What is the Middle Years Program?

The MYP is designed for students aged 11 to 16.

It provides a framework of learning which encourages students to become creative, critical and reflective thinkers. The MYP emphasizes intellectual challenge, encouraging students to make connections between their studies in traditional subjects and to the real world. It fosters the development of skills for communication, intercultural understanding and global engagement.

The Curriculum
The MYP is a disciplinary and interdisciplinary curriculum, which consists of eight subject groups. Subject teachers provide a global context for teaching and learning, and develop conceptual understanding within their own discipline and across subject groups.

Students are required to study at least two languages (as part of their multilingual profile and also to develop their intercultural understanding), individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, arts, physical and health education, and design. These subjects are unified by their focus on skills that help students learn how to learn, and their promotion of service as action.

In Year 10, students will undertake a small group ‘community project’ to explore their right and responsibility to implement service as action in the community. This will help to prepare them for their final year, during which students will undertake an independent ‘personal project’ to summatively demonstrate the development of their skills and understanding to this point.

What are the eight subject areas identified within the MYP?

• Language acquisition
• Language and literature
• Individuals and societies
• Sciences
• Mathematics
• Arts
• Physical and health education
• Design

The MYP is a disciplinary and interdisciplinary curriculum. Subject teachers provide a global context for teaching and learning, and develop conceptual understanding within their own discipline and across subject groups.

The MYP requires at least 50 hours of teaching time for each subject group, in each year of the program. In the final two years of the program, carefully-defined subject group flexibility allows students to meet local requirements and personal learning goals.

Assessment

MYP assessment standards are consistent around the world and are a criterion-related assessment model. Our teachers structure varied continuous assessment tasks so that learners can demonstrate achievement according to the objectives defined by the IB. Tasks are assessed against established criteria, not against the work of other students.

These include:

• open-ended, problem-solving activities and investigations
• organized debates
• tests and examinations
• hands-on experimentation
• analysis and reflection

The recording and reporting of individual levels of achievement are organized in ways that provide students with detailed feedback on their progress as it relates to the assessment criteria for each subject group.