Exploring Passions, Innovating Ideas and Self Discovery—The Personal Project Exhibition

On Thursday February 27, Grade 10 students presented their completed Personal Projects at the annual Personal Project Exhibition. This year, to add in a new layer of fun, projects were organized into six different towns, showcasing the wide variety of projects students undertook: Flavourtown, Innovatia, Aesthetica, Kinetic Town, Tinkertown and Inspiration Isle.

The Personal Project is the culminating activity at the end of the IB Middle Years Programme. Students in Grade 10 work on this project starting in September and share their results in February of their Grade 10 year. This is a project that is independent and student-driven, where students identify an interest outside the walls of the classroom and create a learning goal that they wish to pursue. 

Ms. Tara Colborne, the Personal Project Coordinator shares that “The exhibition was so incredibly well attended and the whole community surrounded the Grade 10s and celebrated and honoured all their hard work.” Grade 5 students visited from the Beach Drive Campus to attend, as well as many of the Grade 6 through 12 classes and GNS families. 

As students can explore a passion completely outside of their school work, the Exhibition encompasses a huge variety of interests! Adrian Syreyshchikov built a gaming computer from scratch, a passion he first discovered in Grade 6. Radmir Yarullin researched and built a spider habitat that was on display, including a live tarantula (surprising many visitors!). Momo Ma took recycled items from the beach and turned them into an incredibly inspiring wave art piece. Kei Tsuchimoto created an entire video game from scratch, using three different coding languages and hand drawing each character. Scarlett Pagett built incredible horse jumps, and painted them with her own designs. Leah Wang learned Latin and used her new knowledge to translate text from the Roman Republic. 

As amazing as the final results are, it is the process and the learning that takes place throughout the project that is the primary focus of the Personal Project experience. Students utilize many of their Approaches To Learning Skills (ATLS) which they have acquired  throughout the IB MYP, such as short and long-term planning, organization, research and communication skills.

It is wonderful to see students proudly display their projects and be able to speak so thoughtfully about their challenges and successes throughout their process! Students feel such a strong sense of ownership and accomplishment after completing the Personal Project as it is completely of their own design and pursuit. 

Congratulations Grade 10s on reaching this milestone as you near the end of the Middle Years Programme!