The PYP Exhbition: The Role of PE

 PYP Exhibition: How Can PE Integrate?

In the last year of the PYP, students are required to participate in a culmination project, the PYP exhibition. Ideally, as single subject teachers, it is great to be able to authentically integrate into this exhibition, but the reality is that it can be very difficult to do so.  The exhibition is a wonderful opportunity to let the students take the bull by the horns, so to speak, as they are “required to engage in a collaborative, transdisciplinary inquiry process that involves them in identifying, investigating and offering solutions to real-life issues or problems.

The central idea and lines of inquiry are not known until the unit begins as the entire process is very much student-driven. This makes it difficult for single subject teachers to plan ahead in order to integrate in the best possible way. In some cases, it is impossible to genuinely integrate as doing so would be a forced fit. However, when a good opportunity presents itself, single subject teachers should take full advantage of the opportunity.

The 2011 PYP exhibition at International School of Phnom Penh revolves around poverty. The central idea that our grade 5 students have come up with at this point is “People must take responsibility for reducing levels of poverty”.

We have a unit in Movement to Music happening at the moment in our PYP PE classes and feel that we can integrate very well into the exhibition based on the following premise:

Many poor regions in the world use dance as a means to alleviate the effects of poverty. Essentially, dance has many positive effects on people who suffer from poverty.

For a full description of how this unit will hopefully turn out, please see the “Examples of Integration” page. Sample assessment tasks, central idea and PE lines of inquiry are provided.