Discovery Learning

Proposal: Do all heroes wear capes? What makes someone a hero? We are calling Ridgway students to put on their Journalist caps and investigate all things HEROES. Who is YOUR hero? Meet a real life journalist to get all the ins and outs of the job and have a go at interviewing a real life hero in your community!

Students signed up to a Discovery Group based on a list of several 'proposals' as seen above. After hooking them into a Discovery Group, our group talked about what is a hero and what is journalism.

We then brainstormed ideas of what we wanted to do and/or create, as well as the skills we would need to achieve this goal.

The general consensus was to create a news website and newspaper, focused on local heroes. Overwhelmingly, all students wanted to conduct their own interviews. Due to time constraints, we only ended up creating the website.

Looking back, we ended up achieving and doing a lot of what the students initially set as their goals the very first week- including interviewing Jacinda Ardern (via email) and going on a trip to Stuff News!

We then got started on equipping the students with the skills they would need to achieve their goals. This included workshops on how to prepare for an interview, how to ask the right questions, and how to "Think Like a Journalist". Students got to work with a past Journalist (Paul, our teacher trainee) as well as talk to several journalists on our trip to Stuff News.

The students had a chance to practise these skills right away, with our first interview conducted on May 26th. After each interview, we would reflect to refine our skills for the next time.

After completing several interviews during class time, as well as some students completing them on their own time, we started creating our final product, our website! It was now time for students to transcribe interviews (luckily we found an App to help us with this), and put their articles and photos together.

Despite some time constraints, the students showed resilience and persevered to create exactly what they initially sought out to do. We reflected on our time in this Discovery Group during our last session, with the students noting some highlights, challenges, and things they found interesting, as noted below.

Some highlights:

"Interviewed a lot of people"

"Interviewed people who were somewhat famous"

"Our trip to Stuff & going on the bus"

"Making our own website"

"We had options and choices (choosing who to interview)"

Some challenges:

"Writing up the interviews "

"It was a short amount of time"

"Only had time to create the website and not the physical newspaper"

Some things the students found interesting:

"Found out that all heroes DON’T need capes"

"Easier to make a website than initially thought"

"Found out that anyone can conduct interview!"

Way to go, Ridgway Hero Journalists!