MYP Programme

The MYP fosters the development of active learners and internationally minded individuals who can empathize with others and pursue lives filled with purpose and meaning. Through this programme, students are empowered to explore a broad range of issues and ideas at local, national, and global levels, cultivating creativity, critical thinking, and reflective thought.

Building on the foundation established by the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP), the MYP prepares students for the rigorous demands of the IB Diploma Programme (DP) and the IB Career-related Programme (CP).

About the MYP

In the programme model for the MYP, the first ring around the student at the centre describes the features of the programme that help students develop disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) understanding.

• Approaches to learning (ATL)—demonstrating a commitment to approaches to learning as a key component of the MYP for developing skills for learning.
• Approaches to teaching—emphasizing MYP pedagogy, including collaborative learning through Inquiry.
• Concepts—highlighting a concept-driven curriculum.
• Global contexts—showing how learning best takes place in context.

The second ring describes some important outcomes of the programme

• Inquiry-based learning may result in student-initiated action, which may involve service within the community.
• The MYP culminates in the personal project (for students in MYP year 5) or the community project (for students in MYP years 3 or 4).

The third ring describes the MYP’s broad and balanced curriculum

• The MYP organizes teaching and learning through eight subject groups: language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, arts, physical and health education, and design.
• In many cases, discrete or integrated disciplines may be taught and assessed within a subject group: for example, history or geography within the individuals and societies subject group; biology, chemistry or physics within the sciences subject group.
• The distinction between subject groups blurs to indicate the interdisciplinary nature of the MYP. The subject groups are connected through global contexts and key concepts.

Conceptual Understanding in the MYP

In the MYP, concepts are explored from various perspectives and levels of complexity, helping students innovate, solve problems, and address challenges.

The programme uses two types of concepts:

• Key concepts are broad, abstract ideas that encourage higher-order thinking across subjects. The MYP includes 16 key concepts that guide curriculum planning and promote interdisciplinary understanding.

• Related concepts are subject-specific and provide depth by focusing on particular aspects of a discipline. These help students develop a more detailed and sophisticated understanding.

Teachers use both types to design meaningful learning experiences that connect different areas of study.

Learning in Global Contexts: Connecting the MYP to the Real World

In the Middle Years Programme (MYP), learning is rooted in authentic, real-world contexts to encourage global engagement and international mindedness. Students learn best when their experiences are connected to their lives and the world around them. By using global contexts, teachers make learning meaningful and relevant, which enhances student engagement and supports the development of key IB learner attributes.

MYP's global contexts allow students to link concepts to their own lives, apply knowledge, and address real-world challenges. This approach helps students develop global competence, preparing them to navigate and contribute to an increasingly interconnected world.

The MYP identifies 6 global contexts for teaching and learning:

• Globalisation and Sustainabiliy: How is everything connected?
• Scientific and technical innovation: How do we understand the world we live in?
  
• Personal and Cultural expression: What is the nature and purpose of creative expression?
  
• Orientation in Space and Time: What is the meaning of “where” and “when”?
  
• Identities and Relationships: Who am I? Who are we? What does it mean to be human?
  
• Fairness and Development: What are the consequences of commun humanity?

MYP curriculum at ISÄ

At ISÄ we offer the following subjects:

• Language Literature- English (the Swedish language literature is offered to students fluent in Swedish)
• Language acquisition Swedish (all students take this), Spanish and or French (a choice offered starting from MYP2 (Grade 6) must be made between Spanish and or French.)
• Individuals and Societies- these are all a combination of multiple social sciences.
• Mathematics- we offer standard and higher mathematics
• Science- combination of Physics, Chemistry and Biology
• P.E.
• Design (Choice)*
• Visual Arts (Choice)*

* Please note that for the arts and design a choice is made at the end of MYP3 (Grade 7) between Visual arts and Design. All students take part in all 3 subjects for the first 3 years of the programme.

Approaches to Learning (ATL) in the MYP

Through ATL, students develop transferable skills that help them "learn how to learn" across the curriculum. These skills, taught and improved with practice, build a foundation for independent and collaborative learning. ATL skills support meaningful assessment, providing a common language for students and teachers to reflect on the learning process. They help students meet MYP objectives and prepare for future academic success in the DP and CP.

While not formally assessed, ATL skills are essential to student achievement. Teachers offer feedback and opportunities for practice, integrating ATL into both subject-specific and interdisciplinary learning. This promotes deeper understanding, skill transfer, and academic success.

IB programmes identify five ATL skill categories, expanded into developmentally appropriate skill clusters.

Service as Action in the MYP

Service as action is a key component of the MYP, encouraging students to make a positive impact in their community. Through community and personal projects, students explore, design, and reflect on their efforts to improve their environment. It offers opportunities to share talents, meet new people, and connect classroom learning with real-world experiences.

At ISÄ, Service as Action is closely tied to classroom learning but is also often initiated by students themselves. It is a core element of the programme, managed by our SA coordinator, with students’ learning processes and outcomes recorded in ManageBac.

Service activities help students develop the IB Learner Profile and gain a deeper understanding of local issues. MYP schools are responsible for setting qualitative expectations for students' participation, aligned with service learning outcomes. Meeting these expectations is a requirement for earning the IB MYP certificate.

Personal Project

MYP students in their final year explore an area of personal interest over an extended period. It provides them the opportunity to consolidate their learning and develop important skills they’ll need in both further education and life beyond the classroom. It also helps them develop confidence to become principled, lifelong learners.

Elements of the personal project:

The personal project formally assesses students’ approaches to learning (ATL) skills for self-management, research, communication, critical and creative thinking, and collaboration.

The project is made up of a process, a product and a reflective report.

• process —ideas, criteria, developments, challenges, plans, research, possible solutions and progress reports
• product or outcome—evidence of tangible or intangible results: what the student was aiming to achieve or create
• report—an account of the project and its impact, to a structure that follows the assessment criteria. The report describes both the process of creating the project and an evaluation of the impact of the process on the student or their learning.

The report is assessed by the supervisor and externally moderated by the IB to ensure a globally consistent standard of excellence. Each project is awarded a final achievement grade.

MYP Assessment

The aim of MYP assessment is to support and encourage student learning. The MYP places an emphasis on assessment processes that involve the gathering and analysis of information about student performance and that provide timely feedback to students on their performance. MYP assessment plays a significant role in the development of ATL skills, especially skills that are closely related to subject-group objectives. The MYP approach to assessment recognizes the importance of assessing not only the products, but also process of learning.

MYP assessment encourages teachers to monitor students’ developing understanding and abilities throughout the programme. Through effective formative assessment, teachers gather, analyze, interpret and use a variety of evidence to improve student learning and to help students to achieve their potential.

Student peer and self-assessment can be important elements of formative assessment plans. Internal (school-based) summative assessment is part of every MYP unit. Summative assessments are designed to provide evidence for evaluating student achievement using required MYP subject-group specific assessment criteria.

MYP assessment requires teachers to assess the prescribe subjet-group objectives using the assessment criteria for each subject group in each year of the programme. I

In the MYP, teachers make decisions about student achievement using their professional judgment, guided by mandated criteria that are public, known in advance and precise, ensuring that assessment is transparent.

Across a variety of assessment tasks (authentic performances of understanding), teachers use descriptors to identify students’ achievement levels against established assessment criteria. MYP internal (school-based) assessment uses a “best-fit” approach in which teachers work together to establish common standards against which they evaluate each student’s achievement holistically.

This “criterion-related” approach represents a philosophy of assessment that is neither “norm-referenced” (where students must be compared to each other and to an expected distribution of achievement) nor “criterion-referenced” (where students must master all strands of specific criteria at lower achievement levels before they can be considered to have achieved the next level).

Assessment in the MYP aims to:

• support and encourage student learning by providing feedback on the learning process
• inform, enhance and improve the teaching process
• provide opportunity for students to exhibit transfer of skills across disciplines, such as in the personal
• project and interdisciplinary unit assessments
• promote positive student attitudes towards learning
• promote a deep understanding of subject content by supporting students in their inquiries set in real-world contexts
• promote the development of critical- and creative-thinking skills
• reflect the international-mindedness of the programme by allowing assessments to be set in a variety of cultural and linguistic contexts
• support the holistic nature of the programme by including in its model principles that take account of the development of the whole student.

The MYP assessment criteria across subject groups can be summarized as follows.

How is the student work assessed?

For the MYP Subjects that the student is studying the IB has developed assessment criteria against which the student’s work will be assessed.

The student will not be judged against the work of other students, but against assessment criteria which the teacher will show and explain to the student.

The final assessment for MYP Subjects takes place at the end of the programme in order to determine the levels individual students have achieved in relation to the stated objectives for each MYP subject.

The achievement levels of student understanding are based on the whole course and not the individual components (criterion). The grades in each criterion (grade X 4) are added to arrive at a final grade. Grades from 1 (lowest) and 7 (highest) are awarded to the students, for each MYP subject according to following grade boundaries.

Teaching and Learning Platform - Toddle

We subscribe to an online platform to inform all the stakeholders about the teaching and learning that takes place at ISÄ.

For parents, the platform helps them to follow the school calendar, policies, curriculum overview, follow the academic progress of their child/ren and support them in their daily activities at school.

For teachers, the platform helps them to create and follow their plans as per the requirement of the curriculum, track their students’ progress, help them in the areas of development and report progress and events of their classroom.

For pedagogical team, the platform helps to ensure the coherence of teaching and learning, track progression of the subject, assessments, and students’ progress.

More information on navigating this platform will be available on request.