Personal Project
What are the Aims of the MYP Personal Project?
The aims state what a student may expect to experience and learn. These aims suggest how the student may be changed by the learning experience. The personal project is an opportunity for students to:
- inquire explore an interest that is personally meaningful take ownership of their learning by undertaking a self-directed inquiry
- act transfer and apply skills in pursuit of a learning goal and the creation of a product
- reflect recognize and evidence personal growth and development.
What are the objectives of the MYP Personal Project?
The objectives state the specific targets that are set for learning. They define what students will be able to accomplish as a result of their studies. The objectives of MYP projects encompass the factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive dimensions of knowledge. Listed below are the objectives of the personal project specifically.
Objective A: Planning - Students should be able to:
- state a learning goal for the project and explain how a personal interest led to that goal
- state an intended product and develop appropriate success criteria for the product
- present a clear, detailed plan for achieving the product and its associated success criteria.
Objective B: Applying skills - Students should be able to:
- explain how the ATL skill(s) was/were applied to help achieve their learning goal
- explain how the ATL skill(s) was/were applied to help achieve their product.
Objective C: Reflecting - Students should be able to:
- explain the impact of the project on themselves or their learning
- evaluate the product based on the success criteria.
What ARE the benefits of the MYP Personal Project?
MYP projects are student-centered and age-appropriate, and they enable students to engage in practical explorations through a cycle of inquiry, action and reflection. MYP projects help students to develop the attributes of the IB learner profile; provide students with an essential opportunity to demonstrate approaches to learning (ATL) skills developed through the MYP; and foster the development of independent, lifelong learners.
Approaches to Learning and the MYP Personal Project
What are the key Learning opportunities?
As today’s MYP students mature, they will be increasingly called on to shape the world that they inhabit. To prepare students for this responsibility, middle level education must cultivate students’ motivation, agency and capacity for lifelong learning.
Motivation - Students explore an area that motivates and interests them. Agency - Students set their own goal and choose how to achieve it. Students create their own articulation of what success will look like. Lifelong learning - Students demonstrate and develop ATL skills. Students reflect on the impact that the personal project has had on themselves and/or their community.
Through the process of inquiry, action and reflection, students are encouraged to demonstrate and strengthen their ATL skills. The personal nature of the project is important; the project allows students to explore an area that motivates and interests them. Students choose what they want to focus on, which can be an existing or a new interest, choose how to achieve their goal, and create their own success criteria for the product.
The project provides an excellent opportunity for students to produce a truly personal and often creative product and to demonstrate a consolidation of their learning in the MYP.
How does this help in future classes of the IB Programme?
The CP core comprises personal and professional skills, a reflective project, language development and service learning. The MYP community project supports raising awareness needs in the community, the application of ATL skills, the reflective nature of inquiry as the project progresses, and the language development required for an oral presentation as the culminating activity.
The DP core comprises the extended essay, theory of knowledge (TOK) and creativity, activity, service (CAS). While the personal project enables students to pursue their personal interests further in the MYP, the DP extended essay enables students to pursue an academic interest through a research essay. The personal project is not necessarily a research essay; however, personal projects usually involve research, including the use and collection of information and sources.
The personal project emphasizes experiential learning, which is developed further in community and service in both the CP and DP. Through MYP projects, students experience the responsibility of completing a significant piece of work over an extended period of time, as well as the need to reflect on their learning and the outcomes of their work—key skills that prepare students for success in further study, the workplace and the community.
All graphics and text is directly from the Personal project guide (for use from September 2021/January 2022) published on behalf of the International Baccalaureate Organization, a not-for-profit educational foundation.