Creating Academic Exhibits

Overview

Creating a Museum of Student Work

As a museum school, Normal Park utilizes student-created exhibits as a way to assess student learning. Every nine weeks, the entire school turns into a museum where student work is on display and the learning students have done over the past quarter is celebrated. Exhibits are a great way for students to take ownership of their learning.

Exhibit pieces include art projects, essays, poems, travel journals, sculptures, and drawings. Each exhibit piece is accompanied by a student-written exhibit label, which describes the piece, its academic content, and the student’s personal connection to the work.

Teachers use the exhibits and exhibit labels as one of the key assessments of student learning.

How It's Done

Designing Exhibits to Demonstrate Learning

Normal Park divides its year into four nine-week quarters. Each quarter, every student studies either a science- or social-studies-themed module. Students may create several exhibit pieces per module; exhibits must include contributions from each of the core subject areas: language arts, reading, math, and science or social studies plus the related arts teams (art, foreign languages, and library).

Here are the steps teachers and students take to create academic exhibits: