We were the New Student Magazine Group. Our goal was to make a new student magazine to help new students feel more welcome. Our book contained information new students should know before coming to IST. We chose this topic because most of us had experienced a difficult time when first coming to IST, and we didn’t want others to go through the same thing we did.

We learned

• that cooperation between team members is key to success
• that keeping deadlines is important
• that organization is hard to achieve
• to always exert your best efforts

Our advice to fourth graders is to try their best to cooperate. It can be disastrous if you split up and do whatever you want. You should always work as a team. Sometimes you will need to step back, take a deep breath, and allow others to also sometimes get their way. Some learner profiles you should try to be are open-minded, caring, inquirer and risk-taker.

Below are individual reflections from members of the New Student Magazine Group. To read, click on the link and download the file.

In Seon’s reflection essay

Isabella’s reflection essay

The Student Handbook Group is preparing a new Student Handbook for the 2012-2013 school year. This handbook will be distributed to new students to IST starting in August.

The new Student Handbook group are working well. They made a list of topics to divide their work. They had trouble to agree on the layout but they talked it out.  They are learning how to get along.

The group is very organized. They divided their topics in 4 sections and about  25 sub sections. The 4 sections are How To’s, Places, Teachers and Fun Stuff. They first write each sub section on Microsoft Word, then the copy and paste it into a Pages document. They will include lots of photos to help new ESL students. As you can see, they have worked very efficiently.

They are creating the handbook on Pages. Pages is an Apple program that lets you use lots of different templates. The Student Handbook group choose Pages because the templates make it easier to have cleverly designed text boxes and colorful layouts. They choose a “newsletter” template for their pages. They are working on the library MacBooks and are becoming very skilled with the program.

The Handbook is almost finished. A few of the writers are done with their sections and only need to edit them. Their draft is due on the day we return from the April break. Ms. Nicol and Mr. Moody will be writing introductions to the handbook as the elementary principal and the school director. We’re looking forward to seeing the final document!

Edited by Chloe.

We surveyed the different groups about their exhibition work. Here is the response from the Student Handbook group.

The Student Handbook group feels very excited about the exhibition. They look forward to the exhibition and to when their magazine is published. Their group is going very well. They are working together. They say the work is is normal, not too hard and not not easy. They feel very confident.

Edited by Hilma.