Initial thoughts on the Year 6 Exhibition

Laptop and Emojis. Laptop and background picture from Pexels, emojis on laptop screen drawn using shapes.

By Tiara Sarkar, Saanvi Arora, Abigail Yip and Ella Wong

The Year 6 Exhibition is coming to a close, but what were people feeling at the start? Were they excited or nervous? Or something else entirely?

Before everyone started on their Exhibitions, we surveyed some Year 6 students and here’s what they said.

The majority of Year 6 students said they were excited about Exhibition. Some were stressed or anxious, mainly because they were worried about meeting deadlines. A few people said it was confusing or hard, perhaps because of distance learning. As most former Year 6 Exhibitions were held face-to-face, preparing and presenting them online changed how they did it, which could have presented some challenges. 

Why were people excited? Many claimed it was because they could research something they were passionate about or share their newfound information with others. One said that they were amazed by the older Year 6 kids presenting Exhibitions, when they were still in Year 1; now they were doing it too!

Popular ideas for issues included deforestation, discrimination, hiking, pollution, obesity, and technology. Someone also said they wanted to research the history of art, which sounds promising!

One thing Year 6 students were taught during Exhibition was the difference between a topic and an issue. While a topic is simply any subject, an issue is an important problem related to the world.

Students chose their issues by first choosing a topic they were interested in and then connecting it to the Global Goals and problems in the real world. For example, if you were passionate about reading, you might connect that to Quality Education and helping illiterate children get a good education.

Action, where you help fight for the issues outside of the main Exhibition project, was also an essential part of Exhibition. Some examples of our actions are creating blogs, writing books, hosting competitions, talking to neighbours, presenting to younger classes, donating to NGOs and making changes in our lifestyles.

Although a lot of people were eager and enthusiastic about the Exhibition, 27% of people felt anxious, worried or sad. This was because they were either still confused, or didn’t know what to research. A lot were scared of failing to meet the deadlines. An easy way to conquer this is to set reminders for deadlines, like writing post-it notes or listing them on Google calendar. You can also work on Exhibition after school or on the weekends if you’re worried about not having enough time. Make sure you still have some time to rest though!

At the time of writing, Year 6 students are getting ready to present their work—finishing off their padlets, creating bibliographies, preparing presentations, sharing with the community…

Let’s hope it goes well!