5th Grade Exhibition: Action

 

The first week I worked with our 5th grade students, I made a Google Slide presentation based on one by Pam Weiger, teacher librarian/IB coordinator at Allisonville Elementary School in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Pam shared her PowerPoint at a recent IB PYP workshop.

We introduced our students to the United Nations’ Global Goals in order to help them brainstorm for issues and problems.  Our students each have school issued Dell tablets so they worked individually through the presentation. My Google Slide presentation for this second week-https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NcE4bInSKHK3AeG7uHM35q6ub0yo5iqa55yVvyd4QnY/edit?usp=sharing

Action Focus: PYP Exhibition

The second week I worked with the students and we focused on the action component of the exhibition.  We looked at the words invent, innovate and campaign, as these were the concepts from the video, The World’s Largest Lesson 2016.  This video, according to the description on YouTube: ” invite(s) children to get involved in the Global Goals for Sustainable Development by inventing, innovating and campaigning.”

Student Response: Tweet or Question

After viewing the video the students could choose to add another question to our map or compose a Tweet to explain what the UN’s Global Goals are about.

 

I tweeted a sampling of the students’ works:

5th Grade Brainstorming for Exhibition

We are introducing the PYP Exhibition to our 5th graders.  A couple weeks ago our IB (International Baccalaureate) coordinator spoke to each class to give them an overview of the Exhibition and last week I had them examine the IB Mission Statement.

The PYP Exhibition is, according to the IBO website, an extended, in-depth, collaborative project which involves students working collaboratively to conduct an in-depth inquiry into real life issues or problems.

Brainstorming Real Life Issues

This week I worked with each class to help them brainstorm issues or problems by introducing them to the United Nations’ Global Goals.  I was inspired by Pam Weiger, teacher librarian at Allisonville Elementary School (an IB-PYP school in Indianapolis) who created a Google Slides for students to work through some videos and activities.  I borrowed her idea to create a Google Slides with links to some YouTube videos, etc.

Working individually on their tablets.

Katesa Walker, our IB coordinator, working with students, answering questions and guiding them through the activity.

Video Introduction: We the People

The students watched the video, “We The People: The Global Goals for Sustainable Development” on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpqVmvMCmp0&feature=youtu.be) and were asked to write any questions they had on sticky notes.  These were posted on a world map and were their “ticket out the door”.

Padlet for Listing Issues

We also had the students list one issue or problem they were aware of so that everyone could see the collective knowledge of all four classes.

Questions color coded by class.

AnswerGarden, Third Grade and Same, Same but Different

I’m not sure how I came across AnswerGarden (https://answergarden.ch) but I’m glad I did.  I have used it with two grades so far and hope to use it again.  On their website they describe it as tool for real time feedback.  I thought of it as a short cut to creating a Wordle.  I love to create Wordles (or Tagxedos) with students responses but I don’t like typing in all their words!

Same, Same but Different

I read Jenny Sue Kostecki-Shaw’s book, Same, Same but Different to third graders.  This books works so beautifully in our IB/PYP school.  It can be tied in with our Learner Profile and Attitudes or our focus on being internationally minded.

After reading the book, I asked the students to reflect on the book; what were words, details or big ideas they got from the book?  With AnswerGarden you can have the responses limited to 20 or 40 characters and this time I chose 20.  I suggested they could use words or phrases.  Sentences get a little tricky if you only have 20 characters.

AnswerGarden

With AnswerGarden, which is free and very easy to use, the students can type in their feedback and can see in real-time other student’s words.  They like seeing their responses as well as their classmates.

This is what the finished AnswerGarden looked like.

Export to Wordle and Tagxedo

The AnswerGarden can easily be exported to both Wordle and Tagxedo, which gives you more options to be creative visually.

The AnswerGarden can be exported to Tagxedo.

The AnswerGarden can also be exported to Wordle.

IB Mission Statement Examination

I was fortunate to attend an International Baccalaureate workshop this past weekend, “Making the PYP Library the Hub of Learning” at the IB Global Centre in Bethesda, Maryland led by Pam Weiger, IB coordinator and teacher librarian at Allisonville Elemenetary School in Indianapolis.  

One of the activities Pam shared with us is how she had 5th grade students examine the IB Mission Statement as they were starting their Exhibition. It was an “aha” moment for me.  We have a school mission statement based on IB’s which the students recite everyday led by the Morning Show crew.  I know no one has had the students deconstruct it, so I followed her brief overview and did it the first day I was back from my trip.  And it worked!

I had this brilliant idea about 20 minutes before one of the 5th grade classes was coming to the library so I hurriedly copied and pasted the mission statement from the IB website and enlarged the font and ran off five copies.  I glued the mission statement to large butcher paper and highlighted a different phrase for each group.

I wish I had longer with each class as I’d ideally like the small group carousel to each sheet, but we’ll see if I can swing that!  I definitely want to do this with the 4th grade students and then as 5th graders they would be familiar with it and we could go a bit deeper.