Inquiry Topic Blog Post 2: Assessment Conditions – what are the levels that students are expected to achieve as benchmarks for passing to the next level? How do IB educators reconcile traditional standards based educational systems and inquiry-based authentic learning ethos of IB program?
Like any curriculum framework, the IBO has set up it’s own set of standards and benchmarks. There are also Aims and Objectives that are unique to each subject. Each time you teach a subject, you are provided with a subject guide. In that guide it will explain to you the framework to which you are to work in.
The subject guide will also then go on to explain to you’re the objectives for each criterion. Each subject has several criteria. For example currently as I teach Language A English I only have three criteria to assess throughout the year Criterion A) Content, Criterion B) Organization, and Criterion C) Language style & use. While in performing Arts – Drama I have four criteria: Criterion A) Knowledge & Understanding, Criterion B) Application, Criterion C) Reflection & Evaluation, and Criterion D) Artistic awareness & Personal engagement. Yet in Science I believe that they have six criteria to ascertain. Coming soon, the IBO will standardize all of the MYP subjects, so that they will all have only FOUR criteria each, and this will effect some more than others.
After the criteria explanations, the subject guide moves on to the skills and resources explanation. After the skills there are the Areas of Interaction (AOIs) that are explained. The AOIs are a set or values that are incorporated into each unit as an overhead theme or connection to the world at large. There are five AOIs: Approaches to Learning, Environments, Community and Service, Human Ingenuity, and Health and Social Education.
Assessment is the next and most intense section in the subject guide, as it deals with: the rubrics, how to assess students with rubrics, how and when to alter the rubrics language, formative assessment, summative assessment, and moderation. Moderation is when a school will send in samples of students work to assess the quality and appropriateness of the teachers’ set tasks for that unit or work.
At the end of the MYP there is an inquiry-based assessment called the “Personal Project.” This is a project of the students’ own choice, and a reflective essay to be written about the process and success or failure of the made project. The Personal Project has it’s own guidebook, guidelines, and regulations.
The MYP is a continuum in the subject guides. For the alternate years (1 – grade 6) (3 – grade 8) and (5 – grade 10); there are always examples of work, examples of assessments, and goals. These are some of the checks and balances that the departments or subject teachers use in order to plan out their units. Currently the focus on unit planning is by both “understanding by design” and “backwards planning.” We therefore know where we want our students to be at the end of the MYP, the end of the yearly goals, and end of the unit. With the final assessment task and skills in mind, we then go back and plan the unit with our: guiding questions (big ideas), significant concept (real world ideas), AOIs (real world connections), and formative assessment (tasks along the way).
In all honesty I did not find this a daunting change going from Manitoba to IBO. I was always given a BIG curriculum guide and the free reign and trust to get through it all. As long as I had covered all the material by June, how I did it and the way I did it was up to me. I have always enjoyed differentiating my class and having several math groups and lit circles going at the same time. It was often more out of need (class constitution & special needs incorporation) than necessity I guess. Therefore I was already used to the initial stress of planning multiple tasks and balanced instruction before “letting the students go.” Therefore all I had to do was learn the new jargon and unit planner format.
You have given a detailed description of the IBO program and your professional response to implementing the curriculum. It sounds like the IBO approach is conducive to inquiry-based learning design, albeit its appearance, in this reading, of being prescriptive and ends-based rather than knowledge-generative, allowing for unexpected outcomes. The purpose of this blog post was to think about the development needs of the learners that you will be creating learning experiences for: reading levels, cognitive, cultural and technological dispositions and experience, curriculum challenges, pedagogical opportunities. You have provided a broad view of your approach for working with learners, but I don’t have a sense of the age group, or their particular characteristics or qualities that you would designing your learning activities for.