Teacher Collaborative Planning | First steps for MYP candidate schools
Engaging teachers in collaborative planning is an important part of developing the MYP curriculum at your school. In these meetings, teachers work together to ensure that common threads like the key concepts, global contexts and ATL skills are incorporated into individual units and developed coherently throughout the programme.
In order to illustrate that your school has planned to embed collaborative planning into the culture, you will submit a description of the collaborative planning meetings that take place. This description should demonstrate that teachers have regular, scheduled collaboration time to plan and implement the programme, incorporate the IB philosophy into the curriculum, address the elements of an IB education, and ensure a holistic and coherent learning experience for students. For each meeting, indicate who attends, the frequency and the objective(s) of the meeting. Here are a few examples:
Example 1
MYP Collaborative planning meetings for 2022-2023
| Meeting | Participants | Frequency | Purpose |
| MYP Staff Meeting | All MYP staff | Monthly; after school | Programme-wide development activities, including:ATL planningHorizontal and Vertical Curriculum MappingDeveloping understanding and implementation of the IB Approaches to Teaching |
| Subject Group Meetings | Subject group teachers and the MYPC | Bi-weekly; during common prep time | Subject-specific collaboration, including:Planning and reflecting on Units of InquiryStandardising assessment |
| Grade Level Meetings | Grade-level teams | Five times per year; on planning half-days | Grade-specific collaboration, including:Planning Service as ActionIDU PlanningPeer-editing report card comments |
Example 2
There are two days of collaborative planning meetings before the school year begins. In addition to general administrative and orientation tasks, there is time allocated for the following MYP activities:
- Orientation to the MYP for new teachers with the MYP Coordinator
- Review of programme development goals for the year, including roles, responsibilities and timelines
- Review of MYP updates
Throughout the year our school has a late start every Wednesday morning for collaborative planning. Meetings are 75 minutes long. The cadence of the meetings is as follows:
- First Wednesday of the month: All staff meeting for vertical and horizontal planning, professional development
- Second Wednesday of the month: Subject-group meetings for unit planning and standardisation of assessment
- Third Wednesday of the month: Grade-team meetings for student support, IDU planning, service as action planning
- Fourth Wednesday of the month: These are as-needed meetings for initiatives such as personal project planning, service as action planning, international-mindedness activities, social-emotional learning
At the end of the year, there are 2 days of meetings which are primarily devoted to reflective planning. MYP-specific activities include:
- All-staff review of the Programme of Inquiry
- Reflecting on progress towards the programme development goals; refining/establishing goals for next year
There are lots of ways that MYP schools can organise their collaborative planning meetings. There is no single best way or right way to do this. The important thing is to work within the structures and routines of your school to find the best opportunities for teachers to work together to develop your school’s MYP curriculum.
This blog is part of a series designed especially for candidate MYP schools. Click here to view the complete series!
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