Middle Years Programme - MYP

Four elements run through every subject and every year of the programme, giving MYP learning its distinctive shape:

• Key and related concepts that build big-picture, transferable understanding rather than isolated facts
  
• Global contexts — such as identities and relationships, fairness and development, and globalization and sustainability — that anchor learning in real-world relevance
  
• Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills, including communication, collaboration, research, self-management and thinking skills, taught deliberately across every subject
  
• Service as action, through which student inquiry regularly extends into genuine responsibility and contribution within our school and the wider Islamabad community
  

As students at International Maarif School move between our PYP, MYP and Cambridge pathways, the MYP is designed to reinforce the same spirit of conceptual, inquiry-driven learning that runs across the whole school. 

The Written Curriculum

The written curriculum is the school's own record of what is taught, to whom, and why. Our MYP subject-group teachers collaboratively design vertically and horizontally aligned overviews and unit plans for MYP 1, 2 and 3, mapping out:

• Key and related concepts for each unit
  
• Global contexts that frame each area of study
  
• ATL skills targeted for development
  
• Subject-group objectives and assessment criteria
  

This planning is built with continuity in mind. As a school already delivering an authorized PYP alongside Cambridge IGCSE and A Levels, our written curriculum is deliberately aligned to what comes before it in the PYP and what follows it in Cambridge pathways, so students experience one coherent learning journey rather than a series of disconnected programmes. Subject teams review and refine their unit plans each year, informed by student outcomes and an ongoing library development initiative that ensures every MYP subject group is supported by resources reflecting both global perspectives and our students' own Pakistani and Turkish contexts. 

The Taught Curriculum

The taught curriculum is where planning becomes practice — the everyday experience of learning in our classrooms. Teaching in the MYP at International Maarif School is grounded in structured inquiry: teachers draw out students' prior knowledge, pose provocative questions, and design experiences that invite students to construct and test their own understanding rather than simply receive information.

Our classrooms emphasize:

• Collaborative, concept-driven learning, where students investigate, take action and reflect both within individual subjects and through interdisciplinary units
  
• Hands-on, purpose-built learning spaces, including our dedicated MYP Design Lab, where students plan, prototype and problem-solve
  
• Differentiated instruction, ensuring students with a wide range of prior experience and learning needs can reach the same conceptual understanding through pathways suited to them 
  

The Assessed Curriculum

MYP assessment at International Maarif School is authentic, criterion-related, and directly tied to what students have been taught. Rather than ranking students against one another, teachers assess achievement against the MYP's subject-group criteria, using a range of tasks — investigations, performances, projects, and written and oral work — that give students varied ways to demonstrate what they have learned.

• Assessment is planned alongside each unit, not added afterward, so that what is assessed reflects what was genuinely intended to be taught
  
• Students receive regular, meaningful feedback that shows not just what they achieved, but how to progress
  
• As our programme develops toward authorization, we are building consistent, moderated assessment practices across subject groups so judgments of student achievement are reliable and fair across all MYP 1–3 classes 
  

Community Project

Because our MYP currently spans MYP 1 through MYP 3, our students' MYP journey culminates in the Community Project, completed in MYP 3. The Community Project is one of the two flagship projects of the IB Middle Years Programme, inviting students to look outward — to identify a genuine need in a community and take sustained, meaningful action in response to it.

At International Maarif School, the Community Project builds on the culture of service our students begin developing in the PYP and carry forward through initiatives such as our summer service learning programme. Working individually or in small groups, MYP 3 students:

• Investigate an area of need in their community
  
• Plan a realistic and achievable response
  
• Take action to address the need they have identified
  
• Reflect critically on their learning and impact throughout the process
  

Along the way, students strengthen the same ATL skills — self-management, collaboration, research and communication — that run throughout the MYP, while demonstrating the attributes of the IB Learner Profile. The Community Project stands as a proud milestone for our MYP students: a visible demonstration of what it means to be a caring, principled and reflective young person contributing to life beyond the classroom.