Year 6 Exhibition

An Event to Remember

The biggest moment of the year revealed itself at the start of Term 4. A time for Year 6 students to show what the 7 previous years meant to them; a display of inspiration, creativity and passion that bled through the imagination of students. It all started with a few words, ‘Thinking beyond ourselves empowers us to act’. Those meaningful words sparked an ongoing fire inside us, and so, the journey began. 

We were faced with many different provocations (which is a display that provokes your thinking). One of our first provocations asked us to consider, ‘What will you do with your 30,000 days?’ Which invited us to reflect on our lifespan and which activities and accomplishments we would pursue. With these provocations we asked ourselves questions like ‘What provoked your thinking today?’ or ‘Why does this matter?’. This in turn would help us to fabricate a provocation of our own. We sought guidance from our hard working mentors, which were teachers from across the school, who helped us think deeper and build a framework for our creativity. 

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 inquire into. This issue is a local or global problem that occurs here on Earth which we were able to match to a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UNSDG), which are problems that need to be solved. Some UNSDG’s are, peace and justice and strong institutions, good health and well-being, clean water and sanitation or life below water. 

We set out to formulate questions about our chosen issue. To create questions, we used a tool called the ‘question matrix’, which supported us to develop a broad range of questions. From these questions, we researched to develop a better understanding of our issue. Once we had completed our 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 the paper cuts), sweat and tears led to Exhibition night. We opened the ceremony with a stunning performance which set parent expectations high. From then it was time. Over 3,000 conversations took place that very night, 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. We were so successful in provoking and engaging the school community that they lost track of time and before we knew it was time for Exhibition to close and we had to ask people to leave. 

The next day the students from all the grades below us came to visit Exhibition. Needless to say, by the end of the day we were exhausted, but felt an overwhelming sense of reward for what we had achieved. 

All in all, Exhibition was a massive success.

Akshaj & Chamath