The community project focuses on community and service, encouraging students to explore their rights and responsibilities to implement service as action in the community. The community project gives students an opportunity to develop an 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 MYP community project is a culminating example of inquiry because it reflects students’ abilities to initiate, manage and direct their own inquiries.

The inquiry process in MYP projects involves students in a wide range of activities to extend their knowledge and understanding and to develop their skills and attitudes. These student-planned learning activities include:

• deciding what they want to learn about, identifying what they already know, and discovering what they will need to know to complete the project

• creating proposals or criteria for their project, planning their time and materials, and recording developments of the project

• making decisions, developing understandings and solving problems, communicating with their supervisor and others, and creating a product or developing an outcome

• evaluating the product or outcome and reflecting on their project and their learning.

As students become involved in the self-initiated and self-directed learning process, they will find it easier to construct in-depth knowledge on their topic as well as to develop an understanding of themselves as learners.

The aims state what a student may expect to experience and learn. These aims suggest how the student may be changed by the learning experience.

The aims of the MYP community project are to encourage and enable students to:

• participate in a sustained, self-directed inquiry within a global context

• generate creative new insights and develop deeper understandings through in-depth investigation

• demonstrate the skills, attitudes and knowledge required to complete a project over an extended period of time

• communicate effectively in a variety of situations

• demonstrate responsible action through, or as a result of, learning

• appreciate the process of learning and take pride in their accomplishments.

The objectives of MYP projects encompass the factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive dimensions of knowledge. Listed below are the objectives of the community project specifically.

Objective A: Investigating

Students should be able to:

• Define a goal to address a need within a community, based on personal interests

• Identify prior learning and subject-specific knowledge relevant to the project

• Demonstrate research skills

Objective B: Planning

Students should be able to:

• Develop a proposal for action to serve the need in the community

• Plan and record the development process of the project

• Demonstrate self-management skills

Objective C: Taking action

Students should be able to:

• Demonstrate service as action as a result of the project

• Demonstrate thinking skills

• Demonstrate communication and social skills

Objective D: Reflecting

Students should be able to:

• Evaluate the quality of the service as action against the proposal

• Reflect on how completing the project has extended their knowledge and understanding of service learning

• Reflect on their development of ATL skills

Students will use the presentation of the community project as an opportunity to demonstrate how they have addressed each of the objectives. Students will be expected to communicate clearly, accurately and appropriately.

In schools in which the MYP finishes with year 3 or 4 of the programme, all students in the final year must complete the community project. Students are expected to spend approximately 15 hours on their community project.

The MYP community project may be completed individually or collaboratively in groups of no more than three students.

Schools offering the MYP including years 3 and 5 may choose to offer students the opportunity to participate in both the community project and the personal project.

Students are expected to spend approximately 15 hours on their MYP community project. This time includes:

• meeting with supervisors

• independent learning through research, planning, development and completion of the project

• reporting of the project.

The stages followed in the community project (illustrated in the figure), provide a useful framework to develop the attributes of the learner profile. The fifth and final stage is “demonstration”, which in the MYP community project is the presentation.

1. Investigation involves taking an inventory of student interests, skills, and talents to be used in considering opportunities. This analysis requires gathering information about the identified need through action research that includes the use of varied approaches: media, interviews of experts, surveys of varied populations, and direct observation/personal experiences.

2. Preparation involves the student planning the service experience with clarification of roles, responsibilities, actions to be taken, resources required, and timelines while acquiring any skills needed to carry the plan to completion successfully.

3. Action involves implementing the plan. Students may work individually, with student partners, in student groups, or with others.

4. Reflection involves students describing what happened, expressing feelings, generating ideas, and asking questions. Reflection occurs intermittently and in summation to gauge understanding and synthesis, to assist with revising and rethinking plans, and to internalize the experience.

5. Demonstration involves metacognition, with students making explicit what and how they learned and what they have accomplished, capturing the totality of the experience. Integration of technology is encouraged.

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Global contexts, direct learning towards an independent and shared inquiry into our common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet. Using the world as the broader context for learning, MYP projects can develop meaningful explorations of:

• identities and relationships

• orientation in space and time

• personal and cultural expression

• scientific and technical innovation

• globalization and sustainability

• Fairness and development

Students must identify one of these global contexts for their community project to establish the relevance of their inquiry (why it matters).

MYP projects are culminating activities through which students present, in a truly individual way, their development of ATL skills.

ATL skills provide a solid foundation for learning independently and with others, demonstrating learning, and reflecting on the process of learning. They help students to become more autonomous, strategic and self-motivated and ultimately prepare students for responsible participation in local and global contexts.

Students have the opportunity to develop effective skills—mindfulness, perseverance, emotional management, self-motivation and resilience—throughout the entire process. This skill set contributes to managing state of mind and a healthy, balanced approach to the projects.

For the MYP community project, students are expected to document their process in the process journal. In this way, students demonstrate their working behavior and academic honesty.

Documenting the process

The process journal is a generic term used to refer to the record of progress maintained by the student throughout the community project. However, the media for documenting the process can vary depending on student preferences. It can be written, visual, audio, or a combination of these, and it may include both paper and electronic formats. In the use of electronic and digital media, students are strongly advised to make digital copies of their journals or to transmit copies of their journals to an online storage site.

Students will be familiar with the practice of documenting the development of their community project in the process journal, and can draw on techniques used to document the arts process journal, the design folder or similar workbooks in other subject groups. Students may develop their own format and design, although schools can provide templates or examples to support students’ work.

Process Journal

Evidences and presentation

IB MYP Community Project guide