Assessment is an important part of MYP, as it informs teaching and learning by informing teachers about students’ content knowledge and skills and what they need practice to develop and work toward mastery.  The goals of assessment are to:

• support and encourage student learning by providing feedback on the learning process
• inform, enhance and improve the teaching process
• provide opportunity for students to exhibit transfer of skills across disciplines, such as in the personal project and interdisciplinary unit assessments
• promote positive student attitudes towards learning
• promote a deep understanding of subject content by supporting students in their inquiries set in real-world contexts
• promote the development of critical- and creative-thinking skills
• reflect the international-mindedness of the programme by allowing assessments to be set in a variety of cultural and linguistic contexts
• support the holistic nature of the programme by including in its model principles that take account of the development of the whole student.

(from MYP From Principles to Practice) Teachers assess students both formatively (practice work, homework, etc) and summatively (tests, papers, quizzes, labs, performances, etc.) to evaluate students’ growth in terms of the subject’s objectives. Each subject has four criteria with multiple objectives. Students are assessed on these criterion at least two times per year to monitor their growth. 

MYP subjects are aligned so each of the criterion categories is assessing a similar skill, just specifying the language for what it looks like in that content area. In this way, we can think of the criterion categories as:

• Criterion A = Thinking and Knowledge Skills
• Criterion B = Organizing skills
• Criterion C = Application and Communication skills
• Criterion D = Evaluating skills

Each criterion evaluates students’ achievement level on a 1-8 scale. This scale is not meant to be a percentage grade, but rather demonstrate the student’s development of that skill or mastery of content knowledge.

• 1-2 = learning – students are learning about the content or skill and limited in their ability to use it independently
• 3-4 = practicing – students are practicing the content or skill and can demonstrate the skill when they have support
• 5-6 = using – students are using the content or skill adequately and can demonstrate the skill independently
• 8-7 = teaching – students are able to teach others the content or skill and evaluate how effective themselves and others are using it.

Each year of the program, the achievement levels for each criterion are aligned to students’ developmental level. The following documents are the criteria for each subject and reference different years of the program. The following are which year’s criteria are used for each grade.

• 6th grade = year 1
• 7th grade = year 1 first semester, year 3 second semester
• 8th grade = year 3
• 9th grade = year 3 first semester, year 5 second semester
• 10th grade  = year 5

The exception to this sequence is with Language Acquisition classes. These students follow phases in their language development that are more nuanced to illustrate language development. Teachers will communicate what phase they are using with students, parents, and guardians.

Many of our teachers at ROMS and ROHS are moving in the direction of a standards-based classroom.  In order to support a growth mindset, students will have multiple opportunities to practice new learning prior to assessment, but the practice scores (if any) will not count toward the final grade.  Formative assessments will be used to provide feedback to students and identify areas in which they can improve their learning. Final grades will include only summative assessments; if a student demonstrates increased proficiency, he/she will earn that increased grade without being penalized for previous performance.  Assessments will be aligned to one of the four MYP assessment rubrics (included) and students will spend time in class becoming familiar with the success criteria. For more information about standard-based grading, MYP, and how this is reported on MiStar, please reference the following guidebook: