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Discover a New Guided PYPx Student Planner

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The PYP Exhibition is an exciting, and sometimes confusing time for teachers and students. Join us, as we walk through a beautifully designed, editable student exhibition planner and accompanying support lessons to simplify your exhibition process. Created by Cindy, these resources are sure to scaffold your students through the exhibition journey, and provide answers to frequently asked questions about organizing, facilitating, and reflecting on a PYP Exhibition.

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I was invited by the Faria Group to lead a webinar on the PYP Exhibition. This is one of my most favorite things to talk about so it was an easy 'yes'. The enhancements to the PYP have brought about a lot of clarity (in my opinion) as to what the Exhibition is and what it can be. Here is a summary of the ideas shared in the webinar:

This is the 'one word' that I kept thinking of as I was prepping for the webinar. The degree to which agency is present in the Exhibition will likely correlate with the degree to which it exists in all of your learning spaces. If you want students to be agents of their own learning, start now - don't wait for Exhibition! And if you don't know where to start, tap into this holy grail of all things agency as curated by Taryn Bond Clegg.

These are two films I suggested sharing to all members of the learning community as the journey begins. The first one, Alike, will help people see why we want kids thinking for themselves and moving independently about the world. The second one, by John Spencer, will help remind us that it all might be a total failure - but that it doesn't mean WE are total failures. Play them back-to-back to get best effect. 🙂

NOTE: John has a great follow-on video called When Projects Fail which may/may not also come in handy!

The IB Principles to Practice are DEFINITELY worth reading - in particular in relation to the Exhibition. Figuring out the purpose of the exhibition, how it will look in your context, what roles each member of the learning community will play, and the degree of release toward a student-led exhibition, are key factors to consider before getting started.

Collaboration is one of the key components of the exhibition and again, this won't just happen unless we are intentional about it. Destination Imagination has some great resources to help both develop team relationships and then reflect on how they might be made even stronger.

Figuring out what you think/hope the exhibition will look like is a great start. I think most of us have visions of a straight, uncomplicated, but long path. Reality, it looks a bit like spaghetti junction, most of the time. Having a plan before you start is great. Your plan could look something like this:

Identify a global issue or opportunity that has meaning to the student(s) and connects to the school or local context

Collaborate to develop central idea(s)

Identify group or individual lines of inquiry and student questions

Connect with mentors and use class time to focus on ongoing Exhibition inquiries

Designate 'check-in' times with mentors to monitor and document progress, and to provide feedback and feedforward.

Decide on the culmination of the exhibition to share the learning process. Consider the environmental impact of the culminating event when looking for ways to make the learning visible.

Reflect on the Exhibition process

You will then want to think about assessment. What I like about this is that students are asked to have a strong hand in creating their own success criteria. What does that mean or look like? I took the main features of the exhibition and the assessment guidelines and then created a few question to guide students in assessing their learning. Great to share these with the students and to get their input on them too.

Start with the end in mind...

On the topic of assessing, or thinking ahead to what is coming, I like to have students take a leaf from Seth Godin's "Ship It" manual and speak into the future about their own success and achievements before they begin. A powerful way to take a moment to think about what they hope to get out of this process.

Exhibition is not meant to be a solo experience for kids or teachers. Key to the success of the exhibition are mentors. I wrote a post about different ways of including adult support for the exhibition in a post called We(Chat) Are The Champions. It has some good stuff on different ways of making the most out of mentors.

Step by step...

I am not a fan of checklists but I do understand that having some sort of framework when undertaking such a big project is absolutely necessary. Here is my six step version of a checklist. I just implore you to not think of it as written in stone. It's just a guide so when you and/or your kids are wound up in spaghetti junction, you have some idea of which way is up.

Let's get ready...

So, we are now (almost) ready to go! But here's one last-ish word on what that means. It can be really easy to get bogged down with 'research'. I encourage you to consider a bias toward action - a phrase that comes from Design Thinking and the Stanford d.School. Equally, consider developing a Producer Mindset - different from a consumer mindset. Raising Producer Kids by Philip Guo is a great read.

Great questions are the key to a great exhibition and if you want to brush up on your skills in relation to helping kids pose and pursue great questions, look no further than The Right Question Institute.

A tool you might want to consider is the Post-it App. I love this app. It is not a 'must have' but it does make this process fun and there are so many ways to use the kids thinking to build their understanding of the questions they are asking and to help them figure out which questions they REALLY want to go for. Here are some other ways of organizing and categorizing questions:

This visible thinking routine: question sorts, is probably one of my favorites. Questions that end up in the bottom right quadrant are the ones most likely to generate engagement, insights, creative action, deep understanding, or new possibilities, while also being questions that one really cares deeply about investigating. After you have these questions, you could take them and sort them again into concept categories:

Everything you need to know about these cards is on this blog. Check out this post to get started.

A new edition to my Exhibition toolkit (and one I have not tried with PYPX students but use regularly with our XBlock students) is a project summary. This is a one-pager that students can use to summarize their thinking, free from jargon, and with their voice at the front of everything. This would be a tool I would use to conference with students and help them to put a voice to the nature of the project they are about to undertake.

Conceptually thinking...

When students have created lines of inquiry based on concepts, I have found some of them will often get this 'now what?' look about them. What do I do now? The following chart would be a great tool to guide conversations with students about what they might be doing if they were pursuing a line of inquiry connected to one of these concepts. This idea of connecting verbs with concepts was first shared by Cristina Milos and I took her idea and added these prompts.

Action is a key component of the exhibition. Under the PYP Enhancements, action is broken down into a number of categories. These next two images show what those categories are and then the second, what students might find themselves doing depending on what they are trying to achieve:

Link to full post

Learner Profile and ATLs

The following cards are under construction. I am working on the icons in collaboration with our Early Years teachers and I want to work on the language of the guiding/reflective questions. If you have any advice, I would love to hear it!

Suzanne Kitto has generously shared her work on ATLs via her Twitter account. Rebekah Madrid has bounced off this work to create ATLs for MYP students. I was inspired by both educators and made a set of EY ATL cards. You can't go wrong.

In the webinar I pulled math as an example and shared some information about three different ways that three different educators have used to bring math into the PYP. All the details about this can be found in this post.

Documenting the journey

I think most people have ways that they enjoy using (adults and kids alike) to document learning. This might depend on access to technology or student interest, but for the most part, taking the time to document what is going on is a key part of the Exhibition journey. The night before the webinar I had a slide prepped with bullet points about documenting. Then I put my daughter to bed and read "Ish" by Peter H. Reynolds. In that book, Ramon (and Peter) reminded me that it really is ok to NOT document everything - the learning still exists. Love it.

Staging the Exhibition...

When you and your students are getting ready to share, I offer these three things to remember:

1. It is a celebration! Be joyful! Have fun! And remember to celebrate the process, the failures, the false starts, the milestones, the massive achievements. It is all part of the journey.

2. Be kind to the environment. Consider the message your physical products are sending to your audience.

3. Keep asking yourself, "Who's fingerprints are on the work?" - this is a phrase my friend and fellow design teacher uses to remind us that at the end of the day, it's the kid's work. Let their academic voice shine through.

And to the students, I would say:

I will post a link to the webinar when it becomes available. I want to make sure I thank all the educators who so generously share their work with the rest of us. I also want to thank Leila Holmyard from Managebac who helped me think through the process of exhibition and was so open to helping me synthesise and expand on my wonderings based on the PYP Enhancements, and Kelby Zenor of Faria Education for inviting me to the Webinar.

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I was invited by the Faria Group to lead a webinar on the PYP Exhibition. This is one of my most favorite things to talk about so it was an easy 'yes'. The enhancements to the PYP have brought about a lot of clarity (in my opinion) as to what the Exhibition is and what...

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The following resources will support you in creating your own materials that will support your students. These are examples that you are free to use as is, or modify to suit your students and your school.

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The following resources will support you in creating your own materials that will support your students. These are examples that you are free to use as is, or modify to suit your students and your school.

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We promote use of the Sustainable Development Goals in learning so that children can contribute to a better future for all. From citizenship and justice to climate change and the environment, inspire children to make a difference!

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World's Largest Lesson : Flipgrid Discovery Partner

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Check out World's Largest Lesson Topic templates and use them in your classroom.

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# 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

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# 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

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# 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

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# 12 Responsible Consumption and Production

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# 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

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# 16 Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

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Student Digital Planner

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Action is a key component of the PYP exhibition. In this exciting session with Chad, discover how action can thrive as a key learning tool, even in these unprecedented times. Explore how you can use action to launch the exhibition, extend research, support the identification of issues, and serve as a response to learning. Take-away strategies, tools and best practices to make action a priority, even in the virtual learning environment.

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Inspire your Group- How to Mentor the PYP Exhibition Successfully

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Do your exhibition students have either glorious plans to change the world or perhaps very specific targets that are locked in one place and time? Are you finding that their passions don’t align with real-world issues? How do you find a balance to help inspire them to what really matters (to them)? Learn about the power of questioning and the value of agency in inspiring your exhibition group to achieve their full potential. Join in to learn how to be an inspirational mentor to your Exhibition group, especially in these challenging times of blended and online learning.

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https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/13CYRILEyLnWRwG3js16i40KRQPkJVuDLHKkcUo0YR_E/edit?usp=sharing

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Find your purpose, Connect to our world TEMPLATE

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The following information is a direct cut and paste from my classroom blog. The blog is used as a communication tool between home and school. I also post homework, ideas, polls, and all things related to life in 4D. Over the course of the year, we have gone from "What is a blog?" to "Can you please put it on the blog?" and now "I wrote my first blog post last night!" as we start our own journey into blogging in our Exhibition groups.

In the process of unpacking our Central Idea, I shared a number of videos that opened up amazing discussions. Some were oldies but goodies, some were hot off the internet, all of them were inspiring. If you are looking for a longer list than the five I am sharing below, take a look at the playlists created by Terri Eichholz of Engage Their Minds. They are for students and teachers via Pinterest (which, thankfully is unblocked at my school now!) and I plan on sharing the link with my students to peruse the library of inspiration!

"Taking Action" is a big part of the PYP and also a big part in our Exhibition. Before we even began, I was hearing the deafening roar of, "We are going to hold a sale...". In reading the idea behind action as a key component of the PYP, I wasn't getting the connection to the selling of stuff. I reached out to my friend Marina who put me in touch with the work of Richard Black, whom I had visited (virtually) before. He had a great way of explaining a much more fleshed out picture of what action was. I turned his words into cute cards, but they are all his thinking. We have them up as a permanent visual that in reality, we are taking action at all times which I actually think is freeing the kids up from the 'bake sale' idea and potentially (I will keep you posted) opening them up to a more diverse path of action.

What inspires your kids?

How do you encourage authentic action?
On to the class blog post....
Today we looked at the central idea for our Exhibition unit:

We discussed as a class what this meant:

We then watched some videos to support our understanding of the central idea and the Exhibition process:

Follow the Frog - This video is all about what the Exhibition is NOT about. It is not about going over the top with wild, crazy expectations. It is about inquiring into topics that you are passionate about and finding out what action you can take to make an impact. Take a BIG issue and think about taking action on a SMALL scale. It doesn't have to stop there, however it is often the smallest of actions that can make the biggest impact.

Kindness Boomerang - This video highlights how one small action can make an impact that can grow exponentially. You might not ever know the impact of your actions and one action is never too small in the eyes of the person it impacts.

Emily's Hair - Some people say "but I'm just a kid, what can I do to make an impact?"...those people need to hear 3 year old Emily's story. She shows that through the simple action of cutting her hair, she is making an impact. It doesn't matter how old you are, it matters how much you care.

The Race - The Exhibition is like this race. We have been 'training' for it all through our years in the Junior School. We are prepared. We can do it! BUT....we might fall. It doesn't matter when, where, why, or how hard we fall, what matters is what we do AFTER we fall. That will be a determining factor in the success of our Exhibition journey.

Sarah's Softball Story - This is one of my favorite stories. To me, it highlights what life is all about - helping others to achieve greatness, doing the right thing, paying it forward, and always choosing kind. The students who helps Sarah, Mallory and Liz embody what it means to a PYP student and to be an inspirational human.

Tomorrow we will be digging deeper into what it means to take action. Today we looked briefly at six different ways of taking action (with thanks to Richard Black, PYP teacher in Canberra, Australia - his words, my layout):

A mom, educator, designer, creator. I care about kindness, representation, equality, and making a positive contribution. I began teaching in 1997 in New Zealand and have since taught from G1 through G10 in 4 continents. View all posts by Sonya terBorg

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PYP Exhibition - Video Inspiration to take Action Six Different Ways

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The following information is a direct cut and paste from my classroom blog. The blog is used as a communication tool between home and school. I also post homework, ideas, polls, and all things related to life in 4D. Over the course of the year, we have gone from "What is a blog?"

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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Looking for a new career path? This super-quick quiz doesn’t require any reading at all—just choose the images that appeal to you most and discover how your choices can point you toward your ideal career. Based on the well-respected Holland Code system, this quiz provides a brief yet complete assess…

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How do you know of if charity or aid organization is doing what it says it does?

Where do you go to find out how different non-government organizations (NGOs) are rated and evaluated?

Try these links!

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LibGuides: PYP Research: 5th Grade Exhibition Research

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How do you know of if charity or aid organization is doing what it says it does? Where do you go to find out how different non-government organizations (NGOs) are rated and evaluated? Try these links!

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Online databases

Research in Context

It is designed for teen-aged students who are new to research. It has a brief overview of different topics. It pulls together articles from over 1,200 academic journals, newspapers and magazines. It also has reference resources and links to audio and video

Click on the following link:

Global Issues in Context

Global Issues in Context brings together information about issues affecting each country in the world. It can be searched by topic or by country. It has articles from academic journals, newspapers and magazines. It also links to podcasts and videos.

Click on the following link:

National Geographic for Kids

Designed for children aged 6-14, National Geographic Kids provides articles on science, nature, culture, archaeology, and space.

Click on the following link:

More Online databases

Britannica Library

Britannica Library is an encyclopedia covering a broad range of topics. It has sections for kids, teenagers, and adults, and gives a brief overview of over 125,000 different subjects.

Click on the following link:

Online Library Catalog Koha

Follow the link and search for resources at the SIS Library:

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Library libguides: PYP Exhibition tips: How to search information

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Skip to main content It looks like you're using Internet Explorer 11 or older. This website works best with modern browsers such as the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge. If you continue with this browser, you may see unexpected results. It is designed for teen-aged students who are new to research.

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Welcome to Britannica School , a safe, up-to-date, and age-appropriate information resource for Primary, Middle and Secondary School.

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Essential Features of PYPx

As the culminating PYP experience, it is required that the exhibition reflects all the major features of the programme. Therefore it must:

provide an opportunity for students to exhibit the attributes of the IB learner profile that have been developing throughout their engagement with the PYP

incorporate all the key concepts; an understanding of the key concepts should be demonstrated by the application of key questions throughout the inquiry process

synthesize aspects of all six transdisciplinary themes

require students to use skills from all five sets of transdisciplinary skills (see Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education, 2007, figure 8); students should be given the opportunity to develop and apply skills from all the transdisciplinary skill areas in their exhibition inquiry

offer the students the opportunity to explore knowledge that is significant and relevant

offer opportunities for students to display attitudes (see Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education, 2007, figure 9) that relate to people, the environment and their learning; these attitudes should be evident throughout the process

provide opportunities for students to engage in action; students should demonstrate an ability to reflect on and apply their learning to choose appropriate courses of action and carry them out; this action may take the form of personal involvement with the planning and implementation of the exhibition and/or service-orientated action; action may not always be clearly or immediately visible or measurable but evidence should be recorded whenever a particular behaviour results from the learning involved

represent a process where students are engaged in a collaborative and student-led, in-depth inquiry facilitated by teachers; records should be kept that reflect the process of planning and student engagement with the exhibition

include ongoing and rigorous assessment of the exhibition process; this assessment should take two forms: firstly, ongoing assessment of each individual student's contribution to and understanding of the exhibition; secondly, a summative assessment and reflection on the event itself.

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UISG Library: UISGZ Library: PYP Exhibition

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Access Google Forms with a personal Google account or Google Workspace account (for business use).

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Read to Feed is Heifer's unique reading incentive and motivation program for kids. It encourages a love for reading and helping others.