What is the purpose of the exhibition?

How do we make this unit different to all of the others? In grade five we give a lot of direction for units over to the students. Students are engaged in the unit development process from the first unit of the year as a means of helping to better prepare for exhibition itself. At our school we are using a model for exhibiton where the students develop their own unit of inquiry - from begining to end - the unit is their own creation. It is this unit development process which I believe sets exhibition apart from all other units.

The IBO lists essential features of the exhibition in its text, Exhibition Guidelines. These features are extensive although still leave room for interpretation: The PYP Exhibiiton must:

• Provide opportunities for the student to exhibit the IB learner profile & attitudes
• Incorporate all key concepts
• Synthesise aspects of all transdisciplinary themes
• Require students to use the transdisciplinary skills
• Explore significant and relevant knowledge
• Provide opportunities for students to engage in action
• Represent a collaborative, student-led, in-depth inquiry
• Include ongoing and rigorous assessment

It is the requirement to provide opportunities for action which I am most interested in. To be more specific the IB Guideline states: " Provide students opportunites for students to engage in action; students should demonstrate an ability to reflect on and apply their learning to choose appropriate courses of action and carry them out; this action may take the form of personal involvement with the planning and implementation of the exhibition and/or service-orientated action; action may not always be clearly or immediately visible or measurable but evidence should be recorded whenever a particular behaviour results from the learning involved"

Action can take many forms, it does not always need to be service-oriented. In many conversations with teachers there appears a misconception that action reflects only service-orientated action. Taking action with regard to learning is so much more than doing something for a cause. Isn't it enough to ask our 10-11 year old students to take action with regard to their own learning by ensuring that their exhibition is just that - theirs.

An exhibition unit of inquiry should be designed and built by the individual student. Exhibition is different to all other units because it is the student's own unit of inqury. The student takes themself through the unit design process. The student determines the transdisciplinary theme, they nominate the real life issue, they connect the issue back to their theme with relevance and significance. The student  carefully selects the key concepts which drive their inquiry and their questions. The student plans the learning activities and undertakes their in-depth inquiry. The teacher's role as facilitator allows her to support the connections between concepts and themes, which teachers themselves do not always agree on when planning a unit of work, and to support the students' development of the assessment model.

Surely this process is action enough to fulfil the requirement that the "PYP Exhibition must provide opportunities for students to engage in action". Not all PYP units lead to service-oriented action. Why is it then there seems to be an underlying expection of service-oriented action for the PYP Exhibiton?

PYPX Beyond Classroom Walls

From a group of teachers wanting to have a bigger conversation, grew yesterday's IB.PYP Exhibition sharing day for teachers of four schools across Germany. The conversations were great, sharing ideas of practise past and future. Talking with others rates so highly on my personal PD agenda and yesterday was no exception.

In our PYP classrooms we talk a lot about collaboration and sharing. The exhibition is designed to be a celebration of the learner, an opportunity to take ownership and lead an inquiry from beginning to end; an opportunity to design, construct, plan, develop and present their own unit of inquiry. Last year's exhibition went well, but there remains a lot of scope for improvement. The whys and how-tos of mentoring remain high on our agenda, action, performance and evidence elements are other areas of reinterpretation. For me though, these are not where my mind wonders off to the most.

What does the ideal exhibition look like? There are so many elements of exhibition open to interpretation, each requiring discussion and revisiting each year, one thing seems obvious though, connecting kids across classrooms. In the PYP we talk about making the world a smaller place, helping students to develop an understanding of our world through the lenses of six transdiciplinary themes. Can we truly do this within the confines of a classroom?

My ideal exhibition would have students collaborating with others from across the globe. Sharing in their learning and their approach to change with students beyond the walls of their own classroom. Our discussions yesterday helped me to realise that the initial focus for students would be on action, encouraging students to consider the areas in our world where they would like to help, to affect change. As these conversations continue, opening doors for discussions with others using tools like Edmodo, blogs and Voicethreads students in Europe can begin to share their ideas with students in Asia, the Nordic, Americas and the Pan-Pacific.

Last year our early focus was on moving students from topic to concept. I saw it then and I know it now, these 'topic to concept' discussions were very hard for the kids. They really didn't understand why. A colleague helped me to realise yesterday that by changing our approach the student would take themselves from topic to concept. So my ideal Exhibition would have students connecting with others who care about similar issues. As they connect with each other and talk about the action they can take their conversations will naturally lead them to the underlying concepts.

The combined inquiry will continue individually and together as the students build their knowledge, share their understanding and through their combined actions, affect change together. The ideal exhibition group will consist of students from multiple classrooms across multiple countries. Students will present and talk about their understandings in multiple languages, especially their home languages.

How do you encourage you students to consider other perspectives and collaborate during exhibition?