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8/11/2024

Message from the PYP Coordinator: What is the G5 PYP Exhibition?

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The PYP exhibition serves as a culminating, collaborative inquiry where students engage in meaningful exploration and demonstrate agency and responsibility in their learning. The PYP exhibition takes place in Grade 5, which encompasses student learning throughout the entire Primary Years Programme.  During the PYP exhibition, students explore and present their understanding of a topic or issue they are passionate about, allowing them to investigate an area of interest in depth, share their findings, and show what they’ve learned in a meaningful way. The exhibition gives students a chance to demonstrate key skills and qualities they've developed throughout the primary years, such as being open-minded, caring, and reflective. It encourages them to look at their topic from different angles and bring together everything they’ve learned in a meaningful way. Through the exhibition, students document and present their learning process, take action based on their discoveries, and reflect on their journey within the PYP framework. It is also a unifying experience that brings together students, teachers, and the wider learning community, celebrating students’ growth and preparing them for the next stage in their educational journey.

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13/9/2024

AISM Diploma Program May 2024 exam results

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As we do every year, we have been unpacking the AISM Diploma Program May 2024 exam results. Below are some highlights of our results. Congratulations to the Class of 2024!  
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16/9/2023

AISM Diploma Program May 2023 exam results

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As we do every year, we have been unpacking the AISM Diploma Program May 2023 exam results. Below are some highlights of our results. Congratulations to the Class of 2023!  
More analysis & details forthcoming...
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28/6/2023

Our approach to teaching and learning in the MYP

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The MYP aims to help students develop their personal understanding, their emerging sense of self and responsibility in their community.Teaching and learning in the MYP is underpinned by the following concepts:

Teaching and learning in context
Students learn best when their learning experiences have context and are connected to their lives and their experience of the world that they have experienced.

Using global contexts
MYP students develop an understanding of their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet through developmentally appropriate explorations of:
  • identities and relationships
  • personal and cultural expression
  • orientations in space and time
  • scientific and technical innovation
  • fairness and development
  • globalization and sustainability.

Conceptual understanding
Concepts are big ideas that have relevance within specific disciplines and across subject areas. MYP students use concepts as a vehicle to inquire into issues and ideas of personal, local and global significance and examine knowledge holistically. The MYP prescribes sixteen key interdisciplinary concepts along with related concepts for each discipline. 

Approaches to learning
A unifying thread throughout all MYP subject groups, approaches to learning (ATL) provide the foundation for independent learning and encourage the application of their knowledge and skills in unfamiliar contexts. Developing and applying these social, thinking, research, communication and self management skills helps students learn how to learn. 

Service as action, through community service
Action and service have always been shared values of the IB community. Students take action when they apply what they are learning in the classroom and beyond. IB learners strive to be caring members of the community who demonstrate a commitment to service—making a positive difference to the lives of others and to the environment. Service as action is an integral part of the programme, especially in the MYP community project.

Inclusion and learning diversity in MYP
As part of the MYP curriculum, schools address differentiation within the written, taught and assessed curriculum. This is demonstrated in the unit planner and in the teaching environment, both of which are reviewed during programme authorization and evaluation.

The MYP allows schools to continue to meet state, provincial or national legal requirements for students with access needs. Schools must develop an inclusion/special educational needs (SEN) policy that explains assessment access arrangements, classroom accommodations and curriculum modification that meet individual student learning needs.

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21/5/2023

Two Minutes with Taryn: Provoking your Thinking as a PYP Parent

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​A great way to grow your understanding and support of the Primary Years Program is to engage with materials that provoke your thinking about teaching, learning and education in the 21st Century. Check out this 2 minute snippet of Will Richardson speaking at a 2018 IB conference for some thought-provoking remarks about the role of respecting and supporting learner agency. To dive a little deeper into the role of agency in the Primary Years program you can check out this two minutes with Taryn video.​​​​​​​

Want to learn more about the PYP?
Click here to spend "Two Minutes with Taryn" to learn more about the four dimensions of assessment in the PYP: documenting, monitoring, measuring and reporting.  A full collection of 24 short videos can be found in the Two Minutes with Taryn archive.

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21/5/2023

How MYP Assessment Criteria foster academic rigor

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Each MYP subject has students working towards four main objectives from Grade 6 through Grade 10 (see graphic below). These objectives target key disciplinary skills and form the basis of the criteria used to assess student performance on a variety of tasks. As students progress through the Middle Years Program, the names of these assessment objectives remain the same, but the performance criteria become more complex. 
Let me give you an example: Assessment Criterion A in Language and Literature is “Analyzing”. 
Let’s take a look at how the performance expectations get more sophisticated as students move through the program: 
  • By the end of Grade 6*: 
    • Students should be able to identify and comment upon significant aspects of texts.
  • By the end of Grade 8*: 
    • Students should be able to identify and explain the content, context, language, structure, technique and style of texts, as well as relationships between texts.
  • By the end of Grade 10*: 
    • Students should be able to analyze the content, context, language, structure, technique and style of texts, as well as relationships among texts.
As the Learning Outcomes (standards) for each grade increase in complexity, so do the expectations for student performance. This continual raising of the bar, at developmentally appropriate increments, fosters academic rigor and ensures that students are developing the knowledge, skills and understanding that will be crucial to their success as they move into the Diploma Program or the AISM High School program. 
*The MYP provides us with scaffolded assessment expectations for Grade 6, 8 and 10 only. In grades 7 and 9, teachers will use a combination of the previous and following years’ expectations. Teacher implementation of these expectations is  informed by our AISM learning outcomes to ensure developmental appropriateness. 

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21/5/2023

Grades in the MYP

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In the MYP, teachers will report on student progress via ManageBac, roughly every three weeks. You will receive an email from ManageBac indicating that there are comments and grades (depending on the task), available for your viewing. If you have not been receiving these notifications, please reach out to our IT Helpdesk at, [email protected].

Assessment in MYP comes with its own language and a unique grading system. Below, we will address a few frequently asked questions that are common from MYP parents and students: 

What are these A, B, C, D Criteria? All MYP subjects have students working towards four objectives - labeled as Criterion A, B, C and D. While these objectives are not the same in each subject, there are always four, labeled as A, B, C, D (see graphic below*). Each MYP assessment task (formative or summative) will be addressing one or more of these objectives. In their comments, our teachers will be indicating areas in which your child made progress, as well as ways in which your child can improve towards these course objectives. 
How are grades applied towards these four objectives? Accompanying grades are based on a scale from 1-8 for each objective/criterion, with 1-2 indicating limited progress/performance, 3-4 indicating progress/performance that is approaching expectations, 5-6 indicating progress/performance that is meeting expectations and 7-8 indicating progress/performance that meets expectations with sophistication. 
What grade indicates my child is meeting grade level expectations? A grade of 5 against any criterion is the benchmark for meeting grade level expectations. Any grade higher than 5 indicates your child is meeting expectations for their grade level with varying degrees of sophistication as we move from level 6-8 on the scale. 
My child received a task grade lower than 5… should I be concerned? A grade of 4 generally indicates your child is very close to reaching grade level outcomes, but may need further practice or slight improvement. A grade of 3 would indicate a passing grade, with the need for improvement. A grade of 1-2 would indicate significant interventions are required. Teachers will use assessment data in order to inform targeted classroom instruction to help all students as they work towards grade level objectives. Additionally, assessment data will inform how teachers group students for extra support during PIE (a flexible learning block that occurs 3-4 times throughout the week). Of course, if you have any questions or concerns about your child’s grades, please contact the teacher. 
Wait a second…when I get my child’s report card the grades only go as high as 7, but tasks on ManageBac are graded on a scale of 1-8… am I missing something? No you are not. Individual Criterion grades are assessed on a scale of 1-8 on a per task basis. At the end of each semester, our teachers will make a professional, evidence based judgment as to where your child’s performance best fits against each of the four Criterion in a given subject, over the course of the semester. These four grades are then added up to get a total score out of 32 possible points (max 8 points x 4 criteria). The total score is then compared to grade boundaries set by the IB to give students their overall grade for semester: 
  • 1-5 = 1: very limited performance towards/understanding of course outcomes 
  • 6-9 = 2: limited performance towards/understanding of course outcomes 
  • 10-14 = 3: acceptable performance towards/understanding of course outcomes (passing threshold)
  • 15-18 = 4: approaching proficient performance towards/understanding of course outcomes
  • 19-23 = 5: proficient performance towards/understanding of course outcomes
  • 24-27 = 6: proficient, occasional sophisticated performance towards/understanding of course outcomes
  • 28:-32 = 7: proficient, frequently sophisticated performance towards/understanding of course outcomes
Does this seem really complicated, or is it just me? It is really complicated. The IB’s goal in both the MYP and DP was to create a grading system that was not reflective of any country’s national grading system. This means, unless you were an MYP or DP student, that this system of grading will be completely novel. Don’t worry - we are here to help! An upcoming Secondary School Principal Wine and Cheese evening will focus on grades and assessment in both the MYP and DP.
If you’d like to learn more about grades in the MYP, please contact our MYP Coordinator, Mike BondClegg at [email protected] 
*MYP Objectives (Criteria) in each course: 

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American International School of Mozambique,
Rua de Rio Raraga, 266 
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Maputo,
​Mozambique

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