We have a topic!

What a great morning! The students from each of the classes presented their ideas for this year's exhibition topic.  Every class gave a 3-5 minute presentation on the topic of their choice for the whole grade level to consider.  Each class presented the idea, why it was important, the impact the topic had globally, and ideas for action from the students.

This year the presentations were:

5A: Sports

5B: Conflict

5C: Creativity

5D: Education

5E: Discrimination

All of the presentations were very thorough and interesting and after a difficult vote, the grade level chose DISCRIMINATION as their topic of interest for this year!

Now we will begin thinking about the types of discrimination that we encounter in our personal contexts and how we can take action to stop discrimination from happening around us.

Do you have some ideas about what types of discrimination you are interested in learning more about?  In what ways could you use the topics from our vote to explore more about discrimination?  Are there any "hidden" types of discrimination that we should inquire about?

Looking forward to your thoughts!

The Misses of Grade 5

We did it!

Wow! What an exciting night we had!  The exhibition evening was a complete success!  We had many, many parents come during exhibition evening as well as many teachers, principals, mentors and friends of the community in Santiago.  We had a great time sharing all of our learning with everyone!

The students were very well prepared as we spent the Tuesday and Wednesday during the day presenting to all of the students of the school.  We had the grade 3 and 4 students come and visit the grade five classes and give great feedback to each of the presentation groups.  We also took our boards to the grade 1 and 2 classes and gave a short version of the presentations to practice using our English with different types of audiences.  On Wednesday afternoon each of the grade five classes had been able to see the other grade five presentation as well.  By the time it was the evening on Wednesday the students had practiced their presentations at least 4 different times.  They were ready and it showed! :)

Some of the highlights of the evening were the following:

• Listening and watching the student created exhibition song (with voice change effects from Garage Band and recorded on an iPad) via an animoto short 

• Listening and watching two grade five students explain the overall process of our exhibition to the parents and visitors

Opening presentationevening.2011

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• Seeing the various specialist integrations that the students collaborated on especially the recycled artworks and mobiles with discarded technology and the virtual wailing wall from the religion classes

• Watching the students present to their parents in the classrooms with amazing confidence, knowledge and understanding

• Seeing the parents and visitors participating in asking questions, giving feedback via google forms and QR codes and leaving "love notes" on the grafitti wall

It was an amazing end to a great unit! Thank you to all of the students, teachers, mentors, parents and visitors for helping us achieve such an amazing amount of learning and understanding in just 9 short weeks!

When we return from our holiday break, we will finish with the final stage of our inquiry process which is reflection.  We will post a few reflections when we return.

In the meantime, if you visited our exhibition, what was your favorite part of the evening?  Is there any additional feedback you would like to give?

Miss Jessica :)

It's all coming together now!

After 6 long weeks we are at the final stages of the exhibition!  We now have a title for the exhibition which was voted on by the students through this blog...

Technology... upload it to your mind!

We now have two mascots which we will use to identify the two different groups of visitors to the exhibition next week.  Both mascots were drawn by students in grade five and I think they show the theme of the exhibition as well as the personality of the students very well!

Technology Gorilla: Group A

Beach Phone: Group B

And we just sent out our invitations on Wednesday inviting everyone to the presentation.  I am really excited to add an extra presentation this year which is a visit to the first and second grade classes.  I think the younger students are really going to enjoy seeing the "older students" showing what they have been doing.  All of the different people, parents, community members, teachers, mentors, and grade level teachers and students received a version of our invitation.  It was made by one of our 5th graders and I think it is an EXCELLENT example of balance in showing all students from each class as well as a little bit of our process.

Sc invitación exposición.2011

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Now, as the students finish their final reflections and evaluations and complete their presentation boards, we are in a FRENZY of creativity!  The halls are covered each day with students working in the halls designing, discussing and developing their presentations!  It's great to see such hands on learning!

And now as we near the end of the cycle of our inquiry, I'm interested in knowing what has been your favorite part of the exhibition inquiry cycle?  Wandering and Wondering, Planning and Preparing, Finding Information, Using Information, Synthesis, Evaluation, Presentation, or Action?  Why did you like that part the best?

Miss Jessica :)