IB stands for International Baccalaureate.  MYP stands for Middle Years Programme.  "The IB Middle Years Programme (MYP), for students aged 11 to 16, is designed as an inclusive, whole-school programme by the International Baccalaureate (IB), a not-for-profit organization supporting the education of more than 1 million students every year in over 3,900 schools in 147 countries.

The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

At River Road Middle School, the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) Learner Profile is at the heart of everything we do. It describes the kind of people we strive to be—caring, open-minded, principled, reflective, knowledgeable, balanced, thinkers, inquirers, communicators, and risk-takers.

These traits guide how we learn, act, and treat others every day. As MYP students, we want you to use these traits to explore new ideas, show respect for different perspectives, and take meaningful action in your community.

The goal of the IB Learner Profile is simple: to help you become your best self—ready to learn, lead, and make a difference in the world.

 Approaches to teaching

The same six approaches underpin teaching in all IB programmes. The approaches are deliberately broad, designed to give teachers the flexibility to choose specific strategies to employ that best reflect their own particular contexts and the needs of their students. In all IB programmes, teaching is:

1. based on inquiry: A strong emphasis is placed on students finding their own information and constructing their own understandings.
2. focused on conceptual understanding: Concepts are explored in order to both deepen disciplinary understandings and to help students make connections and transfer learning to new contexts.
3. developed in local and global contexts: Teaching uses real-life contexts and examples, and students are encouraged to process new information by connecting it to their own experiences and to the world around them.
4. focused on effective teamwork and collaboration: This includes promoting teamwork and collaboration between students, but it also refers to the collaborative relationship between teachers and students.
5. designed to remove barriers to learning: Teaching is inclusive and values diversity. It affirms students’ identities and aims to create learning opportunities that enable every student to develop and pursue appropriate personal goals.
6. informed by assessment: Assessment plays a crucial role in supporting, as well as measuring, learning. This approach also recognizes the crucial role of providing students with effective feedback.

IBO. (2019, October 11). International education. International Baccalaureate®. https://www.ibo.org

‌Approaches to learning

Our focus on approaches to learning is grounded in the belief that learning how to learn is fundamental to a student’s education. The five categories of interrelated skills aim to empower IB students of all ages to become self-regulated learners who know how to ask good questions, set effective goals, pursue their aspirations and have the determination to achieve them.

These skills also help to support students’ sense of agency, encouraging them to see their learning as an active and dynamic process. The same five categories of skills span all IB programmes, with the skills then emphasized in developmentally appropriate ways within each programme. The five categories are:

1. thinking skills—including areas such as critical thinking, creative thinking and ethical thinking
2. research skills—including skills such as comparing, contrasting, validating and prioritizing information
3. communication skills—including skills such as written and oral communication, effective listening, and formulating arguments
4. social skills—including areas such as forming and maintaining positive relationships, listening skills, and conflict resolution
5. self-management skills—including both organizational skills, such as managing time and tasks, and affective skills, such as managing state of mind and motivation.

The development of these skills plays a crucial role in supporting the IB’s mission to develop active, compassionate and lifelong learners. Although these skills areas are presented as distinct categories, there are close links and areas of overlap between them, and the categories should be seen as interrelated.

IBO. (2019, October 11). International education. International Baccalaureate®. https://www.ibo.org

At River Road IB classes include eight core subjects rather than the traditional four core subjects.  These subjects include:

1. Language and literature (English language arts)
2. Mathematics
3. Science
4. Individuals and societies (social studies)
5. Physical and heath education
6. Arts (Band, visual arts)
7. Design (Career and Technical Education)
8. Language acquisition (Spanish)

Teachers create unit plans and instruction is guided by inquiry-based, student-centered classrooms, informed by high quality assessments and data.