5th Grade Exhibition Was Extraordinary

CDS 5th graders use their IB skills to become well informed about big issues relevant to them and work together to initiate change.

The 5th Grade Exhibition is the culminating assessment of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP). Across the globe, students in IB PYP schools participate in this experience. The Exhibition is a reflection of the knowledge, concepts, skills, attitudes, and actions students have learned throughout their ECC/Elementary years at CDS. The 5th graders began preparing for their Exhibition in August working under a central idea. Over the past six weeks, they have conducted their final research and created their presentations to share with the community. 

In addition to presentations, the students design t-shirts to go with their central idea. Below are summaries of what our amazing 5th-grade students and teachers presented this week, both from teacher and student perspectives.

5th Grade Exhibition Shirts

Mrs. Monty's Class | Human Behavior has consequences that cause change.

Monty Exhibition

This year Mrs. Monty’s class became concerned about what was happening to plants and animals in our world. It is for this reason they chose wildlife conservation to be their Exhibition topic. They developed their Central Idea to be Human behavior has consequences that cause change. Mrs. Monty’s class decided that their Lines of Inquiry would focus on What wildlife conservation involvesWays humans impact wildlifeHuman consequences, and Ways we can help. They worked tirelessly researching to become extremely knowledgeable about each of their Lines of Inquiry. While researching, they discovered that there are six main dangers threatening wildlife. These dangers include climate change, overhunting and poaching, deforestation, pollution, overuse of animals and plants for products, and overpopulation.

Monty Exhibition

Mrs. Monty’s class was involved in numerous exciting activities throughout their Exhibition journey. After reading Joel Sartore’s book Photo Ark, they were inspired to create and illustrate incredible haikus about wildlife conservation and Exhibition that were displayed on their Exhibition day. Additionally, Mrs. Monty’s class had the privilege of Zooming with the World Wildlife Fund and the Alberta Institute for Wildlife Conservation. They even Zoomed with their Buddy Classes: Mrs. Overton, Ms. Mosher, and Mrs. Lisi. These Zooms provided the perfect opportunity for Mrs. Monty’s class to learn valuable information about wildlife conservation from experts. They also had the opportunity to share what they had been learning with their Buddy Classes.

Mrs. Youngblood's Class | Poverty affects humankind's survival.

Youngblood Exhibition

The road to Exhibition has been a long and exciting journey. Everyone put their energy and time fully into this project. Mrs. Youngblood’s class decided on poverty as their topic way back in January. Everyone put ideas into a document and Mrs. Vicencio put them all into a Survey Monkey. The options were homelessness, global warming, poverty, deforestation, overpopulation, water problems, and hunger. In the end, the majority of Mrs. Youngblood’s class voted on poverty. In February, everybody voted on our central idea; How Poverty Affects Humankind’s Survival. About a week later, everyone got into groups of the lines of inquiry; How Poverty Affects Children, How COVID- 19 Affects Poverty, Preventing Poverty, and Causes of Poverty.

Youngblood Exhibition

Everyone started to create their ideas for the live, interactive, and action pieces. One group started to gather materials to build four shops. Another began to plan the action piece. And the other two started to write scripts for skits for the live piece. After a couple of weeks of frantic creation and rehearsals in the multi-purpose room, the groups started practicing like it was Exhibition immediately. The week of Exhibition arrived. As other classes did their own Exhibition, Mrs. Youngblood’s class became jittery with excitement and nervousness, for they knew that their day was soon to be upon them. The day before Exhibition arrived, and by 1 o’clock Mrs. Youngblood’s class was setting up for, what they hoped would be, a great Exhibition. By Josie P.

Mrs. Haywood's Class | Embracing diversity balances inequalities in our society.

Haywood Exhibition

Our central idea was “Embracing Diversity Balances Inequalities in Our Society.”  We chose this topic because we were curious about why people are treated differently and unfairly based on their race, ethnicity, religion, language, or disability.  During one of our conversations about race and ethnicity, we learned that all of our families came to the United States from different countries around the world.  This was the reason we chose our first line of inquiry, “Celebrating and Embracing Different Cultures and Our Own Heritage.” We researched the flag, geographic location, famous landmarks, languages spoken, religions practiced, foods eaten, and traditions and holidays celebrated in our own country of origin. 

Haywood Exhibition

We each created a display board of our research and we all typed up a family recipe from our country. Our guests created cookbooks titled “Recipes Around the World” during our exhibition interactive centers.  Our second line of inquiry was “Accepting and Respecting People From Different Races.”  We created a slideshow with information about the difference between race and ethnicity and information about Black Lives Matter and the AAPI community. During the exhibition, our guests made bracelets using beads that represented a variety of skin tones and a handmade clay heart to represent love.  Our third line of inquiry was “Accepting and Respecting People Who Speak Different Languages.” Our class focused on sign language and taught our guests how to finger-spell their names.  We also used sign language to “sing” a song, “We Are the World.” Our final line of inquiry was “Accepting and Respecting People With Disabilities.” Our class made a clay stop-motion movie about treating others with respect and created a Guess Who game using characters with varying disabilities.  We learned that there are “billions of people of all different colors who walk and talk differently.  People can’t change the way they look, but we can change the way we see.” 

Mrs. Viera's Class | The responsibility of global citizens and pollution's impact on humanity.

Viera Exhibition

We were passionate about Pollution because we thought it was the world's biggest problem and so we thought we needed to put an end to it. 

Viera Exhibition

We learned about the many different types of pollution and how pollution hurts our planet: water, land, air, animals. We learned some ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle to help the environment instead of throwing trash away. We also learned how to make trash art. We learned how we impact pollution and how pollution impacts us.

Some of the activities that we did to learn about pollution were a feather and oil simulation, created a board game about how pollution affects land and sea animals, developed an aquarium simulation to demonstrate a clean healthy ocean vs. a littered one, figured out how to make and take terrariums with upcycled bottles, and even made an animation about the causes of air pollution. 

We are now knowledgeable to make better choices to keep our earth a happier, cleaner place to be. 

Mrs. Rodriguez's Class | Humans' actions can impact living things in all environments worldwide.

Rodriguez Exhibition

Hello! We are Mrs. Rodriguez’s 5th Grade Class. For our exhibition, our class wanted to learn about all the ways humans are impacting all living things in all environments worldwide. We studied topics like deforestation, overfishing, climate change, pollution, and lots more. We have taken action by going to the Tampa Riverwalk and passing out a QR Code that leads to our website to share all of our knowledge.

Rodriguez Exhibition

We made jump ropes out of non-recyclable plastic bags that we collected from other students in the elementary school. We then handed the jump ropes to each elementary and ECC class to use during recess. In addition, we created a podcast that is also attached to our exhibition website. Later on in our exhibition, we went on a field trip to the Suncoast Youth Conservation Center where we learned about the effect humans have on living things in various environments. 


Thank you to the unbelievable students and faculty of CDS 5th grade for the amount of work and care they put into these projects. We'd also like to thank the parents who supported the students in their endeavors.