In the beginning, we looked at a photo of how the Gardens looked 145 years ago - just a SWAMP!   This small black and white photo created much discussion, and from this starting point, the children devised questions that they wanted answered. Keeping these in mind, we made our focus for inquiry -
I wonder what activities were needed in the past to make the Gardens the place it is today?

Sample of our initial questions -

• Who contributed to the design of the Oamaru Public Gardens?
• How were/are the gardens landscaped?
• What are it's special features?
• How were these features built?
• What did the first caretakers start with?
• How does the Parks and Recreation Department keep the gardens in such good condition?

To help us develop our questions further, we went on a fact-finding mission to the Gardens itself.  Our search for information also meant we had to interview, send faxes, and telephone those involved in the running of the Gardens.  We invited speakers along too, and improved our note-taking skills as well. The above tasks were valuable because they helped the children focus their attention on what was relevant to our study, and so ask pertinent questions.

• At this stage we looked closely at the accumulated information and reviewed our questions further. The working groups firmed up their areas of study.  Further questions were faxed away to information sources to fill out any gaps. Some sample topics to emerge were..
• The history of the Gardens
• Yearly events held in our Gardens
• Special features
• Bird area
• A day in the life of the Gardens. 

Any information a group felt was pertinent to another group was freely shared with them. Once groups  had the data they needed, they were ready to create!  Each working group completed a hard copy of their webpage layout using an A3 sheet. This was a time of much negotiation and cooperative planning.  The children also revisited the Gardens to select the 'perfect pic' for their own webpage. At this point, it was decided that different colours for each page would be used to reflect the beautiful variety of colours found in our Gardens. 

Once completed, the webpages were viewed by the other groups.  This gave the class the opportunity to share their opinions, reflect on aspects of their work that pleased them, and consider future improvements.

REVIEW

We hope to present our webpages to the school to see what they think.