Grade 5 PYP Exhibition · Shanghai
The Working Wall.
How Grade 5 students used a wall to track inquiry, evidence, action, and exhibition readiness.
This site documents one wall in a bilingual Grade 5 PYP classroom.
The wall became the place where the inquiry stayed visible. Questions, research, evidence, mentor notes, and next steps were not hidden in notebooks or scattered across group conversations. They were on the wall, where students could see them, use them, and revise them.
Not a display. A working space.
This wall showed work in progress
Most display boards show finished work.
This wall showed the messy part: first questions, weak searches, research that did not answer the question, and sticky notes that moved more than once.
Students added to it each week. They changed questions, replaced notes, and used the wall to decide what came next.
When their thinking changed, the wall changed.
The learning wall was not decoration. It was a working system that showed how inquiry became action and exhibition.
Week 1 to Week 8
A short timeline of the Exhibition
Each week the wall picked up a new routine. Tap a week to jump to the full account.
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On the wall
Featured artifacts
Artifact
Research Unstuck Wall
Give students a set of steps to try when research stalls, before asking an adult.
Artifact
Question Triangle
Sort questions by type so students could tell a quick-fact question from one worth an inquiry.
Artifact
Project Map
An A3 poster holding a group's central idea and lines of inquiry, with mentor advice, new questions, and new evidence added as they came in.
What the wall helped with
Three shifts
From questions
to inquiry
Students started with topics and long lists of questions. The wall helped them sort questions by type and pick the ones worth building an inquiry on.
From research
to evidence
Random fact-finding stopped. Students tracked what the project still needed and went after primary evidence: interviews, tests, real numbers.
From display
to visitor experience
The last weeks moved from making posters to designing what a visitor would do, hear, and try at each station.
Explore
The full documentation
Why the Wall
The problem the wall was solving — and what it did not solve.
Research Base
The four sources that shaped the wall, and how each one showed up.
The Journey
Week by week, from inquiry systems to the final presentation.
Wall Artifacts
The systems and routines that lived on the wall and at the stations.
Group Actions
Six PYPx groups, their actions, and the evidence behind them.
What Changed
Honest course corrections — what did not work, and the fix.
Mentor Buy-In
A leadership project on clarifying the mentor role during Exhibition — so adults coach inquiry instead of managing it.
The wall changed as the students changed their thinking.
Walk through the journey