MYP Curriculum
Why the MYP?
At Leigh Academy Rainham we are committed to delivering a innovative, highly ambitious digital curriculum that exposes students to diverse contexts from around the world. It is our intention that when students leave they feel like that have travelled the globe and are equipped with the lifelong learning skills needed to be successful in their chosen careers. The IB's Middle Years Programme for Year 7-9 provides a robust framework within which our vision for the curriculum is implemented.
In summary, the International Baccalaureate is a global educational organisation committed to the consistent and conceptual education of young people. During the aftermath of World War II, a French educator heading the International School of Geneva, Marie-Thérèse Maurette, envisioned “a pedagogy of peace”, in the hope that education could bring peace. Designed to bridge national biases and boundaries, the academically rigorous IB curriculum aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.
An MYP lesson - what you can expect!
As a student you can expect the following from your MYP curriculum and our standardised symbols will help you to see when MYP learning opportunities take place:
Inquiry Questions
Opportunity to formulate 'inquiry questions' at the start of topic which you will then explore as a class. These might be things that spark your curiosity about the topic!
Learning 'Concepts'
You will see familiar concepts across all your subjects when you are learning new content and skills. These are the big ideas that the curriculum links to in the world e.g the concept of 'change', 'culture' and 'identity'.
Global Contexts
When learning new topics you will be shown why its relevant to us and the world we live in, in other words your learning will be linked to 'contexts' e.g. globalisation, fairness, relationships.
Approaches to Learning
You will be explicitly shown by your teachers how to master different learning skills that will support you through all walks of life. In each topic you will focus on just one or two of these e.g. critical thinking, collaboration, reflective skills, media literacy.
MYP Levels and Grades
Each criterion within each subject evaluates students' achievement level on a 1-8 scale. This scale is not meant to be a percentage grade, but rather demonstrates the student's development of that skill or mastery of content knowledge. Those levels can broadly be thought of in the following way. MYP Levels of between 3 and 5 are what most students should be expected to attain. At the end of the year each child then receives an overall grade for the subject between 1-7 based on how they have achieved in their levels for each criterion throughout the year.
LAR Parent Guide to MYP .pdf