Understanding the MYP

Approaches to Learning

Our focus on approaches to learning is grounded in the belief that learning how to learn is fundamental to a student’s education.

The five categories of interrelated skills aim to empower students to become self-regulated learners who know how to ask good questions, set effective goals, pursue their aspirations and have the determination to achieve them. These skills also help to support students’ sense of agency, encouraging them to see their learning as an active and dynamic process.

The same five categories of skills span all IB programmes, with the skills then emphasized in developmentally appropriate ways within each programme. The five categories are:

• thinking skills—including areas such as critical thinking, creative thinking and ethical thinking

• research skills—including skills such as comparing, contrasting, validating and prioritizing information

• communication skills—including skills such as written and oral communication, effective listening, and formulating arguments

• social skills—including areas such as forming and maintaining positive relationships, listening skills, and conflict resolution

• self-management skills—including both organizational skills, such as managing time and tasks, and affective skills, such as managing state of mind and motivation.

The development of these skills plays a crucial role in supporting the our goal to develop active, compassionate and lifelong learners. Although these skills areas are presented as distinct categories, there are close links and areas of overlap between them, and the categories should be seen as interrelated.

The Community Project and the Personal Project

There are two important culminating projects in the MYP:

The community project is undertaken in Grade 8 and focuses on community and service, encouraging students to explore their right and responsibility to implement service as action in the community. The community project gives students an opportunity to develop awareness of needs in various communities and address those needs through service learning. As a consolidation of learning, the community project engages in a sustained, in-depth inquiry leading to service as action in the community. The community project may be completed individually or by groups of a maximum of three students. 

The personal project encourages students to practise and strengthen their ATL skills, to consolidate prior and subject-specific learning, and to develop an area of personal interest. The personal project provides an excellent opportunity for students to produce a truly personal and often creative product/outcome and to demonstrate a consolidation of their learning in the MYP. The project offers many opportunities for differentiation of learning and expression according to students’ individual needs. The personal nature of the project is important; the project should revolve around a challenge that motivates and interests the individual student. Each student develops a personal project independently. 

International Mindedness

Our MYP creates opportunities that help students increase their understanding of language and culture, and become more globally engaged. Education for international-mindedness relies on the development of learning environments that value the world as the broadest context for learning. 

Intercultural understanding involves recognizing and reflecting on one’s own perspective, as well as the perspectives of others. To increase intercultural understanding, students learn to appreciate critically many beliefs, values, experiences, forms of expression and ways of knowing. 

Global engagement represents a commitment to address humanity’s greatest challenges in the classroom and beyond. It can develop from the use of global contexts in inquiry leading to principled action. Our programmes provides sustained inquiry into a wide range of issues and ideas of significance locally, nationally and globally. Our students are encouraged to engage the world through developmentally appropriate explorations of local and global concerns, including the environment, development, conflicts, rights, and cooperation and governance. Globally engaged people critically consider power and privilege, and recognize that they hold the Earth and its resources in trust for future generations.