Assessment

In the MYP your work is assessed all the time. During lessons and when you are completing work your teacher and sometimes other students in your class will give you feedback. This feedback will help you make improvements in how you do your work (the process) and in the actual assignment itself. This type of assessment is called formative assessment.

When you have finished an assignment the teacher will grade your work against one or more of the assessment criteria, and provide you with additional feedback. This is summative assessment, and it is important that you understand the feedback as this will let you find out what you have done well, and what you need to improve.

Teachers will use a variety of assessment tasks, such as oral presentations, essays, project-work, tests and quizzes, research assignments and art work. Different tasks allow you to demonstrate your knowledge, understanding and skills in different ways.

Rubrics

Your work will always be graded against a rubric, and you will see these before you start your assignment, so you know what to do. Each subject has four assessment criteria, and each criterion has its own rubric. Each criterion has a maximum mark of 8.

Sometimes your teacher will change the wording of the assessment rubric so it matches the assignment you are working on. This is to help you understand what to do and how to complete the assignment.

Grades

The maximum mark you can achieve for any piece of work is 8. An assignment may be marked against one assessment criterion, or it may be marked against two, three or even all four criteria. It is important that you understand how your work will be marked before you start an assignment, so check with your teacher if there is anything that you do not understand.

Remember that you need to use the rubric when receiving your marks as the rubrics do not work like percentages or letter grades. Again, if you have any questions about how your work has been graded you need to ask your teacher so you can apply what you have learned to your next assignments.

At the end of the year, your teacher will look at your grades and decide on the most consistent and best fit level of achievement for each criterion. These four marks (out of 8) will appear in your June report card. A final attainment grade out of 7 will also be included in the June report card. To calculate this, your teacher will add together the four marks you received for criteria A, B, C and D, and then use this grade boundary table.