Dear Parents,
What a week of MYP learning, and this time, not only for our students!
Our Grade 10s experienced their first IRL introduction to eAssessment, simply getting a feel for the platform, the conditions, the timing, and the style of questions they will eventually face. No grade, no pressure, just information. Their feedback has already given us a clearer picture of what feels comfortable and what needs more practice. That is exactly the point. We try, we reflect, we adjust, and then we move forward better prepared.
The same thing happened at our Parent Information Evening. I was genuinely delighted to see so many of you at the MYP workshop, asking thoughtful, challenging, and very valid questions. As MYP Coordinator, there are few things I could ask for more than parents who want to understand why we do what we do. Please keep asking. Keep questioning. Keep coming back.
One question in particular stayed with me: where are the textbooks? (the one about differentiation is for next week!)
The short answer is that the MYP is not built around a prescribed textbook. That does not mean content somehow disappears! At ABIS, we map learning backwards from where students ultimately need to be, including the demands of the Diploma Programme, and build that progression through the grades. The knowledge is there. The difference is in what we ask students to do with it.
That is why the IB places such importance on Approaches to Learning skills alongside subject knowledge. One very practical example is Communication: “take effective notes in class.” We want students gradually to learn how to listen, select what matters, organise information, make connections, and create something useful for themselves, rather than relying on somebody else to package every important idea between two covers.
Take our Grade 10 French unit, which is now moving into mental health and wellbeing. Of course, students will learn the French vocabulary, structures, grammar, and text conventions they need. But the bigger questions matter too. What affects the wellbeing of young people? What responsibility do schools, families, communities, and individuals have? How do we recognise when balance has been lost? How do different societies approach the same problem?
Suddenly, French is doing much more than teaching French.
And perhaps there is something important for all of us adults in that example too. Supporting learning does not always mean finding more work for young people to do after school. Sometimes the best support is asking them what they learnt, helping them explain an idea, encouraging them to organise themselves, and then recognising when it is time to sleep, move, play, connect with people, and simply switch off.
More work is not automatically more learning.
We absolutely want students who know things. But today’s world also needs young people who can decide which information matters, question it, connect it, communicate it, and use it wisely.
That is the ambition of the MYP.
So keep the questions coming. Stop us in the corridor. Come to the workshops. Ask your children why they are learning something, not only what they have learnt.
Because if we can build a community of students, parents, and teachers who are curious enough to keep asking “why?”, we are already teaching something much bigger than any textbook ever could.
Warm wishes,
Miss J