designer to make each of the pages but our teacher encouraged us to create each page from scratch as this made us think more about the layouts that would work for our readers. Then we tried lots of different images, sounds, colours and fonts, but picked the ones here because we thought they created consistency without being boring. 

Room 6, Waverley Park School, Year 4-6. Teacher: Carolyn Williams.

In Term 2 Room 6 worked on an Inquiry that had a Technology focus. The overall theme was “A Slice of Waverley.” We decided to make ebooks about aspects of life at Waverley Park School. Our aim was to create ebooks that could sit in a virtual library and be accessed by all students at the school. The first step in the process was to come up with a list of subjects that we felt warranted further investigation. Next the students had to apply for their choice of subject, explaining why they thought they would be a “good fit.” Letters were written to ask permission from subjects. Storyboards were then prepared, taking into account colour, font, text, pictures and videos. The students were constantly challenged with the question “how are you making this different from an ordinary book?” 

Myhayla and Abbey are both animal lovers. They chose to write about Lady the cat. Although Lady is a regular visitor to Waverley Park we did not know anything about her “real family.” This ebook was a big hit when played at our school assembly!