Exhibition Week 0

School Community Meeting

On Thursday evening, we held a presentation and meeting for students, parents, and teachers to learn about and discuss our school's inaugural PYP Exhibition to be held in about two months, on 26 April during our International Children's Day event.

I began the meeting by reviewing the description of the Exhibition on the International Baccalaureate Primary-Years-Program website and the directing everyone to the Exhibition Guidelines for further details.

Next, I delivered a short presentation. Here are the slides and notes:






I was happy to field many questions, which made it more conversational than a typical presentation. It was also an indication that the 'zen' of my slides was effective at stimulating thinking rather than simply containing information, a goal I set in the post Exhibition pre-Zen-tation.

Exactly the kind of energy we're looking for during this collaborative adventure.

After the presentation, we visited the JIES Grade 6 PYP Exhibition Wiki. All of the students' preparations and presentations will be linked to that web page, so it is important that everyone know how to find and make sense of it.

I could see relief in the parents' and administrators' eyes when they saw an organized way to document specific learning during what is, by necessity, a very nebulous 'assignment'.

Finally, we discussed and agreed to our PYP Exhibition Essential Agreements.



These were created collaboratively in class. Please note the inclusion of all of the PYP Attitudes. Everyone seemed satisfied with them as they are, so we agreed and adjourned the meeting. In the interest of transparency, all materials were posted on our class blog in a post similar to this one.

I'm most excited to see how the students react to having the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy. My hope is that being trusted to use their tablets and smartphones will inspire them to truly integrate the technology and connectivity into their learning, even if only after a bit of goofing around.

Very excited to get started on Monday and hope that my colleagues around the world will share and reflect online during this special time of the year for so many PYP students.