Stutzfamily blog thingie

This week was the fifth graders’ PYP exhibition, a culminating project incorporating all sorts of learning that took place over their elementary school years. The class focuses on a student selected topic for the last 8 weeks of the school year and then presents what they learned to parents, teachers, and peers. This year’s theme was “With Every Child’s Rights Come Responsibilities.” Because child rights are such a pertinent topic to everyone living in India, the students found that they had a unique opportunity to explore many different facets of the subject.

.

To keep things at a manageable level, the kids split up into 8 different groups: Abuse, Basic Needs, Education, Fun, Gender, Healthcare, Labor, and Protection. Alea chose Labor (or Labour as it was spelled here), and so her group’s presentation looked at the lives of children through the prism of them having to work. After the entire grade sang an introductory song, accompanying themselves with drums and guitars, they split up into separate rooms to spend time ‘teaching’ the parents and other visitors about their topics.

The main part of the presentation was a ‘newscast’ with Alea and another group member reading the latest news on child labor from several regions in India, followed by an “interview” with 2 ex-child laborers (also group members playing a role), and finishing with a puppet show detailing life as a child slave. After the movie, we were invited to explore the information that the kids had collected and detailed in poster form hanging around the room. There was also a labor simulation of work at a brick making factory, where Breck, and others,  saw how hard it was to load and haul a wheelbarrow across the room.

Of course, her group’s was the best out of all of them (!!), but the other rooms were all interesting and very well done. Breck was a great learner through the different presentations, and even got to participate in some of the games and activities. The highlight of the evening – outside of Alea’s group – was when he took part in the Healthcare game. He was competing against a teacher, and he had some tough questions to answer. We were very proud of his response to, “How do you help someone who is dehydrated?”. He said, “Drink lots of water and electrons” which was close enough to water and electrolytes for us.

But the real moment of parental pride came when he had to “Describe the symptoms of malnourishment.” He stood still for a moment, and then his face brightened and he gave his answer: “When someone is lying on the ground, with their eyes closed, and they’re not breathing!”

Does my son know the symptoms of acute malnourishment, or what?!!