Middle Years Programme

The Middle Years Programme (MYP) is designed for those children in early puberty and mid adolescence, which is a particularly critical phase of personal and intellectual development.  The MYP offers an approach to teaching and learning that embraces yet transcends the focus on traditional school subjects.  While insisting upon thorough study of the various disciplines, the MYP accentuates the interrelatedness of them and so advances a holistic view of learning.   This perspective asks the student to consider issues and problems in their widest scope and to realize that good solutions often draw upon insights one has acquired from many sources.  This means helping students recognize relationships between school subjects and the world outside, and learn to combine relevant knowledge, experience and critical thinking to solve authentic problems.

Five broad areas known as the areas of interaction give the MYP curriculum its distinctive core and reflect the programme’s focus on students’ intellectual and social development.  These are not academic subjects like the specific disciplines, but rather are common perspectives embedded within and visible across academic subjects.  They provide a framework of learning, allowing connections among the subjects themselves.  The five areas of interaction are the following:

Approaches to Learning:  How do I learn best?  How do I know?  How do I communicate my understanding?

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

Homo Faber:  Why and how do we create?  What are the consequences?

Environment:  Where do we live?  What resources do we have or need?  Where are my responsibilities?

Health and Social Education:  How do I think and act?  How am I changing?  How can I look after myself and others?