Notre Dame coordinators work to ensure smooth transition
The transition to International Baccalaureate MYP from PYP is a big step for students. Notre Dame IB coordinators are ensuring that the change goes as smoothly as possible. Brenda Kambakhsh is Notre Dame’s IB-MYP coordinator.
Brenda Kambakhsh, Notre Dame’s MYP Coordinator, says the teachers are a big part of making sure the students see the change as important and familiar, even within an MYP curriculum that is itself undergoing change.
In middle division staff meetings last semester, according to Kambakhsh, the IB coordinators focused on the new elements of the MYP, allowing teachers to develop and revise units to reflect the new key, related concepts, and global contexts, chosen from those prescribed in the MYP subject guides. She said teachers are also creating inquiry statements to frame their units, as well as inquiry-based questions in three categories – factual, conceptual, and debatable.
“The MYP curriculum framework recognizes and values student efforts to construct meaning when exploring the world around them,” Kambakhsh added. “To support this effort, the MYP requires teachers to provide learning experiences that draw on the prior knowledge of students, and to provide the time and opportunity for reflection and consolidation. We also want our parents to ask their students to tell you about what they are learning in different subject areas, about how they are learning the material, and what tasks they have to complete. Parents should be able to see how student engagement and inquiry has become central to the learning process.”
NOTE: In a relatively recent blog reprinted below, an International Baccalaureate educator from south Asia also discusses the importance of the PYP-to MYP transition and how he deals with it.
Change ahead
BY Rafael Angel, a PYP, MYP and DP teacher at Ecole Mondiale World School in Mumbai, India.
(This article illustrates a transition journey from PYP to MYP.)
For the last three years, educators in my department (IB Language Acquisition / foreign language) have been working hard at enriching and diversifying our appreciation for diverse approaches to teaching; as well as at broadening our explorations of learner-centered practices that benefit inquiry-based teaching and learning. The goal has always been clear to us: our focus is the process and the learning experience. Building a community of learning from the moment we plan our curriculum and our classes, to the moment when we experience the creation of new understandings, has just been a very pleasing side effect. Evidently, in this journey, teachers and students are included.
Teaching in three IB programs (PYP, MYP and DP) has helped me consolidate the scaffolding strategies and approaches that I implement as my students move form one stage or phase to the other. Yet, no other ‘transition’ excites me more than the one that occurs from the Primary Years Program to the Middle Years Program.
PYP students arrive in the MYP with a very strong understanding of the importance of ‘community of learners,’ and, due to the context of the school, because of academic competition, they realize that they are to develop a new set of skills that will allow them to evolve as individual in their new stage. Some of them automatically refer to students who are definite role models in middle school, and some others struggle to develop a sense of belonging.
With this observation in mind, I have sometimes wondered to what extent the MYP context in our school somewhat forces students to abandon some significant attitudes that they acquired in PYP. I have also asked myself whether some strengths are replaced by newly found ones, when the point would be to enrich our repertoire of possibilities.
I used to refer to the Approaches to Learning (ATL) as the ugly duckling of the areas of interaction (AOI), for this was the AOI that needed to be present in all unit planners, but it was the least discussed. Thus, when I learned that ATL would become the backbone of the IB programs, I could not help but become more motivated to explore different ways in which to support and magnify students’ learning experiences.
For this reason, getting them ready for the MYP has become a big part of my mission as an ATL coordinator. The first thing I did was to create a couple of videos to support students understanding of the ATL (Grades 6-8, Grades 9-10), but then I decided to actually develop a full experience with students: having an ATL workshop where I also learn from them.
I have not been alone in this process, some of my colleagues who understand my passion have been instrumental, key individuals in this transition journey and have helped me curate a series of sessions that will help students develop confidence in the MYP from day 1 contributed the journey started. Therefore, since last year, we have included an ATL workshop in the PYP-MYP transition and it has truly proven to be a corner stone in the learning experience of students.
This year we are planning to do it more meticulously and have prepared a more comprehensive learning experience in which we will address the nature of our learning, how we enjoy learning, our learning styles, the responsibilities teachers and students share, as various aspects of inquiry-based learning; all of this aiming at exploiting the skills indicators in the ATL categories.
PYP-MYP transition brings a very interesting sense of possibilities, and I am quite fond of the excitement involved in this change.
Comments or questions? mkelly@ndpma.org.
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About Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy
Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy is a private, Catholic, independent, coeducational day school located in Oakland County. The school's upper division enrolls students in grades nine through twelve and has been named one of the nation's best 50 Catholic high schools (Acton Institute) four times since 2005. Notre Dame's middle and lower divisions enroll students in jr. kindergarten through grade eight. All three divisions are International Baccalaureate "World Schools." NDPMA is conducted by the Marist Fathers and Brothers and is accredited by the Independent Schools Association of the Central States and the North Central Association Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. For more on Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy, visit the school's home page at www.ndpma.org.