This article from Issue 31 of the PYP Inclusive newsletter, was published by the Victorian PYP Network in September 2010. It was written by by David Kainey and Luke Whitehouse from United World College of South East Asia, Singapore.
At the end of the last academic year, we undertook our inaugural exhibition in our first year of expanding up to fifth grade. As a school undergoing accreditation at the time many thought we were crazy choosing to stage an exhibition when we did not have to; however, as experienced PYP teachers we knew just how much students gain from going through the exhibition process and we were reluctant to deny our students this opportunity to grow and develop so much. We decided to take the opportunity of planning an exhibition to reflect, not only the culmination of all the students’ PYP learning, but also the values and ethos of our College. UWCSEA places a high emphasis on social service, with every grade level from K1 upwards working with both a local and a global service, building to every Grade 11 student going on a project week in the South-East Asia region with a concern they have been associated with during their time at the college.
We decided that not only would an exhibition based on this ensure that we reflected the school’s philosophy, but that it would provide previously identified issues with which the students were both familiar and already frontloaded. Our ultimate goal in outcome differentiation would be for some primary aged students to go through the rigorous procedures of setting up their own Global Concern for the school, a bureaucratic maze that only committed secondary school students generally navigate. This was a best case scenario as it is very rare for primary students to have that much commitment and organization. At the very least, we knew that students would be interacting with issues that were available at community and regional level and these would be problems that they could see solutions for, or at least paths that would lead to, solutions.
Our central idea was “Organizations are established to help communities that are at risk”. As well as drawing on experiences from throughout the year, we deconstructed the central idea and ensured that we all had a common understanding of key terms and concepts such as sustainability, aid relief, emergency response and what organizations such as NGOs do. We had experimented with students creating their own central ideas and lines of inquiry in previous units, as well as even students designing their own assessments to assess their understanding of the big ideas. The students were well versed in inquiry terminology and PYP metalanguage and we had ensured the units leading up to the exhibition gave the students the experience of presenting their learning in a variety of ways. Online note taking such as Diigo had been used, as well as groups collaborating using Google Docs (and we used Google Wave as soon as it was released on trial), and we had heavily emphasized academic honesty in referencing sources and images. In that way, while we frontloaded the content of the unit in the first two weeks, we had frontloaded the skills over the course of the year.
In our planning we had outlined a timeline that we thought we should follow. The first two weeks dealt with frontloading and exploring themes such as disaster relief response and exposing students to the range of communities that could be at risk. At the end of the second week the students had identified their areas of interest and were ready to write their central ideas and lines of inquiry. These had to fit underneath our overarching umbrella central idea. We then explored ways to contact organizations associated with their areas of interest to generate interviews with real experts possessing knowledge not available on the internet. After that students arranged to go and take action where possible related to their inquiries. Finally, they presented this at our exhibition. Throughout, the students kept a process journal and this was to be the main assessment focus of the exhibition, along with showing their action and how they recorded their progress. By recording their initial thinking at the tuning in stage, we could map the course their thinking took and ultimately be able to assess the learning that took place over the course of the exhibition process. We outlined a skeleton of how we thought the unit needed to progress in order to meet deadlines. While not prescribing specific activities, we ensured we covered less, but uncovered more and that there was plenty of opportunity for the students to construct meaning in their own time.
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In reflection, we were particularly pleased with how we utilized primary resources during this exhibition, but in some ways we had no choice. We had all experienced exhibitions where the students only demonstrated a shallow amount of surface learning because of the temptation to regurgitate internet or book information without connecting with it and resynthesizing it. Due to the changing and very local nature of these issues, there was actually no reliable and up-to-date internet, let alone printed, resources available. Therefore, going to places such as the Cancer Society, the SPCA, a local cyber-addiction clinic or the Red Cross, to name a few examples, was the only way to find out more. And this also brought out the best in the students. Calling up the offices and dropping in with the parents was a very empowering experience for the students. To do this did require active buy-in from the parents, but this made this a more powerful community exhibition in its own right. It brought them personally closer to the issues they were inquiring into and made deeper individual connections. We found that bringing in experts to talk to us in the first few weeks allowed for students to associate personally with the matters and issues – this brought the issues to life with real people they could meet and talk to. Due to our school’s wide range of contacts in the service community in the region we had plenty of willing volunteers to come in and talk to the grade. High school students from affected areas, scholars from communities at risk, as well as project week students came and shared their experience with our students and fielded the surprisingly mature and insightful questions our students posed. We are lucky to have public speakers come to our campus and so Greg Mortenson (Pennies for Peace) and John Wood (Room to Read) provided a great stimulus, motivation and inspiration for two groups in particular.
By choosing an exhibition that meant something to the students in their everyday school life and, indeed to every child at our school, it meant that the issues they were engaging with were within the scope of the students learning. Action – meaningful action – indeed, a range of meaningful action was therefore more available for the students to take. Action in its range of forms had been modeled in the school environment and the students were then able to make choices depending on their inquiry. A group interested in whaling, for instance, spread awareness and educated some grade one classes who had just done a unit on endangered animals. Another group brought a Red Cross training team to school to educate students on the Red Cross organization’s scope and structure and to lead some first aid training. One group raised money by organizing a sponsored walk. Another group helped with clerical work at a charity where they were unable to actually help with the terminally ill patients. By volunteering their time, it allowed the workers more time with the patients. The group inspired by Greg Mortenson’s talk set up a Global Concern for our school, with Pennies for Peace being established in our school as a grade global concern in the Middle School. By contacting and interviewing experts and contacting organizations for interviews, the students became empowered to do more and believe that they were not too young and they could start to make a change in the world. A group researching ethnocide received a personal letter from Wade Davis, an explorer-in-residence for National Geographic and watching his ‘TED Talks’ inspired a student to research further into Peranakan culture in Singapore. This was a powerful part of our exhibition. Because students had more time to work on this aspect, they gained a deeper understanding of their inquiries. Rather than hitting a lot of areas in a shallow fashion, they were personally constructing meaning of these situations and this enduring understanding was reflected in the exhibition itself.
In staging the students’ work, we started off with an opening performance or ceremony to the parents. This helped to set the context for them and outline again our focus on reflecting the process the students went through rather than being judged merely on a showy product, which may not belie deeper understanding. It also made it special to our students, sharing their journeys with their parents before anyone else. We had photographic montages, keynote speeches and a song before we moved the parents upstairs to the classes. We timed this at the start of the day so all parents could attend on their way to work and especially so fathers could easily attend. In presenting their work, we really had to focus the students on discussing their journeys of learning rather than the end result. We encouraged the use of photography throughout so that the students had a visual record of their activity throughout the whole unit and by having these on display gave them something to talk around rather than having a ton of small printed reports with copy and pasted data. This was key for us because it is natural for an elementary student to assume that more is better and that their voice and opinion is less valid than a so-called expert in a secondary resource. We hopefully left a lasting impression on the students that their conclusions and perspectives were valid and meaningful and that they were the actual experts through their exhibition work.
The question is, how much difference has this made to the students themselves? We would like to believe that it has made them more compassionate and open-minded people. We know they will take this away with them as a memorable experience and a time of great personal growth and development. Even better, if it has changed their mindset and has made them proactive in their desire to keep solving issues. For the students who stay on at our school they are in a climate of service and global concerns. Maybe that will mean it takes less effort outside their comfort zone to get something going because it is there around them? We hope not. We have many students who continue to go that extra mile and get involved with particular issues that resonate with them. But really it is in the students who move to pastures new that the enduring learning will be more thoroughly tested. Will they continue to be proactive when it is not in their immediate climate? Will they make that extra effort to be proactive in service if in a school without an environment of service? That is what we hope for ultimately. We want compassionate, proactive, future citizens, who feel they can make a change for the good. We feel proud of what we have done with this exhibition, particularly in how we have written it to be particularly meaningful to our school’s identity and ethos. In this we feel that it is a very PYP unit – after all the beauty of the PYP is in the ability and the freedom to write units that are relevant, meaningful and engaging to a student body. And in that way we can judge it a success.
The UWCSEA East Exhibition 2010 team were class teachers Luke Whitehouse, Mario Saez, Rob O’Toole and the PYP Coordinator, David Kainey.