The Exhibition Online PD - Staging and reporting the exhibition and final reflections

Reflect on your own learning and how it will determine the way you lead the PYP exhibition at your school. Post your reflection when you upload the final version of your planner to the module forum.

I have really enjoyed participating in this course and being able to share strategies and ideas with other IB educators. As Rebecca has mentioned above this course was very timely as we are just beginning the PYP Exhibition process at our school for 2018. I have therefore already been able to implement some of the new resources we have made and share some of the ideas discussed with my other colleagues. My own understanding of the five essential elements of the PYP has been strengthened through our activities, readings and discussions and this has helped me to develop my students understanding. I already feel more organised for this exhibition because of the way we have developed our planners and have put together personal timelines. The readings that we have engaged with have reminded me of the information and support that is out there from other IB educators. This has motivated me to find out more and continue to develop my practice. I have thoroughly enjoyed learning alongside all of you and would like to thank everyone for their contributions.

Before completing the final task for this workshop, we will do some preliminary reflections on some of the concepts, skills and contents that we developed through these four weeks.

In order to do that, you will need to reflect upon:

• three skills you developed during this workshop

• two key concepts

• one attribute of the IB learner profile and

• one action you will be taking as soon as you complete your workshop.

Share any other reflections and comments that you would like your peers to read before we all say goodbye in the conclusions task of the workshop.

• three skills you developed during this workshop

Communication: This is the first online course that I have participated in. I have learnt to communicate my thoughts and ideas clearly with others in this type of forum.

Organisation: I have developed several tools throughout this course to aid with the organisation of our exhibition but have also developed my own ability to be organised and complete all activities during the busy weeks we have currently been having.

Collaboration: Even though our school works very collaboratively already, it has been fantastic to work alongside Hayley and Rebecca (both in different teaching teams from my own) to create a collaborative planner and tools that will benefit our school’s exhibition.

• two key concepts

Form & Function: Throughout this course my understanding of the PYP exhibition process has developed and grown. I understand what each stage is like and have a better grasp on how it all works.

Connection & Perspective: The connections made with others throughout this workshop have had a huge impact on my practice and have encouraged me to look at things through different lenses. I feel I have a new creative way of looking at the exhibition process and hope to share this enthusiasm with my students.

• one attribute of the IB learner profile

Open-minded: Discussing and sharing ideas and strategies with other IB Educators throughout this course has definitely opened my eyes to a whole range of new ideas and ways of doing things. I look forward to implementing many of these in my own school and to continuing to find out more!

• one action you will be taking as soon as you complete your workshop

I will be implementing all of the new knowledge and strategies learnt throughout this course into our school’s PYP exhibition process which we have just begun working through with the students. I am excited to share my new findings with our other colleagues to strengthen our PYP practice.

Writing Monitoring Meeting - Gail Loane - Thursday 6th September 2018

Leading Learning PD - Gail Loane - Wednesday 5th September 2018

Gail shared about a student that she has been working with recently and the journey that he has been on with his writing.

- Make connections
- What do they need?
- How do we help them to take the next step?

Ladder of Inference

Learning from your experience
- Stop using avoidance strategies such as blame, justification, denial and quitting
- Using 'I' Statements
- Notice the little moments - Call it as it happens - Deal with it
- This can be a good opportunity to share perspectives/clarify any misunderstandings and misinterpretations.
- This same strategy can be used with students - Gail mentioned about a school that has used this successfully.

How to facilitate Learning Conversations effectively with colleagues, student teachers, etc.

The Exhibition Online PD - Discussing student-led in-depth inquiry

Module 3, Learning Engagement 1

Student-led in-depth inquiry

1) Use the table below to brainstorm local issues (with/without global significance) that would fit under each one of the transdisciplinary themes.

2) Narrow your focus to one issue

3) Develop key concept questions about that issue

4) Think about actions that your students may come up with that would be related to the issues you’ve brainstormed.
The action component of the exhibition is student-generated, so you may be surprised with some of the ideas your students come up with.

Here is my original table:

As we focus on the same TD Theme and Central Idea across our school I have chosen to work on the same TD Theme as Rebecca, however I have tried to focus on a different local issue and generate some different questions.

Here are my ideas:

Staff Meeting - Tuesday 28th August 2018 - Dust, Polish, Shine

How do we accelerate learning at Berkley?

The Exhibition Online PD - The PYP exhibition in the SharingPYP Blog

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.

Guided Reading - Professional Practice

What is a TIP Chart?

TIP vocabulary charts- The Term- Information- Picture

Here is an example of a TIP Chart in action:

This lesson was taught with BANG Group (Level2/Early Level 3) after reading the text Backyard Chooks. The TIP Chart helped them to unpack the terms Supply and Demand. They were able to make links to the text and to their prior knowledge.