At Yew Chung International School of Beijing, our Year 5 students recently held a Celebration of Learning to mark the completion of their ‘Shaping Our World’ unit of study. Celebrations of Learning are regular occurrences at YCIS Beijing. They serve as ‘So What Moments’; providing our students with an authentic opportunity to demonstrate what they’ve learned and why it matters.

YCIS Beijing’s Year 5 students’ ‘Shaping Our World’ Celebration demonstrated the skills and knowledge acquired from exploring maps, reading scales, and investigating how people shape the world. Each child presented their analysis of a city they’d selected. The students' based their analyses on their thorough research and study of a variety of graphs, the history of how and why their chosen city urbanised, the biggest changes their city had undergone, and some current issues and solutions the cities face in regards to urbanisation and sustainability. They exhibited their work in the form of multimedia presentations, prepared by each student, highlighting their findings in these areas.

Our students also prepared time-travelling narratives set in Beijing’s famous hutong: Nanluoguxiang (both in the present day and ancient times). They delivered engaging readings of their hutong narratives, illustrated with stop-motion animations. The stories were entertaining and full of twists and turns that would keep an audience captivated.

The entirety of their learning, with these self-directed city analysis projects and stop-motion animations as key showcase pieces, was exhibited at the Year 5 ‘Shaping Our World’ Celebration. Whether presenting to peers or school leaders, students were able to speak with confidence and answered a range of thought-provoking questions.