MYP Personal Project Description

Grades 9-10 (MYP Years 4-5)

Jefferson HS asks scholars to complete one culminating project in year 5 of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program.  Scholars will gain strength for this task during the continuum and these long-term projects demonstrate a consolidation of learning in both knowledge and skills.  The projects focus on expanding student learning through choice in service action or personal interest and will not be administered through a subject group class/course.  Scholars are assigned project supervisors and expected to complete 25 hours for the personal project in meeting with a supervisor, independent work and reporting on the project.  In the process students will identify an achievable goal, apply a global context, research and cite sources, develop an action plan, consider ATL skills, document using a process journal, complete an academic honesty form, and formulate a report and final product.  The projects will be measured on four assessment criteria:

            Objective A: Investigating

            Objective B: Planning

            Objective C: Taking action

            Objective D: Reflecting 

This component is required to receive internal MYP recognition.  For further explanation of the project, reference https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/myp-projects/.

Personal Project Grades 9-10 (MYP Years 4-5)

The personal project includes three components: focuses on a topic leading to an outcome, a process journal and a report.  The goal is to extend MYP learning through individual choices in a wide variety of ways including recording and reflecting on their learning by;

1. Expanding on or pursuing an area of interest outside the eight subjects of MYP such as teaching yourself photography.
2. Communicating a new understanding to an audience of choice by perhaps writing an article on technology and the environment and submitting it to the local newspaper.
3. Demonstrating how in response to a new understanding they have made decisions to change their behavior like writing a persuasive essay on why early interventions and education in middle and high school prevent college dating violence, or creating a healthy eating habits meal plan.

The students must create a final product of original work such as art, a model, a plan, a campaign, an essay, a film, etc.  There must also be a culminating report; written, electronic, oral or visual, of a specified length following the above sections.  The purpose is to inform an account of something observed, heard, done or investigated in order to summarize the experiences and skills that the student documented in their process journal along the way.  Jefferson HS must register all students in MYP year 5 for external moderation of the personal project and this component is required to open all doors of future options.