Introduction
The PYP Exhibition represents a significant event in the life of a PYP student and PYP school.
In the student’s final year of the PYP at MBIS (PYP5) the students have 5 Units of Inquiry and the Exhibition. The Exhibition unit can take place under any transdisciplinary them and at MBIS this is decided on by the PYP teaching team and PYP 5 students.
Our students are required to engage in a collaborative, transdisciplinary inquiry process that involves them in identifying, investigating and offering solutions to real life issues or problems.
As a culminating experience it is an opportunity for our students to exhibit their understanding of the programme, including the role of the PYP Attitudes and IB Learner Profile.
*Only IB World Schools offering the PYP are required to participate in the exhibition although candidate schools may choose to do so.
Purpose
The PYP exhibition has a number of key purposes:
- for students to engage in an in-depth, collaborative inquiry
- to provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate independence and responsibility for their own learning
- to provide students with an opportunity to explore multiple perspectives
- for students to synthesize and apply their learning of previous years and to reflect upon their journey through the PYP
- to provide an authentic process for assessing student understanding
- to demonstrate how students can take action as a result of their learning
- to unite the students, teachers, parents and other members of the school community in a collaborative experience that incorporates the essential elements of the PYP
- to celebrate the transition of learners from primary to middle/secondary education.
Essential features of the exhibition
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.