The Middle Years Programme (MYP)
Renaissance College (RCHK) offers the International Baccalaureate MYP programme. RCHK has been a fully authorised MYP school since November 2007.
The IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) is designed for students aged 11 to 16 years (Year 7 – 11) and sits between the PYP (Year 1 – 6) and the IB Diploma and Career-related Programmes (Year 12 and 13) creating a continuum of education.
The MYP provides a comprehensive curriculum framework of academic challenge that enables students to embrace the connections between traditional subjects and the world in which they live through the process of inquiry. The Middle Years Programme (MYP) is an inquiry-based curriculum framework with a focus on using conceptual and contextual lenses to frame learning. This framework, along with continued innovation, has allowed us to provide students with a varied and challenging curriculum with engaging learning experiences and instructional strategies.
The MYP supports student learning in this critical phase of personal, psychological, social, physical and intellectual development. Success in school is closely related to social and emotional wellbeing and the MYP aims to build self-esteem and resilience through exploring life beyond the classroom. The MYP uses a rigorous process of criterion-based assessment across the disciplines to develop academic knowledge and skills.
Students in the MYP are encouraged to:
- Develop a sense of discovery and enjoyment of the learning process both collaboratively and individually
- Recognize the manner in which knowledge, skills and concepts are interrelated
- Learn to communicate effectively across different media, in English and additional languages
- Develop their own sense of cultural identity and respect for other cultural identities
- Reflect upon their ideas, behaviours and attitudes
- Become independent learners who use their knowledge, skills and talents to participate actively and responsibly
Learning in the MYP
In the MYP, eight key subject areas (above) form the academic framework through both disciplinary and also interdisciplinary learning. The subjects are connected through key concepts that enable students to understand and link the big ideas they are studying. Relevance to the real world is provided by global contexts.
At Renaissance College students are required to study the following subjects:
- Language and Literature: English and Putonghua (Chinese)
- Language Acquisition: Putonghua (Chinese)
- Individuals and Societies (formerly Humanities)
- Sciences
- Mathematics
- Physical and Health Education (formerly Physical Education)
- Design (formerly Design and Technology)
- The Arts: Music, Theatre (formerly Drama) and Visual Art
- MYP Global Contexts (PYP Transdisciplinary themes)
The Personal Project
In the final year of the programme, all students engage in the Personal Project. The project involves students setting specific and rigorous learning and product goals that they work independently to fulfill, and will then report back on their process, learning, and achievement. This process enables them to investigate, design, create and reflect upon a personal area of interest and demonstrate the knowledge and skills related to this area of interest through the engagement in a process of independent learning.
What are the benefits of a four-programme IB school?
- Learning through inquiry is central to all four IB programmes.
- Links learning to the world we live in through the PYP transdisciplinary themes which become the MYP Global Contexts, followed by the DP Theory of Knowledge or CP Personal and Professional Skills.
- Learner skills and attributes gained from the PYP exhibition support the MYP Personal Project and which in turn can be developed and used in the IB Diploma Extended Essay or CP Reflective Project.
- Assessment in all four programmes is criteria-based encouraging an active role in the assessment and feedback processes from students.
- The programmes encourage students to become “caring members of the community who demonstrate a commitment to service—making a positive difference to the lives of others and to the environment” ( International Baccalaureate Organization, 2020) through Action in the PYP, which leads into Action and Service in the MYP, CAS in the DP or Service Learning in the CP.
Through the aspects of the IB Middle Years Programme learners are enabled to become successful independent, globally-minded critical thinkers prepared for the demands of the IB Diploma and Career Programmes and their ongoing future learning.
Additional resources for parents and guardians
Contact
Jennifer Whitehair
IB MYP Coordinator, Secondary Vice-Principal