MYP Assessment

Practices and Philosophy

MYP assessment requires teachers to assess the prescribed subject-group objectives using the assessment criteria for each subject group in each year of the programme. In order to provide students with opportunities to achieve at the highest level, MYP teachers develop rigorous tasks that embrace a variety of assessment strategies. Each subject has a number of different criteria that are used to evaluate students’ achievement.

Sometimes all criteria are applied to an assessment task; sometimes only selected criteria are applied. For each criterion, there are level descriptors that describe, at different levels of achievement, what a student knows, understands or is able to do. These descriptors explain what a level of achievement means in terms of a student’s learning and progress towards a subject’s objectives.

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).

MYP From Principles to Practice, January 2015

Types of Assessment in KCIS

Formative assessment

“Ongoing assessment aimed at providing information to guide teaching and improve student performance. (MYP: From Principles to Practice. N.p.: IBO, May 2014. Pdf)

“Also known as assessment for learning.” - Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind” (Page 55)

Formative tasks can be but not limited to quizzes or process journal or informal such as peer evaluation or in-class activities

“By assessing students as they develop disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding,  teachers identify student‐learning needs in order to better inform the learning process. Formative assessments should be planned from the start of a unit, although they may change as teachers engage with students to determine the next stages of learning.” (MYP from Principles to Practice)

Summative assessment

“The culminating assessment for a unit, term or course of study, designed to provide information on the student’s achievement level against specific objectives.” ( MYP: From Principles to Practice. N.p.: IBO, May 2014. Pdf. p. 125)

also called assessment of learning.  Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind” (Page 59)

Summative tasks may be but are not limited to essays, tests, presentations, products, performances, projects, or lab reports

School-based assessments

KCIS uses NWEA MAP, a computer adaptive interim assessment given three times a year.  The data enables the teachers to differentiate instruction based on student’s RIT scores and the scores are also a criterion in placing students in appropriate level.

MYP Assessment procedure

KCIS Middle Years Programme starts from grade 7 - 10 and will follow this assessment procedure:

Standardization of scores to ensure effective assessment

Teachers in each subject collaborate to design assessment tasks.  At the end of each summative task, teachers conduct a standardization of assessment to promote consistency and build a common understanding of student achievement based on MYP objectives

The table below summarizes the MYP assessment criteria across subject groups

Recording and Reporting MYP scores

“MYP reports of student achievement should communicate the student’s achievement level for each assessment criterion. This practice provides students and their parents with information about the student’s engagement with the objectives of each subject group and should be supported with advice for improvement, where applicable.”

“All schools are required to organize learning and assessment that is consistent with the prescribed MYP objectives and criteria. The assessment criteria, and their published achievement levels, must be used by all schools for any final internal assessment for MYP students and for predicted grades reported to the IB” - (MYP: From Principles to Practice. N.p.: IBO, May 2014. Pdf. p.. 101)

Student performance in KCIS will be reported in two separate ways:

Students are assessed based on the factors that describe actions and behaviors that support academic achievement. This is framed using the ATL skills aligned to KCIS student learning outcomes (SLO).  ATL skills are reported each term

ATL skill attainment is reported by four indicators - Exceeding Expectations (EE), Meeting Expectations (ME), Approaching Expectations (AE), and Below Expectations (BE).

Generating the IB 1-7 grade

At the end of each term, teachers evaluate how a student has performed on the four criteria over the course of the units studied in that term.  Note that not a specific task but the whole student is being assessed.

Add up the four grades in each criterion (a maximum of 8 per criterion) and convert it to a 1-7 MYP grade