Post 1: Using local leaders to launch the PYP
exhibition
Comments/Questions:
Having experts from your local community to come in and inspire
the students is a great idea! We have just carried out something similar within
my own school in the lead up to exhibition - For many of our students the
significant role that scientists play in our lives remains hidden. The
purpose of the speaker series therefore was to expose students to the world of
scientists and technologists. To give our learners an opportunity to hear about
the work that people in these fields are engaged in - including the skills they
employ, the challenges they face and the impact of their work. Through this the
learners gained a better understanding of how scientists see the world and
interact with it and the experience sparked curiosity about the impact of
scientific thinking on society and the planet.
I am also curious to know more about the workshops that you run in
the lead up to exhibition - How does this work?
Post 2: Making
the exhibition happen
Comments/Questions:
I love the idea of Authentic transdisciplinary
tasks. These give the students a purpose and all work towards the same goal.
This is something that we are currently working towards at my school. You
mentioned the students learning in Maths, Drama, Spanish, English and Art. Do
you have different teachers for these areas? Does this require a lot of
collaborative planning prior to beginning the exhibition process?
Post 3: Re-thinking the
exhibition presentation
Comments/Questions: Thank you for sharing your students awesome presentations!
This is often something that we struggle with and I look forward to sharing
some of these ideas with my own students. I agree that planting the seed of
creativity early is important and that students should be thinking about and
planning how they will share their inquiry with the wider school community
throughout the exhibition process.
Finding One - Workshops:
In the post ‘Using local leaders to launch the
PYP exhibition’ I read about running a variety of mini-workshops that focused
on useful areas of the PYP exhibition, including: collaboration, identifying
concepts, taking action and thinking about all of their interests. This
interested me as we often run workshops in Mathematics and Literacy to
encourage students to be self-regulated learners but it is not something that
we have trialled during exhibition. I think that being able to opt into
workshops like this throughout the exhibition process would really benefit our
students.
Finding Two - Exhibition Presentations:
As we are just starting the exhibition process
with our students looking at different ways to present/share the exhibition
process with our community is very relevant and timely. In the post
‘Re-thinking the exhibition presentation’ I read about how to get the students
to convey the passion and excitement that they have for their inquiry. I hadn’t
thought of challenging the students by removing all student work, displays etc.
from the walls and telling the students that they were to think of their
classroom as a blank canvas on which they would be designing their exhibition
inquiry and eventually their exhibition presentation experience. Getting the
students to think of their presentation as an ‘experience’ where the audience
interacts with the facilitators is something that I am looking forward to
trying.
