Day ???: Presenting

The presentation process is always huge in an Exhibition. This year as we are presenting online, it is challenging students with many unknowns and firsts for the students and the school.

All groups will be presenting using a Padlet or a self designed Website as the platform to present their exhibit from. This provides students the possibilities to add links, images, videos, graphs, info graphs, quizzes, surveys, forms etc to their presentations to make them interactive.

Students will then be challenged this year, to put together a ten minute oral presentation of their issue and inquiry that will presented to other students at the school.

Day ???: LOTE in Exhibition

The key in including LOTE into our Exhibits this year is to ask...

What does the issue look like in other countries we are interested in?

Following a simple inquiry approach, we asked ourselves questions that we think are relevant and interesting to the issue being inquired into and how that may appear or be like in other parts of the world.

The big understanding that we can take from inquiring globally like this, is that many people and places around the world struggle with similar issues in their communities.

Day ???: Action

Throughout Exhibition, discussions have been had about what constitutes ACTION. 

In recent discussions, we have focussed on action can be more personal then raising a few dollars. Action can take place when we change our own thinking. This in itself can help guide the choices we make as individuals later on in our lives. 

Action can be challenging others opinions and thoughts or adding to their knowledge and understandings. This of course leads to guiding them in their future decision making. 

When we look at action as a way of informing and challenging the thinking of ourselves first and others second, we start to work on action as a lifelong change or process, not just a one off kind gesture.

Day ???: Music in Exhibition

As a part of exhibition, during Music students are working on creating a rap for their Exhibition issue.

Below is a run down of what the task is...

Use your knowledge of how to create a rap song to complete this task.

Song needs to have an intro, hook, meat/ cheese, hook, outro.

All up 24 - 25 bars.

Remember ... How will you end the song? (On beat 1 of bar 25?)

However... this is your song, and you can be as creative as you can!

This song can then be used in your exhibition.... somewhere.... some how!

Up to your group what and who’s they put in.... but there has to be at least one persons! Could be more!

Everyone needs to hand up there song!

Share your song as a song! Not a project!

You could go further... and make a video! If you have time!

Day ???: Working Padlets - Collaboration at work

This year, students will present their work on Padlet as an interactive online Exhibit. Groups have also decided to use Padlet to organise their group and record their research and ideas electronically.

Here is a sample of how the organisation and preparation is looking...

Day ???: The Basic Working Plan for the next 2 Weeks

Here is the basic working plan for the next couple weeks. Different groups and individuals will be bouncing between these three areas as they head towards piecing together their Online Exhibits.

Day ???: Gavin from Gawler's Volunteer Graffiti Removal Team

Another guest speaker today. Gavin, a well known face around our school, came in and shared his role as a volunteer graffiti removalist. 

It’s great to know that Gawler is one of only three SA councils that have a Graffiti Removal Team. Plenty of interesting information shared. Hopefully, it was a good eye opener for the students but also useful information for the Exhibition group looking at the issue of graffiti.

Day ???: Making and sending out surveys

The Year 6 students are completing group inquiries on issues in our world. They are looking for people's opinions on different topics. If you have a spare minute or two, could you please complete some of their surveys below. Your help will be appreciated. Also, if you could pass some or all of these on through your circles of associates or social media outlets, that would be great.

The effects of graffiti on the community - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/VGZRYZX

The impacts of fruit fly - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/N3RTLWL

Your thoughts on palm oil - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NBFPRLZ

Implications of pandemics on mental health - https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/N3LQ9LD

Day 16 Bonus: Guest speaker from the Big Issue

Two groups this year are looking into the issue of homelessness. To assist them, we were able to book an e-classroom session with a guest speaker from The Big Issue. 

During this session, the facilitator explained what marginalisation means and how it is to be homeless. She also discussed the needs of people and how missing aspects of those needs can lead to homelessness. We were also re-educated on stereotypes. This was an important lesson as it turns out that in Australia, 1 in 7 homeless people are primary school aged. 

We were also given the opportunity to listen to Marcus. Marcus lives in Sydney and he shared his story of being homeless, how he got there and what (as a homeless man) he appreciated from people. 

For more information about The Big Issue, hit this link https://www.thebigissue.org.au/

Day 16 Extra: Where is the Mathematics in the Issue?

The International Baccalaureate encourages us to be trans disciplinary in our learning. That is, to not just focus subject to subject separately from each other. 

Through the Exhibition period and during our me that is lessons, we will be trying to answer:

‘What maths can there be in researching/presenting our issue?’

There are mathematical skills that are really easy to engage in this process. We encourage students to engage those skills but also to challenge themselves with some creative mathematical applications. 

We look forward to seeing what they can present.

Day 16: Refocusing in on the Issues

After a holiday break, it’s important that we spent a few moments refocusing on the task that is Exhibition and the individual issues we are looking into.

We did this by coming up with a ‘mud map’ plan of the next four and a half weeks...

After this discussion, we also spoke about the need to concentrate and delegate researching so that at least 95% of it is completed during week 3. This will allow plenty of time to worry about the presentation side of their exhibit.

We also had the students sit into their groups and discuss the following:

• Share what you have 
• Discuss where you are heading
• Delegate what research/questions need answering
• Is there anything or anyone else you need to contact (we need primary source information)
• Get researching

Day 15: Primary Source Info, Preparing to Inquire, Presentation Ideas and Padlets

Primary Source Information:

We want as much primary source information as possible. We are not after a Chinese whispers, internet driven, copy and paste assignment. Discussions and encouragements have been around the pursuit of talking to people who experiencing the issues or are experts in the fields covered. 

Preparing to Inquire:

With newly established Lines of Inquiry, it is time to allocate/align questions to those lines as well as the key concepts being covered. Once this has been achieved, a brainstorm takes place to come up with primary sources that will help us find, locate and answer our questions. (Who can we speak to, where can we visit.)

Presentation Ideas:

• Video (documentaries, animations, zoom recordings, Ted Talk style, adverts, news reports, interviews, virtual tours, Plays, etc.)
• Audio (interviews, music)
• Diagrams (graphs, info graphs, technical drawings, labelled diagrams, cross-sections, before and after, etc.)
• Pictures (photos, artworks, provocations)
• Surveys
• Quizzes (Kahoot)
• Links
• PDF printouts
• Stories (picture books)
• Journals, Diaries
• What else can you think of?

Below is a Ted Talk example that we watched in class that also shows and ins-ire’s what is possible if you are passionate about an issue and your willing to make an effort to see change.

Padlets:

We looked at Padlets and Website design as a way of colllating and presenting our inquiries. Students all seemed pretty keen to use a Padlet as the chosen format for this role. it will be interesting to see what other formats they include within their Padlet to demonstrate their findings.

Catching Up With Mentors

Regular meetings with mentors is a big part of the exhibition process. Having an extra pair of eyes and ideas is great for bouncing ideas back and forward. 

Each group has met with their respective mentors and have begun developing a working relationship which should benefit their learning journey.

Day 12-14 Questions, questions, questions and Central Ideas and Lines of Inquiry

Using the Lotus Diagram, many questions have and are still being asked that link directly with the IB Key Concepts. 

We then reflect on these questions to see if they fit within the Sharing the Planet Theme and also look for any concepts that have a recurring theme (these are often the questions that lead to successful inquiry).

Following this, a conference is had with a teacher to help students turn questions into a Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry. Here is a draft version for the group above:

Then it’s time to organise the questioning with the Lines of Inquiry and let the inquiring begin.

Day 11: Goal Setting and Getting in Touch with Mentors

This session was a chance to look at our own growth and development by setting ourselves 2 goals. One goal was to be linked to the Learner Profile Attributes and the other to the IB Approaches to Learning. These goals were based on areas of improvement as highlighted by our previous self reflecting. 

We also looked at the way we communicate by looking into writing emails. The idea was to contact our mentors and introduce ourselves to them. This was a way to not only make a positive start to the mentor/mentee relationship but also a way to practice composing a formal email. This could come in handy when contacting people or organisations as part of our researching and search for primary information.

Day 10: Understanding Key Concepts and Asking Questions

IB Key Concepts help us guide our inquiries. Today we have looked into understanding the Key Concepts and where our initial questions fit in. To do this we went through an example of an issue, ‘graffiti’, and brainstormed some questions around it.

We then tried to match the questions to the Key Concepts. What we discovered was that some questions can align with more than one Key Concept and questions can be interpreted differently depending how they are written. As a group we certainly seemed to get the hang of it.

We also started to discuss the notion of having related concepts. From the above brainstorm, we noticed that a common thread in amongst some of the questions was ‘impacts’. ‘Impacts’ could be used as a related concept.

The next task was to sort out existing questions onto a Lotus Grid that organises the Key Concepts. 

Once we have organised our existing questions, it is time to brainstorm more and begin to use some critical thinking skills and deciding whether the questions posed fit with the theme of Sharing the Planet.

Day 9: Groups and Questions

Big Day...

Groups are sorted and ready to get going. Before jumping in to some work, it was important to brainstorm and discuss what is the most important aspect to consider when working in groups. The result was there is not one important thing but many key factors. Here is the discussion notes:

The key aspects of working in groups...

Listening to others

Including everyone

Pulling your weight

Cooperating

Respect opinions

Compromise

Openly communicate

Positive attitude towards your group

and importantly,

Respect people’s efforts

Now it was time to work in our groups to share and ask questions about the chosen issue. This year there are nine issues being inquired into and 10 groups working on these. Here is the results from our initial questioning...

🏅A gold star effort from the Senior Unit today. That’s a great start with questions!

Day 8: Self Learning Reflection and Goal Setting

A big part of IB and Exhibition is reflecting and understanding ourselves as learners. To help us with this, we are also set the challenge of setting two goals in areas we can improve or areas of focus (one Learner Profile Attribute goal, one Approaches to Learning goal).

We start this process by reflecting on the Learner Profile Attributes and ranking them in order of personal strength. (We didn’t include reflection in this task as we will be working on regular reflection throughout the exhibit.)

We then looked at the Approaches to Learning and highlighted a skill within each area that we could improve upon.

The next step is to use this self reflection information to set our two goals. We will also need to reflect on and note examples of the different Learner Profile attributes and Approaches to Learning skills As we continue our Exhibition journey.

Day 7: Choosing Preferences and Academic Honesty

We sat in two circles to share with others which issues from the list interested us and why. After sharing with one person the circles randomly rotated so that we shared with other people. It was great to hear the thoughts of others and especially why they were interested in certain issues. This gave us some different perspectives of the issues and helped us understand our own thoughts more.

Based on the cut down list of issues, students were asked to think about the issues and respond to the ones they were interested in by answering a couple questions. Here are a couple examples:

What is the issue?

Habitat loss

 

Do I have any connections to the issue? (Or why does this issue matter to me?) because I did an assignment when I was little about it and I love animals so I have always kept it in the back of my mind. 

 

What questions do I have about the issue?

• I want to know how much habitat loss is here in SA
• I want to know what animals are effected by habitat loss
• I want to know what individuals can do to help
• I want to know what habitats of animals are actually destroyed
• I want to find out if it is necessary to destroy habitats and a way around it

What is the issue

Homelessness

 

Do I have any connections to the issue? (Or why does this issue matter to me?)

When we are walking down near the local Big W and Woolworths we see lots of people sat next to the building asking for money. They look like they have come from bad backgrounds and don’t have a lot of money. I feel like we need to make a change and help people who are local with us.

 

What questions do I have about the issue?

What do the homeless shelters do to help homeless people? How do homeless people lose their home? Have they been taken away, destroyed or not had one to begin with? How can we support them? How can we make a change and help the homeless?

After clarifying our thinking, it was time to select our top three issues preferred issues in which to inquire into. From these preferences, Mrs Eckermann, Mr Boesch and Mr Semmler have the task of trying to sort us all into groups.

In amongst this process, we also looked at ‘Academic Honesty’. We discussed the need to do our own work and show respect to others by referencing them if we get information or images from them. As this is about being a principled learner, we also signed an agreement to make every attempt to be academically honest during the Exhibition process.

Day 5: BONUS ROUND The Blob Tree Reflection

The Blob Tree has been introduced as a reflection tool for students to use at regular intervals. It is used by highlighting people on or around the tree at regular intervals throughout the exhibition process. The question they need to consider when reflecting is...

How do I feel about exhibition right now?

Students colour and date the Blob that matches their reflection. Then they write a short sentence or two to explain why they chose that blob.