Video: Introducing the new International Middle Years Curriculum featuring some of our teachers and Principal at Futuraskolan International School of Stockholm
What is the IMYC?
The IMYC is our International Middle Years Curriculum for children 11 – 14 years old (Grades 6-8). Used in over 50 countries worldwide, the IMYC is a challenging, international, theme-focused curriculum, which helps develop engaged and active learners.
The IMYC responds to the specific developmental needs of adolescents, involving active skills-based learning, promoting self-reflection and providing opportunities for learners to make sense of their learning. Drawing on current neuroscientific research, the IMYC provides structures and systems that support the 7 needs of the adolescent brain: interlinking learning, making meaning, working with peers, developing agency, taking safe risks, adequate, quality sleep, and transitioning from elementary education to exam-focused years.
How it works
This relevant and engaging curriculum centres around a challenging Big Idea, which is a conceptual statement, and offers a blend of individual and shared learning experiences, following the natural progression of the learning routines established during Primary School with the IPC.
Each unit starts with an Entry Point, an exciting and memorable event introducing the Big Idea and encouraging learners to think about the learning that is to follow. During the course of each unit, learners have the opportunity to research, record and reflect regularly on their learning. They are also given opportunities to build on previously acquired knowledge through Knowledge Harvests and to develop their skills through formative assessment tasks called Assessment to Improve Learning. At the end of each unit, called the Exit Point, learners work individually or in small groups to create and present a media project that reflects their understanding of the ways their subject learning links to the Big Idea. The Action Circle or the grey ring around the outside is there to remind and encourage learners that action can be taken at any point of the learning journey. Learners recognize that they can be agents of change in the school, local, and global communities in which they belong.
At Futuraskolan International School of Stockholm, we explore 5 different units of learning across each Middle School grade during the course of our academic year. Learners connect the learning in their different subjects through the Big Idea.
The design of the IMYC offers a holistic approach to learning through three types of learning goals: subject, personal, and international. It promotes the development of knowledge, skills, and understanding, which are acquired differently, and are therefore planned for, taught, and assessed differently.
- Knowledge – ‘Know that’; knowledge is seen as factual information that can be memorised and is assessed through tests, exams, quizzes, posters, exercises, for which points or letter grades are awarded.
- Skills – ‘Be able to’; skills are learned practically and are assessed with rubrics that include three levels: Beginning, Developing, Mastering. The fourth level ‘Innovating’ is a result of learner-initiated, rather than directed, learning; it describes advanced skills performance and achievement that surpasses the year or grade-level expectations.
- Understanding – ‘Develop an understanding that’; grasping conceptual ideas, making personal meaning and identifying connections between school, home, and the world. Understanding is expressed through journaling, discussions, Exit Points, etc.
The IMYC personal goals refer to those individual qualities we believe are essential in the 21st century. It is our goal to help our learners to be adaptable, communicators, collaborators, empathetic, thinkers, resilient, respectful, and ethical.
Finally, through the international goals, the IMYC fosters international mindedness, which is being interested in other cultures while welcoming diversity, collaboration, and other perspectives. It also encourages global competence, which is being aware of, engaged in, or taking action on world issues as progressive, energetic, and respectful individuals.
Grade 9
Grade 9 is a high school preparatory year, during which our learners build on the knowledge, skills, and understanding acquired during their IMYC years and have further opportunities to take action, innovate, and be challenged. Our Grade 9 learners also complete a year-long ‘Discovery Project’ which is the culminating project of their Middle School experience. The Discovery Project is independent project work based on the learners’ interests and talents, resulting in a product or outcome presented at the end of their Grade 9 year. Through these efforts our learners strengthen their abilities in research, reflection, personal engagement, creativity and project management, and better prepare themselves to be motivated independent learners in high school.
