PYP Exhibition Essential to the Primary Years Programme

The PYP Exhibition is an essential element of the Primary Years Programme. It is an exciting event where all Year 5 students showcase their expertise. Students apply the five essential elements of the PYP, which include Knowledge, Concepts, Learner Profile Attributes, Approaches to Learning and Action. Because of the collaborative nature of this inquiry, it unifies the Year 5 somerset College community. PYP Exhibition is about giving the students an opportunity to participate in inquiry. It allows them to show agency and act as a global citizen. It is also fun for the entire community! During our PYP Exhibition journey we explored the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). We learnt about real world problems. Our overarching central idea was 'Our world encounters a range of challenges and opportunities'. We had the opportunity to refine our central idea as a group.

Our experience was divided into three sections:

PHASE 1: TUNING IN AND STARTING OUR JOURNEY

During the first few weeks of planning for the PYP Exhibition, students were involved in a variety of learning engagements. We investigated the central idea and learnt what the PYP Exhibition was all about. We even had the opportunity to participate in an SDG treasure hunt around the school. This provocation helped us learn about the SDG’s. We also had four incredible guest speakers including Marco Renai, Baden U’Ren, Laura Griffiths and Lann Levinge who all strengthened our passion for various global issues. At the end of this phase, we had lots to consider as we selected an area of focus.

PHASE 2: GOING FURTHER AND INVESTIGATING

During this phase, we began the research segment! The issue we selected was of personal interest or significance. We categorised our issue into one of the six transdisciplinary themes. This helped us to create our PYP Exhibition groups. The next stage was to link our issue to one (or more) of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Before we could start researching, we had to create three lines of inquiry based on our topic and form questions. Now that we had our questions we launched into some serious research! For more than 10 weeks we dedicated loads of time and effort into becoming knowledgeable about our topics. During this phase we also created specific central ideas for our PYP Exhibition groups. These related to our transdisciplinary themes and issues. We also began constructing our written components.

PHASE 3: TAKING ACTION … AND THE BIG DAY!

It was finally the time for us express our knowledge in front of the community. During this phase we got to create our visuals including posters, interactives, models and more. Our classrooms turned into constructive mayhem! We also participated in a PYP Exhibition photo challenge where we became excellent photographers, while we captured brilliant pictures relating to our issues to be displayed at PYP Exhibition. Students showed agency by growing their own vegetables, building websites and educating their peers about their issue.

October 10 finally arrived, and we were so excited to share our knowledge with the school community. Our teachers and aides did a brilliant job assisting us throughout the journey to ensure that we did the best we could. We presented our work beautifully on the day. We were extremely proud of our work and of course we had an incredible time.