We’re very excited here at AIS Kuwait to have launched PYPX 2019!
Our Exhibition takes place within the Transdisciplinary Theme of Sharing the Planet, and we further connect it to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This helps our students find real meaning in their work as they look to investigate the impact of the UN SDGs both in the region and beyond.
So our first challenge was how to help the students get to know the goals and begin to think about their meaning and implication? Luckily, we have a large and amazing school team to call upon!
We managed to set up 14 stations (we have 7 classes in grade 5 so they were split accordingly) for students to rotate through. We took out Goal 17 as inter-agency cooperation was considered by our team to be the least likely for our students to connect to for their exhibition and Goals 14 and 15 since they knew most about these already. After that each member of staff took 1 goal and devised a 10 minute provocation or introduction activity.
On the day of the launch we began with a short video (thanks to my husband Mark for the video editing!) and intro speeches from myself as PYPC and our Middle School Principal. Then when had students rotate through 3 activities.
Some of the provocation/introduction activities included:
- Comparing water samples
- Looking at maps which show phone/internet access in different regions
- Comparing the relative speeds of transport on single lane roads
- Tasting ‘nutrition biscuits’ and discussing why these might be important in some areas
- A demonstration of the difference between equality and equity
- A game to help understand the spread of diseases and why immunization is important
Students were prompted to reflect after each activity with some visible thinking to answer questions such as:
- What does this goal mean to you?
- How did the activity help you to learn about the goal?
- What connections can you make between this and other units you’ve studied as a PYP student?
- What questions do you have about this goal?
These shared thinking sheets were then hung throughout the Grade 5 corridor as a gallery walk to help students share their learning.
Feedback from students and teachers from the launch was positive with the students excited for the Exhibition. Our main point of consideration for next year is that we’d like to stretch this over a longer period so that the students could experience more of the goals – and give them a broader base to start from.
After launching to the parents, myself and one of our Grade 5 team then met parents to walk them through the launch too (see the powerpoint). Here we helped families to understand the SDGs but focused more the skills their students would be developing and how they could support this at home.
Our students are now up and running with their Exhibition process and I for one am so excited to see what they will achieve! A huge thanks to our amazing AIS Team – this worked because teachers, coaches, librarians, leadership and students all came together and it couldn’t have been done without any of them (and an extra thanks to one of our PE team Crystal who stepped in to lead an activity at the last minute when another teacher couldn’t make it)!
