What is the IB Middle Years
Programme?

Purpose: The International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (MYP) is desgned for students aged 11 to 16.  At Siwell Road Middle School, students will receive instruction for the first three years of the Middle Years Programme. The last two years of the Middle Years Programme are housed at Jim Hill High School.  

Students study subjects from eight subject groups through five areas of interaction: approaches to learning, community and service, human ingenuity, environment, and health and social education.

Targeting the age of 11 to 16 is important because it encompasses early puberty and mid-adolescence and is a particularly critical phase of personal and intellectual development which requires a program that helps students participate actively and responsibly in a changing and increasingly interrelated world. Learning how to learn and how to evaluate information critically is as important as learning facts. Curriculum documents are published in English, French, Spanish and Chinese but schools may offer the program in other languages. The Middle Years Program (MYP) is one of three programs offered by the IB.

The International Baccalaureate Programs supports students as:

IB Areas of Interaction

We use the following 5 Areas of Interaction to focus our instruction:

1) Approaches to Learning

How do I learn best?
How do I know?
How do I effectively communicate my understanding?
How you integrate acquired knowledge and personal experiences
Your knowledge and awareness of study skills
Your sense of individual and collective responsibility
How you structure coherent thought
Your critical judgment of various ways of thinking
Your capacity to problem solve and make decisions

2) Community and Service

How do we live in relation to each other?
How can I help others?
How can I contribute to the community?

• Your awareness of what a community is, in all its complex forms
• Your awareness of your position in the community
• The helpful activities you do inside and outside of the school

3) Environment

Where do I live?
What are my responsibilities?

• Your awareness of the interdependence of humans and nature
• Accepting responsibility for maintaining an environment fit for the future
• Understanding global environmental issues
• Your ability to make decisions on environmental situations

4)Homo Faber - Human Ingenuity

• Why and how do we create?
  What are the consequences?
• Man's creative genius
• The processes and products of human creation
• Appreciating the human capacity to impact life through creation, innovation, development, and transformation
• Exploring relationships between science, aesthetic, technology, and ethics

5) Health and Social Education

How do I think and act?
How am I changing?
How can I look after myself and others?

• Preparing yourself for a physically and mentally healthy life
• Skills and knowledge to make informed choices
• Taking responsibility for your own well-being and for your physical and social environment