MYP at ISU
At ISU, we offer the full IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) with all of its benefits and features. It is designed to give students the knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills needed to be successful in today’s world. The MYP teaches tools for lifelong learning and fosters responsible attitudes that help students discover how to use what they learn to take principled action. The MYP’s focus on independent learning makes it the ideal preparation for the IB Diploma Programme (DP).
We teach skills throughout the program to ensure students are able to approach learning in the most effective way. Our process for teaching these skills are aligned with assessment. We ensure the skills are taught throughout our units. We assess the skills along with the content they have learned. Finally, we allow students to reflect on their learning so they can create goals and action plans for further improvement. Teachers then use this information to help them plan future lessons.
MYP Key Features
Key and related concepts are big ideas, which form the basis of teaching and learning in the MYP. They ensure breadth and depth in the curriculum and promote learning within and across traditional disciplines.
Global contexts provide shared starting points for inquiry into what it means to be internationally minded, framing a curriculum that promotes multilingualism, intercultural understanding and global engagement.
Approaches to teaching and learning, a unifying thread throughout all MYP subject groups, are skills which help students manage their own learning. They provide a foundation for success in further education and the world beyond the classroom.
Action and service, essential components of the MYP, set out clear learning outcomes that grow from students’ participation in local and global communities. MYP projects are informed by respected models of service learning and provide stepping stones toward the Diploma Programme’s core requirements for Creativity, Action and Service (CAS).
The personal project, for students completing the programme in year 5, is a culminating experience in which students apply their approaches to learning skills to complete an extended, self-directed piece of work. This required component provides opportunities for creative and truly personal demonstrations of learning.
MYP Benefits
- Rigorous learning objectives
- A student-centred approach to teaching
- International perspectives
- Concern for the whole child
- Sustained teaching & learning in more than one language
- A focus on learning how to learn
- The development of flexible thinking that prepares students to evaluate information critically and apply knowledge in complex, unfamiliar situations.
MYP Skills
- Communication Skills
- Social Skills
- Self-Management Skills
- Research Skills
- Thinking Skills
Course Offerings
Students take eight subjects in MYP. Each subject is equipped with unique content, skills, assessment, and reflection.
