PYP

Year 6 PYP Exhibition 2025

Over the last seven years, we have proven ourselves to be a hardworking cohort. The most significant moment of the year was revealed at the start of Term 4, when we were shown the most important project yet to come. Exhibition has been a time of creativity, passion, hard work and dedication. This project really showed us all that one small act can make an impact and no matter how big or small we are, we can make a difference. We put in all our effort and really demonstrated our learning over the past few years. From our maths skills to our writing skills, allowing us to draw on all of our past knowledge and skills. 

We were faced with 30 different provocations (all aimed to provoke our thinking). Our first provocation asked us to consider, ‘What will you do with your 30,000 days?’ This invited us to reflect on our lifespan and which activities and accomplishments we would pursue, with everyone taking a different route. This really highlighted the differences among us and what we wanted to do with our lives. With these provocations, we asked ourselves questions like ‘What provoked your thinking?’ or ‘Why does this issue matter?’. As well as reflecting on each one of them and connecting a learner profile and the various approaches to learning. This in turn, helped us to fabricate a provocation of our own. We sought guidance from our hard-working mentors, who were teachers from across the school, who helped us think deeper and build a framework for our creativity. This helped us form the backbone of every one of our creative journeys.  

We spent a month doing provocations and then eventually Week 7 hit. This was met with great excitement, as we were able to choose an issue of personal interest to investigate. This issue is a local or global problem that occurs here on Earth, which we were able to match to a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG), a problem that needs to be solved by 2030. These goals are worldwide goals that we need to accomplish and when we do,  Earth will be a better place for all of us and the generations to come. Some SDGs are: peace and justice and strong institutions, good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation or life below water. There are many more, but those are just a few examples.  There are sixteen goals in total and every one of them matters. These goals were established in 2015, an update to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

We set out to formulate questions about our chosen issue. To create questions, we used a tool called the ‘question matrix’, designed by our teachers, which helped us develop a broad range of questions featuring who, what, why, when, and how, ultimately leading to the development of our final provocation question. From these questions, we chose our top 10 questions to research which helped us develop a better understanding of our issue. Once we had completed our question research, we used our exposure to a range of provocations to design and create a provocation of our own. The purpose of our provocations was to ignite conversations with the school community at our Exhibition evening. 

Two months of hard work, consisting of blood (from all the paper cuts), sweat, and tears, finally led to Exhibition Night. Over 3,000 conversations took place that very night, at each of our stalls, which made parents aware of the issues we are passionate about and led to many of them wanting to act, which we learnt through the pledges they completed afterwards. We were so successful in provoking, engaging, and entertaining the school community that they were amazed by the amount of work we had put into it in such a short time. Before we knew it was time for the Exhibition to close and we had to ask people to leave. Needless to say, by the end of the day, we were exhausted, tired, but felt an overwhelming sense of reward and pride for what we had achieved. 

All in all, our Exhibition was a massive success and a lot of fun for all of us.

From the Year 6 Students of 2025.

Written by Mika Machalek and Aiya Downie.

Year 6 Teachers: Joe Calderone, Annie Lui and Gabby McPherson

PYP Coordinator: Angela Houghton