Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Alexandra Explains Student Exhibitions

Alexandra

Hi, I am Alexandra - I am 10 years old and love to write.  For this week, I am going to tell you all about the exhibitions that Jason’s 5th grade class has been working on.

An exhibition is a chance for us students to teach what we have learned.  One of the ways we could do an exhibition is to describe our topic by doing a hands-on experiment and explaining what we are doing as we go along.  For this first set of exhibitions, we have been asked to pick a topic that we have already learned a little about in class. I am studying The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  So one of the activities I am doing is to take a large tub of water, put small pieces of garbage around the edges, and swirl it around to see if the trash gathers together.

I will now tell you how we do exhibitions:  We first decide what we want to do for the exhibition, and then get the topic approved by Jason. As you saw above, my topic is The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  I decided to pick this topic because when we started this topic as a class, I became very interested. After we finished this topic, exhibitions came along, and I thought it would be cool to do that as my exhibition.  Second, we will take our time to get the entire lesson planned step by step. Third, we make sure all the materials are assembled in advance. Even if we could do something during the exhibitions, it is best to do as much as we can before it starts. Fourth, we do a few rehearsals so that we get all our mistakes out before the real thing.  Fifth, we do the exhibition hoping we do well!



A planning sheet to help us track our progress.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
The exhibitions I have seen have both been Evan's, and each had two lessons. The first one was about P.E., and also about the soil Evan collected from ScatterGood, a small boarding school in Iowa that Karl's 6, 7, 8 class went to during the theme of Farm-to-Table.  The second included a gnome math problem that Michael taught his group, and also an activity about the play Julius Ceasar.  I enjoyed Evan’s exhibitions and am excited to present my own!