Mapping the MYP Curriculum

The IB Middle Years Programme is a curriculum framework. Being a framework, the elements inside are very important. It may be compared to the skeletal system, which keeps all the human body’s internal organs safe. The International Baccalaureate Organization in its Standards and Practices (2020), encourages schools to have a coherent curriculum in place. Standard 4040-01 states, “The school plans and implements a coherent curriculum that organizes learning and teaching within and across the years of its IB programme(s). (0401-01)”.

The Xi'an Liangjiatan International School MYP team went through an eighteen-month process of analyzing our curriculum to identify any gaps or overlaps, to ensure we deliver a coherent curriculum to our students. Being an ACS WASC accredited school it was also important that the school ensured, “student understanding of standards-based curriculum and schoolwide learner outcomes” (Focus on Learning, 2020, B1.5) were considered. The team carefully mapped academic standards into the MYP framework to provide students with a horizontally and vertically aligned curriculum. We also took the attributes of the IB learner profile as our schoolwide learner outcomes, thus strengthening the coherence between the IB programmes and the ACS WASC Focus on Learning protocol. 

When this project started there were already units in place. For this reason, concepts were developed and mapped before content. Personally, I do not believe this is the best way to go about curriculum mapping. My suggestion would be to start with content and look for micro-concepts (related concepts) in the content (curriculum standards). From these micro-concepts select the most fitting macro-concept (key concept) for the unit. Then from these along with the global context, the statement of inquiry can be developed. I believe all this is necessary before planning using the Understanding by Design framework. 

It is our pleasure to share this work with our international community here. It will help families see the entire scope of our Middle Years Program so they may support their children from home. It may be used by schools new to the MYP to help them get off on the right foot. I also recorded this lesson on how to deliver an MYP mathematics lesson, with some reflective questions in the comments. Please enjoy this piece of collaborative curriculum mapping and provide feedback in the comments.