We had our exhibition evening on Wednesday, and it was an experience that I will never forget. Having different people visit my stall was quite exhilarating, because some of them told me things that I didn’t know about my topic, which was biodiversity, but I am getting quite ahead of myself. We need to start at the very beginning, when we were just becoming acquainted with the topic of Year 5 Exhibition.

 

The first stage was tuning in. We learnt all about how to write a central idea, which is the main idea around the inquiry, and we had one for the entire exhibition unit, which was; “We raise awareness by expressing our values.” The central idea for my group, however was “Our advancements impact the natural world,” as David and Daniel, the other people in my group were doing deforestation, we thought that that was the one that best suited all of us. At this stage, we also ha to write our lines of inquiry, which are basically just statements beginning with “an inquiry into…” and those were the things that we decided to research about. Of course, we also had to know what our topic was, so that we could research into it, and my lines of inquiry were “an inquiry into the main factors that affect biodiversity,” “an inquiry into what we can do to help protect biodiversity” and “and inquiry into whether loss of biodiversity is actually a bad thing.”

 

The next stage was finding out. We had to do all our research, and I found that starting the research was actually harder that when we were in the middle of doing it. I found it hard to stay motivated, as I didn’t have any leads, no specific things to look into. I knew I had my lines of inquiry, but because I had pretty much no prior knowledge about biodiversity. After I had found out what the main causes of loss of biodiversity were, it was much easier to research, because I had main things to look into, and that was when I started to look at my other lines of inquiry.

 

About 6 weeks s after we began our research, it was time for the sorting out part of the exhibition. In this stage, we had to start sorting out the facts that we had found out, and if we needed to more research on one of our lines of inquiry, then that was the time to do it. For me, I didn’t really have any more things to research about, so I started making my fact sheets. We had to make a fact sheet for every line of inquiry, basically summarising what we had learnt about our topic. For my line of inquiry about the main factors that affect biodiversity, I made several sheets, as instead of making one sheet, I made one saying what they all were, and others, one for each factor, which elaborated on the factor. The other lines of inquiry were much easier to compact into one sheet, so I just made one each for those lines of inquiry.

 

Once we had sorted out all our research, it was time to make conclusions. The big “so what?” What was the point of doing all this research. This was when we had to have our fact sheets done, so we could display them on the night. This stage was still in therm three, so it didn’t feel that pressing to finish up, except maybe to the people who hadn’t been efficient with their time during the researching. At the end of this stage, we had to start thinking about what our displays would look like. I decided that instead of having my work all over the wall behind me, I would just have the inquiry cycle, and what we did at each stage, with my work in a folder on the table.

 

The final stage is taking action, where we have to do something to make a change to improve our issue. We haven’t really looked at that yet, but for my taking action I am joining with the group that was looking into GMOs, and we are making a biodiverse, organically grown, green outdoor work area. I will update you more as we continue to work on our action.

 

Finally, the night came around. This is what my display looked like:

 

I was asked to do the opening for the night, and I was really nervous, though I tried not to look like it. The feelings of triumph when I taught people new things was one of the best feelings in the world, though if I had the chance to do Year 5 Exhibition again, I probably would have looked into something like self image, because I know that lots of people around the world are not happy with the way that they look.

 

All in all, exhibition was an amazing experience, one that I will never forget. We haven’t completely finished it though, as we still have to take our action. Thanks for reading about my exhibition experience.

I am so excited for the holidays in 25 hours, 7 minutes. And yes, I am keeping track. Before the school bell rings tomorrow, I do have time for one last exhibition reflection for this term.

For the past week or so, I have been completing my fact sheets, finishing off videos, making QR Codes, and kind of starting to get ready for Exhibition Evening, even though that isn’t until Term 4.

I have had a really successful term of exhibition work, and I hope that next term will be the same.

Talk next Term! Bye!

This week we have been working on the ‘making conclusions’ part of the Year 5 Exhibition. We have had to make 3 information texts, which can be in any format we want as long as it summarises all of the information we found out about that line of inquiry,  as we have to make one for each line.

The above image is of my first fact sheet, about the main factors that affect biodiversity. I have finished my second and am working on my third, but I feel that that one was my best one so far. Also, in the ‘making conclusions’ part of the exhibition, we have been working on some other things that aren’t finished yet.

It has been a really fun week of exhibition, and i am looking forward to next week.

For this post I will be reflecting on the ‘Finding Out’, ‘Sorting Out’, and ‘Going Further’ stages of our Year 5 Exhibition. 

Finding Out:

For the finding out, it was pretty simple finding websites to answer my questions, but it was challenging at times to find sites about my question; ‘Is lack of biodiversity really a bad thing?’ I think it was hard to find sites about this, because most people just assume that it isn’t a bad thing.

Sorting Out:

When we were sorting out it was pretty simple, because all we had to do was write down our lines of inquiry, write down the key points for what we had found out about those lines of inquiry, and if we didn’t have enough research then we had to keep finding out.

Going Further:

When we were going further, we had to see if we had enough research, and if we didn’t, then we had to continue our finding out. I didn’t rally have to doo much of this as I already had enough research.

Thank you all or reading this post, and I will be posting more progress on the exhibition soon! Bye!

This week we continued our ‘Finding Out’, and we only have until the 3rd of September to finish our finding out and start getting our presentation sorted. I found a few good sites, but the ones that have had the most information were: https://www.worldbookonline.com/wb/Login?ed=wb&id=812 , https://newsela.com and http://education.abc.net.au/home#!/home .

I am looking forward to presenting but I still have to do a fair bit of research before Tuesday. I have been challenged in finding sites apart from the ones linked above, but I have Ben making progress in note-taking. That is my reflection for this week, but as it is Father’s Day on Sunday, let’s give all the Father’s a day off. I will be posting again soon,  but for now, bye!!

Sorry that I didn’t post an exhibition reflection last week. I was away! We have finally finished the tuning in stage (see the upcoming post), and now we have moved on to the finding out stage, where we start researching! So far we have learned a bit about the different note-taking strategies, and it has been super fun so far. If you would like to know more about the entire week, check out our podcast, Year 5 Weekly: http://year5sas.edublogs.org

Thank you for reading, and there will definitely be more posts in the upcoming week. Bye!!

I know that you have probably heard parts of this before, but today I am going to be reflecting on the ‘Tuning In’ stage of the inquiry cycle. My lines of inquiry are; An inquiry into whether lack of plant biodiversity is really a bad thing, an inquiry into what we can do to protect biodiversity and an inquiry into the main factors that affect biodiversity. Lines of inquiry, in case you didn’t know, are statements beginning with ‘an inquiry into…’ that drive your inquiry. The central idea that my group and I came up with is ‘Our advancements impact the natural world’. The concepts that my group are using are; causation, change and responsibility, and our related concepts are; impact, cycles and values. Thank you so much for reading, and I will be posting more next week. Bye!!

The PYP exhibition is an exhibition that students at the end of their PYP journey put on for the rest of the school, usually in year 5 or 6, and at my school we do it in year 5. We have to choose an issue that we are passionate or curious about, as we have to craft our own unit of inquiry (central idea ect. Included), and we research and present our work in a stand-like sort of thing so the rest of the school can see what we have been doing.
This is our first week doing the PYP exhibition at school, and I have chosen my issue to be lack of biodiversity in plants. I chose this issue because I am really passionate about the wellbeing of plants, and naturalistic wellbeing in general. Specifically, I am inquiring into these 2 main questions; Is lack of biodiversity in plants actually a bad thing? And; What causes loss or lack of biodiversity in plants? I am really happy with my choice, and I am excited to continue inquiring into those questions. For my transdisciplinary theme I think I will choose either how the world works, or sharing the planet because I think that they link best with my theme. For our central ideas, we haven’t actually started writing our own personal ones, but we have been practicing by re-writing the central idea for the exhibition unit, which is ‘Change occurs when people take action’, and one of my re-writes is ‘we listen to forms of expression and gather information to take action. If you happen to know any websites about loss or lack of biodiversity, then could you please link them in the comments? Thanks! If you like this post, keep an eye out, because I will be posting every Wednesday at about this time. Please remember the code of conduct if you want to comment. Thank you to everyone that comes to look at my learning on this blog. Bye!!