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Newton Free School

Middle Years Programme

© International Baccalaureate Organization 2024

The International Baccalaureate® Middle Years Programme (MYP) emphasizes intellectual challenge through encouraging students aged 11 to 16 to make practical connections between their studies and the real world, preparing them for success in further study and life.

The programme empowers students to inquire into a wide range of issues and ideas of significance locally, nationally, and globally, fostering the development of young individuals who are creative, critical, and reflective thinkers. The MYP provides a rigorous and highly flexible framework that integrates with local educational requirements.

The MYP aims to develop active learners and internationally minded young people who can empathise with others and pursue lives of purpose and meaning.

IB students are distinguished by practice-oriented attributes, developed throughout the learning process reflected in the IB Learner Profile. The learner profile is the IB’s mission in action. It requires IB learners to strive to become inquirers, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, caring, risk-takers, balanced and reflective. To learn more about the IB Learner Profile, please visit the following link

MYP Philosophy

The MYP is guided by three principles inspired by the IB mission: holistic learning, intercultural awareness and communication. IB philosophy is expressed through all aspects of the MYP. The MYP aims to help students develop their personal understanding, their emerging sense of self and responsibility in their community.

The IB Middle Years Programme:

Addresses holistically students’ intellectual, social, emotional and physical well-being
Helps to prepare students for further education, the workplace and a lifetime of learning.
Provides students 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
Requires the study of at least two languages (language of instruction and additional language of choice) to support students in understanding their own cultures and those of others
Empowers students to participate in service within the community

Learning and Teaching

Learning and Teaching in Context: Contexts for learning in the MYP are chosen from global contexts to encourage international-mindedness and global engagement within the programme. Using global contexts, MYP students explore identities and relationships, personal and cultural expression, orientations in space and time, scientific and technical innovation, fairness and development, globalization and sustainability.

Conceptual Understanding: MYP students use concepts as a vehicle to inquire into issues and ideas of personal, local and global significance and examine knowledge holistically.

Approaches to Learning: The focus of ATL in the MYP is on helping students develop the self-knowledge and skills they need to enjoy a lifetime of learning. Developing and applying these five ATL skills helps students learn how to learn social skills, thinking skills, research skills, communication skills, and self-management skills.

Service as action, through community service: Learning by doing and experiencing is an integral part of all IB programmes. IB learners strive to be caring members of the community who demonstrate a personal commitment to service and act to make a positive difference in the lives of others and the environment.

Language and Identity: In all IB programmes, the role of language is valued as central to developing critical thinking, which is essential for the cultivation of intercultural awareness, international-mindedness and global citizenship.

Inclusion and Learning Diversity in MYP: IB programmes value student diversity and respect individual learning differences. The MYP is an inclusive programme that can cater to the needs of all students.

The International Baccalaureate® Middle Years Programme provides a broad and balanced education for early adolescents. The programme promotes interdisciplinary study that helps students make important connections between academic subjects. IB programme models, including MYP, highlight important shared features of an IB education:

Developing the attributes of the Learner Profile
Approaches to Teaching and Approaches to Learning Skills (ATL)
An organized and aligned structure of subject groups or disciplines
Concept-driven curriculum taking into account global contexts
Development of international-mindedness as a primary aim and context for learning

MYP curriculum is flexible, inquiry-based, and concept-driven. Integrated teaching and learning help students analyse complex issues and develop the habits of mind they need to participate in our increasingly interconnected world.

MYP focuses on STEAM as an important perspective from which to consider integrated teaching and learning in concepts and skills related to science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

MYP is designed to facilitate interdisciplinary learning and teaching. In the Middle Years Programme, interdisciplinary learning supports students in understanding bodies of knowledge from two or more disciplines or subject groups, to integrate them and create new understanding.

Subject Groups

Middle Years Programme comprises eight subject groups including language acquisition, language and literature, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, arts, physical and health education, and design. The subject groups are connected through global contexts and key concepts.

Subject groups and subjects at Newton Free School

8 Subject Groups

Language and Literature

  • Georgian Language and Literature
  • English Language and Literature (optional)

Language Acquisition

  • English Language Acquisition
  • German Language Acquisition
  • Russian Language Acquisition
  • French Language Acquisition
  • Spanish Language Acquisition

Individuals and Societies

  • Individuals & Societies (integrated humanities)
  • History
  • Economics
  • Global Affairs (elective)

Sciences

  • Integrated Sciences
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry

Mathematics

  • Standard Mathematics
  • Extended Mathematics (MYP 4-5)

Arts

  • Visual Arts
  • Drama
  • Music Production

Physical and Health Education

  • Physical and Health Education

Design

  • Visual Programming
  • Digital Mechanics 
  • Web Programming
  • Mobile Programming
  • UI-UX Design

Interdisciplinary Unit

Each year, students in the MYP also engage in at least one collaboratively planned interdisciplinary unit that involves at least two subject groups. Students demonstrate interdisciplinary understanding when they bring together concepts, methods, or forms of communication from two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise so that they can explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product, or raise a new question in ways that would have been unlikely through a single discipline.

Personal Project

All students who complete the MYP in Year 5 complete the Personal Project. MYP projects are student-centred and age-appropriate, and they enable students to engage in practical explorations through a cycle of inquiry, action and reflection. MYP projects encourage students to reflect on their learning and the outcomes of their work – key skills that prepare them for success in further study, the workplace and the community. As students become involved in the self-initiated and self-directed learning process, they will find it easier to construct in-depth knowledge on their topic and develop an understanding of themselves as learners.

Learn more about the MYP Personal Project

Personal Project

The MYP projects aim to encourage and enable students to:

1. Participate in a sustained, self-directed inquiry;

2. Generate creative new insights and develop deeper understandings through in-depth investigation;

3. Demonstrate the skills, attitudes and knowledge required to complete a project over an extended period;

4. Communicate effectively in a variety of situations;

5. Demonstrate responsible action through or as a result of, learning;

6. Appreciate the process of learning and take pride in their accomplishments.

MYP projects involve students in a wide range of activities to extend their knowledge and understanding and to develop their skills and attitudes. These student-planned learning activities include:

  • Deciding what they want to learn about, identifying what they already know, and discovering what they will need to know to complete the project
  • Developing proposals or criteria for their project, planning their time and materials, and recording developments of the project
  • Making decisions, developing understandings and solving problems, communicating with their supervisor and others, creating a product or developing an outcome evaluating the product/outcome and reflecting on their project and their learning.

Service as Action

One of the core elements of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme is Service as Action. ‘Action’ conveys the constructivist principles of learning by doing and experiencing. ‘Service’ requires that students are able to build authentic connections between what they learn in the classroom and what they encounter in the community.

Learn more about Service as Action

Service as Action

Through Service as Action, students become “actors” in the “real world” beyond school.
Service requires that students are able to build authentic connections between what they learn in the classroom and what they encounter in the community. Through their participation in service, students can become more confident, and self-regulated. 

The Action may involve students in:

1. Feeling empathy towards others;

2. Making small-scale changes to their behaviour;

3. Undertaking larger and more significant projects;

4. Acting on their own;

5. Acting collaboratively;

6. Taking physical action;

7. Suggesting modifications to an existing system to the benefit of all involved;

8. Lobbying people in more influential positions to act.

Service may involve engaging in different types of service experiences, such as:

Direct service: a service that affects people, animals or the environment;

Indirect Service: the type of service in which you are not in the presence of the person or thing you are impacting;

Advocacy: when you speak up for or against a cause, an issue, or a solution. When we use our voices to promote action on an issue of public interest;

Research: involves the collection of data, analysis and reporting to inform the policy or practice on the topic of importance.

Throughout the learning process students:

1. Reflect upon their values and driving causes;

2. Identify issues;

3. Identify causes;

4. Identify possible solutions/actions/aims;

5. Evaluate the feasibility of their action;

6. Identify learning outcomes;

7. Take action;

8. Reflect;

The programme empowers students to inquire into a wide range of issues and ideas of significance locally, nationally, and globally, fostering the development of young individuals who are creative, critical, and reflective thinkers.

Research shows that students participating in the MYP:

MYP Studies that have investigated the impact of the MYP

Reveal that:

A higher percentage of MYP students achieved proficient or advanced performance on mathematics and science assessments than non-MYP students;
MYP students responded more positively to statements in a global-mindedness survey than students who had attended a non-MYP school;
MYP students generally rated higher in certain nonacademic attributes such as international and civic-mindedness as well as global awareness, in comparison with non-MYP students;
MYP students performed better than their non-IB peers in all four assessment areas: mathematics, reading, and expository and narrative writing.

Read more about the key findings from research on the impact of the IB Middle Years Programme

10 Reasons

Why the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) encourages you to become a creative, critical and reactive learner:

1. Become a life-long learner: Learn ‘how to learn’ using communication, research, self-management, collaboration and critical thinking skills.

2. Learn by doing and experiencing: Through the MYP community project you learn to service the community and connect what you learn in the classroom to “real life”.

3. The MYP encourages critical thinking: It teaches you to analyse and evaluate issues, generate novel ideas and consider new perspectives

4. Explore global challenges: The MYP helps you increase your understanding of the world by exploring globally significant ideas and issues.

5. Learn for understanding: Not just to memorize facts or topics and prepare for exams.

6. Train yourself to: organize and plan your work, meet deadlines, concentrate, bounce back, persist, and think positively.

7. Subjects are not taught in isolation: You are encouraged to make connections between subjects.

8. It empowers you to develop your talents: Feel empowered to prove what you know and earn the MYP certificate or MYP course results.

9. It prepares you for future education: Prepare yourself for the IB Diploma Programme or IB Career-related Programme delivered by IB World Schools globally.

10. It encourages international-mindedness: The MYP helps you critically appreciate your own culture and personal history, as well as the values and traditions of others.

*Based on IB research

Personal Projects

MYP Projects are student-centred and age-appropriate, and they enable students to engage in practical explorations through a cycle of inquiry, action and reflection.

Service as Action

Service as Action is one of the core elements of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. Through Service as Action, students become “actors” in the “real world” beyond school.

Interdisciplinary Projects

Students demonstrate Interdisciplinary understanding when they bring together concepts, methods, or forms of communication from two or more disciplines or established areas of expertise so that they can explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product, or raise a new question in ways that would have been unlikely through a single discipline.