Reflecting on the Exhibition

Reflecting on the Exhibition

My first time leading the exhibition was a mind bending experience. I want to take a moment to reflect on it now, before I begin the school year leading up to the next exhibition.

This was my 4th year teaching PYP and I had seen 3 exhibitions before attending exhibition training in Coventry, England. The first two exhibitions I saw were humongous affairs with 100 students and 10 teachers in a grade level. The third was a much smaller affair with 15 students, similar to what I worked with. I was inspired by what was possible to accomplish with a large team and spent a good part of my first exhibition reconciling my goals for my students with the realities of the resources of a small school. I was fortunate to have an experienced PYP coordinator and a library teacher who worked with me all year to embed as many skills into the year's lessons as possible.

Here are a few of the things we did before hand to get the students ready.

When I went to the workshop, we were encouraged to develop a plan for our ideal situation, here is mine: I did my best to stick with the plan

Ideal situation

Big idea: The issue that matters to me, my community, my world

 In December I had a parent information evening in the form of a flipped classroom.  The students jigsawed the student information packet, then we put together an event to teach their parents what would be happening. Parents were required to read the parent information handbook and view a PowerPoint before arriving.

 The students developed a variety of games and skits to reinforce important ideas from the reading. At the end of the evening I offered to answer any remaining questions (proud teacher moment, there were none!)
We did this to establish who was responsible for the exhibition (the students) and reinforce that the students would control their learning, topics, and actions. I kept my role to coaching their inquiry and coordinating school resources. It was a great night and I think that it really helped some of my parents learn to trust their children to take control of their learning.

Here is how I established the role change for the unit

On the last day before the exhibition I removed all of the student furniture from the room as well as any extra teaching materials to open up as much of the space as I could. I covered the windows and doors in paper, and put up a sign saying "Under New Management" to create teh impression of a business changing ownership.
When they returned to school on Monday I gave them the keys to the room and we got started. We had a discussion in which we reviewed what the exhibition is, and I transferred classroom leadership to them.  

The big change

The first step that they took was in choosing the layout of the classroom.  They choose the general classroom layout, where we would meet as a group and where they would sit, who they would sit with where they would sit, and any type of desk/chair/pillow configuration. This simple act was a constant visual of their responsibility. When they would complain that they were uncomfortable, a classmate would remind them that they had the power to change their seating. This autonomy began trickling into other areas include research methods...

Their classroom furniture arrangement

It might seem silly, but it worked. When they were frustrated with a line of inquiry they were studying, the form of artwork they had chosen, or the frustrations with their actions not going as planned, they helped each other to find autonomy and  revise their goals. They didn't need my approval and they learned to make decisions about their learning that I had been trying to teach all year.

Establishing a system to support student's staying organized 

I wanted to set them up with a system to maintain their notes. I decided that we would keep a journal using brass fasteners to add new note pages daily. Each day (in theory) we would journal at the beginning and end of the day, track where we were in the unit Day 1/28, pause to reflect on a quote that related to our progress in the unit, and have a 5 minute quick write to keep our minds elastic.  

Our template

We added in each piece that we worked on, all research notes, data collection, drafts and revisions. In the end the journal was too bulky and we divided it into two journals. Part 1: Form, Function, Causation, Change and Part 2: Connection, Perspective, Responsibility and Reflection. This allowed students to keep their journal entries, notes, and otherwise loose sheets of paper so that they could find what they needed quickly and easily.

How it went

Overall, it was a great process. The students stayed motivated and on task.  They really dug into the research and many of them found passions for global issues through their inquiry. While they not everyone accomplished all of their goals, they did all learn a lot about how they learn.  

They were all able to choose a global issue, research it, make connections to the community, and take an action that affected our school community.  I think that this process helped to prepare them to be more independent in MYP.  Our celebration at the end of the unit was a fantastic night of students sharing their learning, their passions, and reflecting on their actions.

Goals for this year

This year I want to:

1.  improve my constancy with having students write the central idea for each unit
2. introduce Cornell-Scratch notes earlier in the year so they are confident when the exhibition begins
3. develop Key Concept question cubes to reinforce the KC as a way of evaluating a subject
4. Increase my student's motivation to take an action during the year.
5. Increase my practice in having student inquiry lead the discussion

To achieve these goals I plan to:

1. Switch my classroom focus from the white board to the unit board
2. Implement Cornell-Scratch notes in each unit 
3. Begin creating Key Concept Question cubes during workshop for my first two key concepts in unit one
4. Listen carefully to student questions, and identify their interest in the units, then encourage actions (Inspired by Chapter 4 of The Power of our Words, Responsive Classroom)
5. To refine these skills I am reading Dive into Inquiry with the PYP Book Study Group