International Baccalaureate - Middle Years Programme

Glendowie College delivers the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) in its junior school, i.e. Years 9 and 10. 

IB Mission Statement

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.

What is the MYP?

The MYP is  a framework of learning that encourages students to become creative, critical and reflective thinkers. The MYP emphasizes intellectual challenge, encouraging students to make connections between their studies in traditional subjects and the real world. It fosters the development of skills for communication, intercultural understanding and global engagement—essential qualities for young people who are becoming global leaders.

The MYP is flexible enough to accommodate the demands of most national or local curriculums.

The MYP:

• addresses holistically students’ intellectual, social, emotional and physical well-being
• provides students with opportunities to develop the knowledge, attitudes and skills they need in order to manage complexity and take responsible action for the future
• ensures breadth and depth of understanding through study in eight subject groups
• support students in understanding their own cultures and those of others
• empowers students to participate in service with the community
• helps to prepare students for further education, the workplace and a lifetime of learning.

 The MYP has distinctive features that help students develop disciplinary (and interdisciplinary) understandings

Approaches to Teaching and Learning
The approach to teaching and learning provides students with the tools to enable them to take responsibility for their own learning by developing awareness of how they learn best. At Glendowie College we teach these skills and tools explicitly to support students to be successful learners. The Approaches to Learning include the following areas: communication, research, self-management, social and thinking.

Learner Profile
The Learner Profile is central to helping our students at Glendowie College learn to respect themselves, others and the world around them.

The profile aims to develop learners who are:

• Inquirers
• Knowledgeable
• Thinkers
• Communicators
• Principled
• Open-minded
• Caring
• Risk-takers
• Balanced
• Reflective

For more information you can view the link: IB Learner Profile

Global Context
Global contexts provide shared starting points for inquiry into what it means to be internationally minded. The curriculum promotes multilingualism, intercultural understanding and global engagement.

Concepts
The concepts studied are big ideas that have relevance within specific disciplines and across traditional subject areas. A conceptual approach supports interdisciplinary learning which allows students to make connections between subjects and to develop ideas and solutions that incorporate learning and knowledge from different spheres.

Community Project

The community project focuses on community and service, encouraging students to explore their right and responsibility to implement service as action in the community. The community project is for Year 10 students with the goal to develop awareness of needs in various communities and address those needs through service learning. At Glendowie College the students engage in a sustained, in-depth inquiry leading to service as action in the community. The community project may be completed in groups of a maximum of three students.