Middle Years Program
Amundsen High School, in conjunction with McPherson Elementary School, has been authorized for the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IB MYP) for students in grades 6 – 10. Students who attend Amundsen’s IB MYP, from any elementary school, will receive honors credit in 9th and 10th grade and internal recognition for their achievements in the program. They will also receive priority consideration for entrance into the IB Diploma program. The MYP curriculum is holistic and intense, offering students challenging classes and, ultimately, a rewarding breadth of knowledge and exposure.
About the Middle Years Program…
The Middle Years Program (MYP) provides a framework of academic challenge and life skills for students aged 11-16 years. The five-year program offers an educational approach that embraces yet transcends traditional school subjects. It serves as excellent preparation for the IB Diploma Program.
The MYP, like the other two programs of the International Baccalaureate Program, is based on the premise that education can foster understanding among young people around the world. Intercultural awareness is central to the program, to enable future generations to live more peacefully and productively than we do today.
Students at this stage—early puberty to mid-adolescence—are in a particularly critical phase of personal and intellectual development. This is a time of uncertainty, sensitivity, resistance and questioning. An educational program needs to provide them with discipline, skills and challenging standards, but also with creativity and flexibility. IB builds its program around these considerations but it is also concerned that students develop a personal value system by which to guide their own lives, as thoughtful members of local communities and the larger world.
The MYP program provides a thorough study of various disciplines. It also accentuates the interrelatedness of them, acknowledging the role of the subject disciplines and transdisciplinary study. At the same time, IB recognizes the importance of respecting the independence and integrity of each discipline.
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.
