Research process

We interviewed our principal, Lorraine and past staff and pupils of Vaiala Beach School to find out the history of our school. With their answers we made our story and we found some photographs.

We had to work as a team to plan, organise and conduct our interviews. We were the ones who had to contact each interviewee and organise where and when the interview took place. We had the responsibility of making it all happen.

First we found out how to do an interview. We made a list of questions to use.

Here are our questions

  • What year did you start teaching at VBS?
  • Why did you want to teach here?
  • What did the uniforms look like when you started working at VBS?
  • How many classes were there?
  • How much were the school fees?
  • How long were school hours?
  • Were there many students at VBS back then? How many were there?
  • What were the students like? Were they different to students now?
  • Where was VBS when you started working here?
  • Was the school big? (buildings/classrooms)
  • Did the school have a field?
  • What were some school rules?
  • What were some of the subjects that were taught here?
  • What are some of your favourite memories of VBS?
  • How has it changed?

Then we found out how to use our questions to write up an interview.

Once we had conducted our interviews, we worked in our pairs to write up our stories.

When we were making our story we found out how to adapt our writing to suit the web.