Exhibition Night, May 22, 2014 Schedule and Rotations

The Exhibition Evening is rapidly approaching. The students are busily putting together summative assessments, action plans, journals, and blogs to showcase their learning in an all encompassing presentation on the night of Thursday, May 22.

We would like to inform you of some times and procedures for this night that will hopefully ensure your enjoyment of this evening with your children and all of the Exhibition students. These procedures have been created to maximise the amount of discussion and presenting that the Exhibition students will engage in. We will allow everyone freedom to roam after each issue group has had the opportunity to discuss and present twice.

Exhibition Evening, Thursday, May 22

5:15 PM in Ms. Alison's Room (Students only): Grade 5 Exhibition students must return to ISPP. Students will, at this time, set up computers and technology for their kiosks, get into their Exhibition uniforms, and will be addressed by their Exhibition teachers.

6:00 - 6:25 PM on Basketball Court (All parents, teachers, mentors, experts, and students): Exhibition opening presentation. Welcome. Poems. Song.

6:25 - 6:30 PM: Exhibition students go to their venues in the Media Center, Ms. Bridget's room (36), and Mr. Jon's room (37). Parents, mentors, and experts follow their own children and students. Other guests choose which room venue to go to.

6:40 - 7:10 PM: Students do first round of short presentations followed by 10 minutes for parents to discuss issues with various groups in that venue.

7:10 - 7:15 PM: Adults rotate. From Media Center, adults go to Ms. Bridget's room. From Ms. Bridget's room, adults go to Mr. Jon's room. From Mr. Jon's room, adults go to Media Center.

7:15 - 7:40 PM: Students do second round of short presentations followed by short discussions with adults present.

7:40 - 8:00 PM: Adults and students may circulate freely and look at the Hall of Blogs, Guest Speaker Quadrants, and other issue groups' work while discussing learning with all students.

Thank You to Parents Who Came Into the Second Exhibition Open House and Exhibition 2014 Evening...

Again, the Exhibition teachers and students greatly appreciated parental visits on Friday, May 16! Students enjoyed discussing their action plans for how they will address their chosen issues and getting feedback from caring adults on group work, ideas, and presentations. As we discussed at the Parents' Information Evening, your continuing support of the students is a crucial aspect of their success during this unit. A million thanks go out to you for your efforts with all of our young learners.

We look forward to seeing all parents, experts, teachers, and mentors again at our 2014 Exhibition Evening this Thursday, May 22, at 6 PM on the basketball court. The children are preparing a short presentation to welcome all of you there before sharing their knowledge of their issues and their Exhibition journeys in Ms. Bridget's room, Mr. Jon's room, and the Elementary Media Center.

We will send out more detailed information about how the night will run closer to the evening itself.

Please fill out this survey about your perspectives on pollution!

Dear ISPP community members (and beyond),

If you have a few spare moments, please fill out this form from the Exhibition's Pollution Group. They would like to know your perspectives on pollution.

ISPP Pollution Survey

Image Credit: https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3685/10362491406_8c096967b2.jpg

Reminder: Tomorrow, Friday, May 16th, from 7:45 until 8:30, is parents' open house to discuss action plans and summative assessments!

Dear Parents,

As previously mentioned, tomorrow morning from 7:45 until 8:30 you are welcome to come to Room 36 and Room 37 to discuss the action plans and summative assessment plans of each issue group.

This will be an informal meeting as the children are very busy working on summative assessments to bring together all of the knowledge that they have been learning.

You may want to ask the students questions like:

• What are you working on this week?
• What action or actions has your group decided to take?
• Is your action a direct action, indirect action, or advocacy?
• Where will your action take place?
• Who will be the target audience for your action?
• What makes you think your action will help solve your issue?
• What are some challenges you might face in doing your action?
• What are you making to show all of your knowledge?
• What technology are you using as part of your action and/or your summative assessment?
• How are you dividing up the work between your group members?
• Is there a leader of your group?
• What things have you found challenging this week?

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Ms. Penny Fields, Country Director for the Peace Corps, Talks to Grade 5s About Action!

The Grade 5 Exhibition Teaching Team and the Grade 5 students greatly appreciated having a chat with Ms. Penny Fields, the Cambodia Country Director for the U.S. Peace Corps on Thursday, May 8. Ms. Fields discussed the activities of the Peace Corps around the world and talked about how volunteers assist in the development of Education and Health sectors in rural Cambodia. Students listened raptly as Ms. Fields told some of her own stories of being a Peace Corps volunteer in Gabon. Thank you for your visit and for inspiring the Grade 5s to think hard about the actions they will take next week to address their Exhibition issues!  

Thank you to all parents for coming to our Open House!

The Exhibition Teaching Team and the Exhibition students would like to express their deep thanks for your consultations from last Thursday, May 8! Students benefitted enormously from sharing their research findings with all of you.

Please check out their blog entries from our Useful Links page! We hope to see you all again this Friday, May 16 from 7:45-8:30 in Room 36 and Room 37 to discuss ACTION!

Please see photos of the Open House by checking out our Picasa Web Album.

Week 6, Pick Up...THE PACE!

Image Credit: YellowFilter https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/legalcode

Ok...now for a bit of variety, and a WHOLE LOT OF BUSY-NESS. Students should be by and large FINISHED with their research into their chosen issues early this week. What does this mean? Most groups should be dedicating their time to SORTING OUT this information, in the form of a summative assessment/synthesis, and MAKING CONNECTIONS between their new knowledge and the world around them.

These connections, we are hoping, are blossoming into ACTION PLANS that students will be putting together early this week. As part of constructing these action plans, students may be going on a field trip or listening to an expert specifically to find out about, discuss, or confirm what action can be taken to deal with their chosen issue.

Here is a bit of Mr. Jon's opening speech to his students this week that may also help you frame the work you are doing with students (and also might clear up some confusion over Action, Summative Assessment, and Presentation):

"This week, you have wrapped up your research but may be finding bits and pieces of information to fill in holes in your understanding of your issue.

This week, you are also bringing everything together into some sort of summative assessment that shows your new knowledge and answers all of your key concept questions (and more!). You have already decided what your summative assessment PRODUCT will be as part of your Summative Assessment Plan late last week. You will want to consult this plan throughout your work.

Now, try not to get this Summative Assessment confused with your Presentation on the Night and Day of the Exhibition (for the whole school community). By "Presentation" we mean, "How are you going to share your new knowledge and the entire Exhibition process with the whole school community?" As part of this PRESENTATION you may show your summative assessment, but overall the PRESENTATION will be bigger. It will include your summative assessment as a piece of evidence documenting the Exhibition journey, but will also showcase your journal and much more of the process.

You are also making a solid ACTION PLAN to address your issue this week. We are going to ask you and your group to think carefully about details of this action such as: what are you and your group actually going to do, what materials will you need to have, what places will you need to go to or use, what jobs will each person in your group have to accomplish to make your action successful, and what assistance will you require from teachers/parents/or experts. You will want to share this plan with your mentor at your meeting.

SPECIAL NOTE - Your summative assessment product will most likely be a part of your Action Plan.

Finally, we are going to go over a rubric with you that we will use to assess your entire trip through the Exhibition."

During Week 6 of the Exhibition Students Will Be...

BIG PICTURE for the Week

• Engaging in mostly "Sorting Out" and “Taking Action” activities related to their particular issue. Students are filling in holes in their research this week. Students are also completing action plans. Finally, students will also be shown the rubric that they and teachers will use to assess their Exhibition journey (Click here to see the Exhibition 2014 Rubric!).

little details for the week

Students, in their issue groups will:

• Be  doing final research about their issues on the internet and with other secondary sources, most likely as homework;
• Be reviewing how to accurately record bibliographic information in their journals using provided scaffolds;
• Be deciding what roles and tasks each student in the issue group must take on for this  week and next;
• Be sending thank you letters to local or international experts for the interviews, visits, or Skype meetings they have offered;
• Be meeting with guest speakers and experts from a variety of fields either on field trips or at school;
• Be summarizing the knowledge they get from each Primary or Secondary source;
• Be sharing these summaries with other group members at the end of the week;
• Be writing a reflection on the sixth week of the Exhibition about working on research and with their mentors, and about the status of their group work;
• Be completing a plan for some potential action they might take with their new knowledge that hopefully is: voluntary; self initiated; demonstrates responsibility and respect for selves, others, and/or the environment; and extends their own learning OR  has a wider social impact (Click here for Action Plan sheet!);
• And will be coming up with new questions they have been developing based on their issues, and arranging those based on concepts in their journals.

Reminder about Exhibition Parent's Open House tomorrow, Thursday, May 8 from 7:45 to 8:30 and Friday, May 16 from 7:45 to 8:30

Dear parents and guardians of the Grade 5 Exhibition Students,

Please remember that tomorrow, Thursday, May 8 from 7:45 - 8:30, we are going to have our first Open House meeting in your child's Exhibition' classroom (Rooms 36 and 37) in which you can come see what the Exhibition students have been up to for the past few weeks. 

We will have another Open House next Friday, May 16 from 7:45 - 8:30.

As part of this Open House, the Exhibition teachers would love you to talk to the Exhibition students, in small groups, about what they are finding out in their inquiries into their various issues and the process of the Exhibition in general. If you choose to come in on this morning, we will invite you to sit with a few groups of students and to have a chat with these students about the following items (amongst other things you may want to discuss):

• What have you and your group done so far related to the Exhibition?
• What have you learned about your issue so far?
• What plans do you have to collect more information?
• What are you trying to find out about your issue?
• Where have you gotten your information from? What experts?
• What tasks are you and your group trying to accomplish this week?
• What sorts of action can you take to address your issue?
• What sorts of action do organisations and other experts take to address your issue?
• What sorts of things did you have to do as a group in order to prepare for research?
• What is it like to have a mentor?

Students will have Exhibition journals, blogs, and research documents that you may want to discuss with them as well.

We  look forward to meeting all of you this week, AND/OR next Friday, May 16.

Thank you so much,

The 2014 Exhibition teaching team

Week 5 is here! PARENTS' OPEN HOUSE this week on Thursday, May 8 from 7:45 until 8:30!

We are over the halfway point in the Grade 5 Exhibition of 2014 this week! This week students are continuing to research into their issues, either through interviewing primary sources (experts), going on field trips, or looking into secondary sources of information in the form of books, websites, movies, and each other's notes!

Students, in their issue groups will:

• Be brainstorming and doing research about their issues on the internet and with other secondary sources; 
• Be meeting with parents who come in for our Parents' Open House on Thursday morning at 7:45; 
• Be reviewing how to accurately record bibliographic information using Easybib and Google documents; 
• Be deciding what roles and tasks each student in the issue group must take on for this week and next; 
• Be sending out more letters for the purpose of asking local or international experts for interviews, visits, or Skype meetings, and for thanking those same experts for their attention (if they have met with students already); 
• Be meeting with guest speakers and experts from a variety of fields either on field trips or at school 
• Be summarizing the knowledge they get from each Primary or Secondary source; 
• Be sharing these summaries with other group members at the end of the week; 
• Be writing a reflection on the fifth week of the Exhibition about working on research and with their mentors, and about the status of their group work; 
• Be brainstorming about ideas for presenting what they have learned during the actual Exhibition nights and days; 
• Be coming up with new questions they have been developing based on their issues, and arranging those based on concepts in their journals; 
• And will be brainstorming about ideas for action with issues groups and the whole year group.

SPECIAL NOTE FOR MENTORS

Mentors, please check out our For Mentors section of this blog for a list of ideas to work on with your issues groups.

SPECIAL NOTES FOR PARENTS

Parents, please remember that we have a Parents' Open House on Thursday, May 8 from 7:45 until 8:30 in Mr. Jon's room and Ms. Bridget's room. Please come and be prepared to meet with various issues groups to discuss and share what these students have been doing and learning during their inquiries as part of our Exhibition this year. We will send out a reminder as we get closer to the day. 

Also, please remember that Friday, May 9, there is no class for students due to professional development for teachers on that day. 

Finally, please check out some of the reflections students have been writing after meeting with guest speakers and taking field trips on our Useful Links section of this blog and our latest photos on our Photos and Media page!