The MYP aims to help students develop their personal understanding, their emerging sense of self and responsibility in their community.
Students learn best when their learning experiences have context and are connected to their lives and their experience of the world that they have experienced.
Using global contexts, MYP students develop an understanding of their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet through developmentally appropriate explorations of:
Concepts are big ideas that have relevance within specific disciplines and across subject areas. MYP students use concepts as a vehicle to inquire into issues and ideas of personal, local and global significance and examine knowledge holistically. The MYP identifies 16 key concepts to be explored across the curriculum. These key concepts represent understandings that reach beyond the eight MYP subject groups from which they are drawn.
MYP key concepts
| Aesthetics | Change | Communication | Communities |
| Connections | Creativity | Culture | Develpment |
| Form | Global interactions | Identity | Logic |
| Perspective | Relationships | Systems | Time, place and space |
A unifying thread throughout all MYP subject groups, approaches to learning (ATL) provide the foundation for independent learning and encourage the application of their knowledge and skills in unfamiliar contexts. Developing and applying these social, thinking, research, communication and self management skills helps students learn how to learn.
The MYP curriculum focuses on STEM as an important perspective from which to consider integrated teaching and learning in concepts and skills related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
As part of the MYP curriculum, schools address differentiation within the written, taught and assessed curriculum.
This is demonstrated in the unit planner and in the teaching environment, both of which are reviewed during programme authorization and evaluation.
The MYP allows schools to continue to meet state, provincial or national legal requirements for students with access needs. Schools must develop an inclusion/special educational needs (SEN) policy that explains assessment access arrangements, classroom accommodations and curriculum modification that meet individual student learning needs.
