Lincoln Community School - IB Middle Years Program

[Grades 6 - 10]

The International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (MYP) provides a framework of academic challenges and life skills for students in grades 6-10. The program offers an educational approach that embraces, yet transcends, traditional schools subjects. It naturally follows the Primary Years Program of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) and it is based on the promise that education can foster understanding among young people around the world, enabling future generations to live more peacefully and productively than we do today. Intercultural awareness is central to the program. The MYP provides the student with discipline, skills and challenging standards, but also with creativity and flexibility. It also focuses on students developing a personal value system by which to guide their own lives, as thoughtful members of local communities and the world at large.

The program provides a thorough study of various disciplines. It also accentuates the interrelatedness of them, acknowledging the role of the subject discipline and trans-disciplinary study.

Academic Connections for the Areas of Interaction
The emphasis is on a conceptual framework with objectives that are skills and learning-process oriented. The Areas of Interaction are addressed within the discipline.

Areas of Interaction

The Areas of Interaction are at the core of the MYP. These are: approaches to learning, community service, health and social education, environment, and Homo faber. They pervade and recur throughout the five years of the MYP, through the eight subjects groups, but also through interdisciplinary teaching and projects, whole school activities, and MYP Personal Projects. The Areas of Interaction are not directly assessed nor given individual grades, since they are themes rather than subjects. They are, however, indirectly assessed through the Personal Project.

This is an independent piece of work that is intended to be the culmination of student involvement in five areas. It may be an essay, an artistic production or other form of expression, chosen in consultation with teachers.

Teachers assess student work with guidance from the IBO according to prescribed, published criteria that state final levels of achievement in each discipline. The program places special emphasis on formative assessment, which is used at different stages of the learning process to measure the progress of the student and make necessary adjustments to teaching plans and methods. The students are involved in formative self-assessment of their own work and they reflect on their own approaches to learning.

Lincoln Community School is currently exploring the option of external IBO moderation of 10th grade student work, which would lead to an IBO-generated MYP Certificate as well as a Record of Achievement. At this time, however, Lincoln Community School produces its own MYP certificates and awards them to final year (10th grade) MYP students who fulfill all requirements for the certificate as outlined by the school. These requirements include successful completion of the Personal Project, sustained participation in service activities and meeting the required number of service hours established for each grade level, and successful completion of each MYP class in the 10th grade year. Students must also have participated in the MYP for at least the final two years of the program (grades 9 and 10) to be eligible for the Lincoln MYP certificate.