Coming Together: School Exhibition 2006-07

By editor on Monday, 30 April , 2007 - 11:30 am

Do you want to feel the pulse of learning in joy, then come enjoy the Annual Exhibition in MGIS.

Do you want to be a part of ‘experiential learning’, then don’t miss the opportunity to experience the MGIS exhibition.

Enter MGIS and you will feel the buzz of being a part of something with energy so contagious, all your senses will be filled with myriad stimuli from everywhere, and you will know this is the Exhibition day.

The process of putting the exhibition together begins a few days beforehand. It is the time when the entire class introspects and reflects together on the year that has been and select what they want to display while organizing their work. The children take responsibility to represent and stand up for a part of the display. They plan and coordinate their exposition and good teamwork is what they learn in the process.

You will be drawn to a lot of happy faces and a campus packed with activities. This is the outcome of enthusiastic children willingly taking up responsibilities and looking forward to talking about their work and sharing with the other children as well as adults who come to participate in the space they create for themselves.

A map provided at the onset of the journey, invitations for the occasion, the layout and the entire event management is done proactively by the students with the initiators facilitating instead of dictating. Thus, the exhibition is prepared and presented by the students and they feel a sense of belonging to the whole process as in the words of a child at the café, “Please come and taste OUR recipes” or the children of Kg3 who tirelessly demonstrate the cartwheel they learned as many times as they have someone come to their spot.

This year you could start with the first counter with a game that evaluated the participant’s environmental awareness in context to traveling. The grade 9 children designed the criteria setup for the game and the data analysis, which followed, as a part of the Ecotourism project. This game reflected, the methods they had learned to mathematically and scientifically investigate the data collected.

This spot clearly fascinated a number of visitors, as they were delighted to learn about simple ways in which they could integrate environmental issues with their travel plans. The travel-brochures made by the children after their visit to Bet-Dwarka as a part of their design technology cycle, had a number of converts who wanted to visit this location after seeing the effective graphical presentation of the beach and its ecology.

Our exhibition is prepared and presented entirely by the children and over the years it is observed that children get extremely enthusiastic about showcasing their work because they get a platform to speak about and display all their work to a larger audience. The children feel empowered while doing this as they feel the ownership of their work and sharing it with others gives them a healthy dose of confidence. They become open to getting a feedback, which in turn continues their learning process

The passion to learn and do things and to overcome all age based barriers by following through a project which the children feel very close to is a strong undercurrent in most of the spots that you will visit during the exhibition and the couple of hours turn to a half a day effortlessly. Visitors get engrossed in activities ranging from learning different kinds of knots to playing a musical instrument put together by the children or printing on a T-shirt at the graffiti art corner.

The engaging experience during the journey of the exhibition is a clear reflection of the passion with which children learn when a environment which nurtures their natural instinct to learn instead of sabotaging it with irrelevant knowledge in the watertight compartment of a set pattern of rote learning from textbooks. For example an art exhibit by the grade 8 students, which included a huge mural done collectively by the whole class showed their understanding of the concept of cubism or the spot where children demonstrated the process of block printing with the wooden blocks they had made or further more the story book making done by the grade 6, all these reflected that art is  coherently included in the learning process instead of being a fragmented subject. Grade 8 displayed the movies they made during the year to discuss various issues and learn the art and technology of making a movie.

The exhibition clearly shows the children’s active participation in construction in their own knowledge base and it being a joyful inherent and holistic process rather than a means to an ‘exam’ end fear based routine. The day culminated with a bold presentation by the grade 8 of the dance and music piece composed as a part of their physical education assessment, drew the whole crowd together and as the audience could not have enough of the beautiful composition the children performed twice for its new formed fans!

According to the dictionary, to exhibit is the act of putting something out to public view or display however, the meaning of the exhibition for the children is more that to just show, it is a platform to share their work with the entire school community and to get a feedback on. It is also for the children an exciting emotion having achieved something own their own, of feeling appreciated. The openness to learn more from the feedback they get on their work is also a wonderful by product of the exposition.

The yearly exhibition is also a link of communication between the school and parents. For without the exams this medium lets them see for themselves how the children go through a process of learning before their project culminates into a product, which is visible to them.

The exhibition is for us a coming together of the spirit of MGIS where learning is contextual, meaningful, and a process of sharing, not merely accumulation of knowledge but applying it for creating the very wisdom to live by. A day when the year that has gone by is celebrated and the year to come is welcomed enthusiastically! So, don’t miss this day.

Category: MGIS Insight

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