The 2014 ISPP Grade 5 Exhibition Parents' Information Evening...a Successful Night of Dialogue!

Image credit: All photos Courtesy of Alison Stanton

Thank you so much to the many parents and students who came to our Exhibition Parents' Information Evening last Thursday. The Exhibition teaching team thoroughly enjoyed the high quality conversations about issues connecting to our central idea this year, "Human beings have the. We also hope that all who attended have a much deeper understanding about what the Exhibition truly is, a collaborative inquiry initiated by the students into global issues that hopefully culminates with some sort of action based on students' new knowledge. We also thank all of you who took the time to fill out the slips with information relating to how you might be able to facilitate the students' inquiries based on your own expertise. If you missed this meeting, you may view the Google Slides presentation by checking out the "For Parents" section of this blog or by clicking the link below:

For Parents Section of this Blog

Parents and guardians, please remember to fill out the information form on the "For Students" section of this blog with your child as well. You can reach this form at the following link:

For Students Section of this Blog

We look forward to the official start of the 2014 Exhibition tomorrow morning!

Grade 5 Exhibition of 2014 Parents' Information Night is Coming!

Dear Grade 5 Parents,

The Grade 5 students will soon begin a culminating experience of all their learning in Elementary School, the PYP Exhibition. We would like to invite you and your Grade 5 child to attend the PYP Exhibition Information Evening on Thursday 27th March 2014. The event will be held in the Media Centre on the elementary campus. We will start promptly at 5:30pm.

During the presentation, you will receive information on:

• What is the Grade 5 Exhibition

• Its purpose

• The role of the students, parents and teachers

• Ways you can support your child at home

We look forward to seeing you and your child there.

Sincerely,

The PYP Exhibition Team

Ms. Bridget (G4/5 Teacher)

Mr. Jon (G4/5 Teacher)

Ms. Carolyne (EAL Teacher)

Ms. Susan (LS Teacher)

Ms. Kim (Acting Elementary Principal)

Please follow the Grade 5 Exhibitions blog by email!

Parents, teachers, mentors, and especially students will be very busy during this year's Grade 5 Exhibition.

Sometimes we may be so busy, gasp, that we forget to check this blog for updates...

Never fear!!!

You can "Follow" this blog very easily. Just search for the form on this page, beneath the calendar, that prompts you to enter your email address. Once you do this, hit submit, and verify that you are a human being, not a bot. You will then receive a final confirmation form in your email. Click on this link and you will be set to receive all updates from this blog! 

We highly recommend that students, parents, teachers, and mentors all follow this blog. 

Please see below for a graphic that might help you find the "Follow this blog" form.

Calling All Mentors! Find the Document Covering Our First Meeting in the Mentor Section of this Blog!

Image Credit: Pablo E. Fabisch, Les Adventures de Telemaque. via http://paesmem.stanford.edu/html/proceedings_4.html

Thank you so much to all of the mentors who came to share ideas both about what the Exhibition means to them and their thoughts on what mentors should or could do for students throughout the Exhibition. You can find a link to the Google Doc we all created by checking the "For Mentors" page (the "dropdown" menu above) or by clicking the following link:

For Mentors Page

Students Create Central Idea for the 2014 Grade 5 Exhibition!

Image by Ryan Leach via http://openclipart.org/

On Monday, March 3, the ISPP Grade 5 students met again with Ms. Kim Engasser to discuss the transdisciplinary theme, "Sharing the Planet", and to distill a central idea from it. Students worked together in groups of three or four to combine their own versions of pieces of the the transdisciplinary theme they found engaging. After this exercise, the Exhibition teachers facilitated a combination of the best parts of many of these groups' central ideas.

The resulting central idea for the 2014 Grade 5 ISPP Exhibition is:

Human beings have a right to have their basic needs met and the responsibility to share natural resources with other living things.

Having come up with this central idea, students will be taking a break from Exhibition preparatory meetings to focus on their current unit of inquiry on materials.

NEXT ON THE EXHIBITION AGENDA...

During the first week of the Exhibition starting on March 31, students will be exposed to many issues through guest speakers, a field trip, and small research sessions. As a parent, you can help your child prepare to select an issue that falls into the realm of our central idea by having conversations about problems both of you see in the world around you everyday.

Mentors, your attention please! Please remember the Mentor's Tea on Thursday, March 13 from 2:45 to 3:45 (at the latest) in Bridget's room.

The Exhibition Teaching Team looks forward to meeting with you again for a more in-depth discussion of the Exhibition and what it means to be a mentor.

You may want to check out documents related to this meeting prior to the meeting itself. 

You can find these documents in this folder:

For Mentor's Eyes

OR check the attachments listed on the invitation we have sent you over Calendar. 

Follow the ISPP Grade 5 Exhibition of 2014 on Twitter!

Image Credit: Sergej Khakimullin / Shutterstock via http://www.redorbit.com/

This year, the Grade 5 students will be incorporating many different technologies and social networking platforms into their Exhibition work; this will be in an effort to increase the collaborative aspect of the Exhibition as much as possible. These apps and technologies will expand upon what students have been learning all year and will include well known applications such as: Google Apps for Education (including Google Drive, Calendar, Docs, and Slides) and Blogger. Students also may use apps such as Voicethread, book making apps, threering, iMovie, and the Educreations suite.

Another platform they will be experimenting with is Twitter. As such, the Exhibition teaching team has created a Twitter account to be used by Exhibition students, teachers, mentors, and parents as a forum for sharing, commenting on, and presenting of new learning.

Our Twitter handle will be @ISPPExhibitions. Please follow us!

For now, any tweeting you see will be from Exhibition teachers. As such, we will be mostly tweeting links to news sites that may be of interest to students as they are searching for issues to explore throughout this Exhibition.

As the Exhibition picks up speed, students will be doing most of the reading and tweeting.

Stay tuned!

Second Exhibition Meeting Completed! Students Have Interpreted the Transdisciplinary Theme "Sharing the Planet"!

Grade 5 students met for the second time last week to learn about and interpret the transdisciplinary theme for the Exhibition at ISPP, "Sharing the Planet".

This theme can be described in the following manner, based on the PYP document, "Making the PYP Happen":

Sharing the planet

An inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other

people and with other living things; communities and the relationships within and between

them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution.

Students worked in groups to read through this descriptor, highlight words they were unfamiliar with, and to describe sections of the description in their own words. 

This is all part of the Exhibition process. Students start out by looking at the big picture of the unit in the form of an overarching theme and will be zooming in on concepts and issues that go into understanding this theme as the Exhibition progresses. In the coming weeks, students will be: creating a central idea to guide their inquiries through this unit, doing some initial research into various issues that could help them understand this central idea,  and writing questions about these issues based around the key concepts of form, change, function, connection, causation, perspective, responsibility, and reflection. 

Check out the photos below to see students in action and records of what they discussed together.