Conceptual Understanding

All units of study in the MYP are framed by one of the 16 Key Concepts. These are big ideas around which the curriculum is organised that help students build relevant understanding within and between different subject groups. Associating their learning with these concepts helps students to transfer their learning between different environments, making them flexible and adaptive in constructing their knowledge and understanding. Each unit of study contains one of the 16 key concepts shown below and details are shown in the plans in the subject specific pages. Students will explore units with all of these concepts across their range of different subjects during their study in the MYP.

Global Contexts

Learning in the MYP is linked to contexts to enable students to understand concepts in realistic, relevant and authentic real-life settings and examples. Global contexts in the MYP encourage international mindedness in learners and a greater understanding of the settings in which our increasingly interconnected world is placed. The six global contexts within the MYP grow from the trans-disciplinary themes evident within learning in the PYP. Each unit of study is linked to one of the six global contexts outlined below.

Approaches to Learning (ATLs)

ATLs are the skills that students need to launch themselves in to becoming successful lifelong learners. They enable students to become active and driving forces in their own development, by building their capacity to recognise and make informed decisions about their own strengths and areas of improvement. Every unit of study in the MYP includes specific ATLs upon which the students will focus in order to build the skills needed to perform in the assessments for that unit.

The IB sets out 10 ATL skills clusters organised in to 5 groupings as shown in the diagram below.

ATL skills are individual skills that form an essential part of the learning toolkit for each child. In the age of information where facts and figures are available at the touch of a button, the future requirements of today’s school students will not be based around their ability to memorise and recall facts. Aspiring to master the ATL skills will enable our graduates of the future to engage adaptively and creatively with the modern, unpredictable world.

ATL skills are practiced and developed in every subject. In the individual subject plans below you will see each unit is linked to a number of ATLs, this again enables opportunities for students to experience growth in these skills through a variety of activities and settings.

MYP Interdisciplinary Learning Overview

The world outside of school is rarely organised to the same extent that schools run on the inside. It is more complex and requires us to switch focus and apply our understanding in different contexts. Interdisciplinary units aim to give students a more authentic real-life experience by exposing them to use transferrable problem solving skills.

Interdisciplinary learning can take many forms and combinations in the school and it is an exciting and powerful way for students to embed deep and authentic learning. The units are taught collaboratively between subjects and require students to recognise, develop and reflect on their transfer of knowledge between disciplines. These units may involve learning multiple subject areas within one of their traditional subject classes and teachers may transfer between classes to share their subject specific knowledge in a different class. Often, these units have a project focus within which students have a specific end point, which is only reachable by combining their understanding across subjects. Alongside learning benefits, this also helps students engage more in the process and their own development in reaching a more complex goal

Whilst learning in the MYP here is often presented through individual subject information. It should be noted that the MYP encourages students to look and learn across individual subject boundaries. Students learn through Concepts and within shared Global Contexts that help embed a deeper, more relevant and relatable understanding of their specific subject content knowledge. Students will also learn across several subjects through Interdisciplinary units (IDUs) where their study falls between two separate subject groups. Finally Approaches to Learning (ATLs), which are also present in the PYP, are a strong central focus of the programme. The ATLs are core learning skills that students not only develop but are actively required to understand and focus on in order to drive personal progression within their own individual learning.

Assessment in the MYP

The MYP framework allows for a mixture of formative and summative assessment to be employed across all subject disciplines. Each subject in the MYP has four assessment objectives and these are the criteria against which student performance is measured. Each criterion is scored on a scale between 0 (lowest, no work submitted) and 8 (highest). To calculate the overall score in a subject, all four criteria grades are added together and measured against the MYP grade boundary calculator. The table below shows how individual subject grades are calculated and provides indicative descriptions of student work at each level.

Summative assessments in each subject are based on one or more of these criteria. In these assessments, each criterion is graded on the scale of 0-8 based on measuring student submissions against the individual criteria descriptors to determine the correct level at which student is performing. Each criteria score is added to provide a raw score out of 32 for the subject. This score is then converted to a score on a scale of 1-7 for the overall IB grade in the subject, based on the grade boundaries set by the IB.

As an example, a student studying Mathematics finishes the year with the following criteria scores;

1. Knowing & understanding: 6
2. Investigating patterns:5
3. Communicating::8
4. Applying mathematics in real-world contexts:7

This would give them an overall score of 26. In turn this would give the student an overall grade in Mathematics of 6.

Some subject assessments may target an individual criterion, whilst others are more comprehensive and assess all 4 criteria in one assessment. Details of the assessment criteria are shown in the individual subject pages of this guide.

Each subject in the MYP has its own individual mixture of assessment criteria. The table below shows all four criteria for each of the subjects.

Throughout every year of the MYP, each criteria strand will be assessed at least twice. The subject teacher will apply their professional judgement of a student’s overall progress in criteria scores to generate holistic, best-fit criteria scores.

Prior to any summative assessment, students will be issued with an assessment notification carrying task-specific guidance on the criteria that will be assessed. This helps students to understand which criteria they are being assessed on and what is required from them in approaching the assessment task.

Assessment is viewed as an on-going cycle in both the school and the MYP. Teachers will issue students with feedback and guidance on their assessment performance following assessments. Students are expected to regularly assess their own work and that of their peers, reflect on their personal performance and, through collaboration with their teachers, set themselves targets for improvement in future assessments.

It is the student’s responsibility to complete all required tasks in each assessment. Failure to submit any evidence of achievement in an assessment will result in a grade of ‘0’ for each criterion assessed. Issues of academic integrity in assessments will be dealt with in alignment with the school’s academic honesty policy.