Team

CerysSt Barnabas CE Primary School, United Kingdom

CharlotteSt Barnabas CE Primary School, United Kingdom

SaarahSt Barnabas CE Primary School, United Kingdom

SamSt Barnabas CE Primary School, United Kingdom

Age Range

12 & under

Coaches

Jan SymmondsSt Barnabas CE Primary School, United Kingdom

Jan StockburnSt. Barnabas CE Primary School,, England, United Kingdom

Category

Social Sciences & Culture

Audience

Ages 9 and up

Language

English

Site Features

Reading Guide / Book Guide

Quiz

Photo Gallery

Team Collaboration

We started off, quite late into the competition, as a team of 6 children from our school who had never worked together before. None of them had ever made a website before either and I, coach, had very little experience of website making! They are all from different backgrounds and have differing interests although all are interested in history, geography and the environment. They tried to combine these interests when choosing the topic for our site. At first they created a great site (in their heads) and soon realised that they were being far too ambitious considering they had to do all the research and learn how to use Dreamweaver etc; also some of them don't have home internet access so had to fit in going to the local library with research at school. They then changed their targets and started! It soon became clear that there were 2 natural leaders who were willing to spend hours researching, drawing and organising. They delegated different areas and topics to each team member. One spent several days of halfterm holiday with her mum travelling along the banks of the Severn taking fabulous photos and 2 others spent hours researching from the library and internet, and contacting friends and relatives who might be useful. When they all met up again it appeared that 2 members had done very little and were not as committed so asked to leave the team (unfortunately 2 of the 3 boys). The others took on the extra tasks deciding not to get new members at this late stage. Some had sports and drama commitments too, but all managed to combine everything in a very friendly way and the whole experience was great fun.They praised each other, argued, laughed and some tears flowed! Our finished site is fairly basic, but they are all really thrilled to have produced it!From the students' viewpoints:-After we started we found a website already existed that was the same so we had to change ours, that was disappointing but it worked out better in the end. It was hard writing the articles in our own words. It was all good fun.

Team Diversity

The 4 children are from different socioeconomic backgrounds and have very mixed academic and technical skills. Saarah's family are Pakistani and her parents speak very little English. She has fabulous ideas but finds getting it down on paper difficult, especially spelling. Most of them found it difficult to rewrite their findings in their own words; but the 2 more academically able who could do it gave a great deal of help to the others and everything improved. Cerys is very artistic, many of the drawings and maps are hers; whilst Sam seemed to have an eye for colours, fonts etc on the pages and suggested much of the overall layout and buttons. Everything was always voted on before decisions were made.