What is the Exhibition?

The PYP Exhibition represents a significant event in the life of a PYP school and student, synthesizing the essential elements of the PYP and sharing them with the whole school community. As a culminating experience it is an opportunity for students to exhibit the attributes of the International Baccalaureate (IB) learner profile that have been developing throughout their engagement with the PYP.
Students are required to engage in a collaborative, transdisciplinary inquiry process that involves them in identifying, investigating and offering solutions to real-life issues or problems. The central idea selected must be of sufficient scope and significance to warrant a detailed investigation by all students.
Source: PYP Exhibition Guidelines, IBO July 2009

A Parents Guide to the PYP Exhibition

Purpose The PYP Exhibition has a number of key purposes: for students to engage in an in-depth, collaborative inquiry to provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate independence and responsibility for their own learning to provide students with an opportunity to explore multiple perspectives for students to synthesize and apply their learning of previous years and to reflect upon their journey through the PYP to provide an authentic process for assessing student understanding to demonstrate how students can take action as a result of their learning to unite the students, teachers, parents and other members of the school community in a collaborative experience that incorporates the essential elements of the PYP to celebrate the transition of learners from primary to middle/secondary education
This year the unit is under the Transdisciplinary Theme:
Where we are in place and time Focus subject areas: Social Studies, PSPE Focus strand: Continuity and change through time The study of the relationships between people and events through time; its influences on the present and its implications for the future. The students will be guided by the central idea: Playing with ideas can reveal possibilities and can cause shifts in thinking. Big Idea: Potential

The Process (in brief)

Students: select an issue that is meaningful to them as well as connected to their immediate life experiences. engage in teambuilding activities and develop essential agreements on how to work together. form questions that help them gain a deeper understanding of the issue and view it from multiple perspectives. research the issue, using primary and secondary sources. consider the probable and preferable future of their issue consider ways of taking action. choose a means of formally sharing their learning with the wider community. formally reflect on the entire process.

What does the Exhibition unit look like?

The written part will consist of the students research as well as individual Exhibition Journals (these may be on the blogs). The Exhibition Journal is the ongoing record of the thinking and work each student does leading up to the actual Exhibition. The journal reflects the process and progress that is being made as a team, as well as an individual. The expressive part of the Exhibition could include drama, dance, music, art, video, demonstrations, oral and IT presentations, etc as the students share their new understandings with the NIST community.

All assessment of the Exhibition will be done within the school. The class teacher will be involved in the monitoring of progress throughout the Exhibition process and the students will be involved in self-assessment.
Evaluation and reflections will be carried out through the use of observations and rubrics.

Your role as a parent:

Play a supporting role the key word is support, be an encourager Recognising the exhibition as a whole process and not as a product If possible, attending the class Checkpoints sessions Respecting your childs process it is their work and it should be done by them Asking questions about what your child is doing and what they think about what theyre learning Listen to what your child tells you about his/her progress Providing practical assistance when possible - connecting them with people who are knowledgeable about their issue, helping them get to visits/interviews, etc Attending the celebration on May 9th, 2013 and celebrating the completion of the incredible independent inquiry that your child has been involved in. Not critically comparing your childs Exhibition to that of another All the Exhibition Journeys will be completely different Not pressuring your child just let it happen! The teachers will be guiding the students and making sure that everyone achieves