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, internationally-minded and concept-focused curriculum, which helps develop engaged and active learners.
The IMYC responds to the specific development needs of 11-14 year olds, involving active skills-based learning, promoting self-reflection and providing opportunities for students to make sense of their learning. Drawing on current neuro-linguistic research, the IMYC provides structures and systems that support the needs of the adolescent brain: interlinking learning, making meaning, working with peers, developing agency, taking safe risks, 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 students to think about the learning that is to follow. During the course of each unit, students 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, students 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 Outer Action Circle or the grey ring around the outside is there to remind and encourage students that action can be taken at any point of the learning journey. Students 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. Students link 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. Moreover, 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/letter grades are awarded.
- Skills – ‘Be able to’; skills are learned practically and are assessed with rubrics that include three levels: Beginning, Developing, Mastering.
- Understanding – ‘Develop an understanding that’; grasping of conceptual ideas, making personal meaning; 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 students to be adaptable, communicators, collaborators, empathetic, thinkers, resilient, respectful, and ethical.
Finally, through the international goals, the IMYC fosters international mindedness and global competency, which is seen as the ability to be open-minded, adaptable, appreciative, and respectful of other cultures and one’s own, and to be actively involved in global issues.
Discovery Project In Grade 9
All of our students are expected to complete a year-long ‘Discovery Project’ which is the culminating project of our students’ Middle School experience. The Discovery Project is independent project work based on the student’s interests and talents, resulting in a product or outcome presented at the end of their Grade 9 year. Through these efforts our students strengthen their abilities in research, reflection, personal engagement, creativity and project management, and better prepare themselves to be motivated independent learners in high school.
