Saturday, December 2, 2017

Notes on using the MYP Phase system of Language Acquisition in the IB

This post is for anyone who teaches foreign languages in an MYP school (Middle Years Programme, the curricular framework for Grades 6 through 10 for the International Baccalaureate). 


Building an MYP curriculum from scratch is a gargantuan task. I sympathise with anyone who is trying to get their professional practice to fit with the MYP, given that it is a framework more than a curriculum itself and given the beautiful openness, but frustrating vagueness, that this can entail. The application of the Phases and their criteria is a constant topic in an MYP school, given that …
  •          A school may inherit students from the PYP from three different language levels. There is an argument to be very conservative with placement in Grade 6 if the MYP curriculum of your school is built around a grammar-based scope and sequence. Many Grade 6 students are studying grammar in ways that are new to them if they came from the PYP, and they have a weaker systematic knowledge of the language as a set of rules and patterns than their language level would initially indicate. You could start your most advanced new Grade 6 students in an “Advanced Phase 2” class, even though there is an argument to be made for starting them in Phase 4 or 5, even.
  •        The advantages of a conservative use of the Phases – e.g. using the Phase 3 criteria for two years of study, not just one – are that:

o   students’ marks are higher and you can still apply the criteria strictly.
o   You can also flag students whose grammar needs major investment through their scores in Criterion D, whilst still rewarding them for some of their successes elsewhere.
o   One challenge with the MYP criteria is that they grow in intellectual depth across the Phases, seemingly more than they grow in linguistic depth. The intention of this is clear – the MYP wants to tie foreign language learning with the development of critical thinking. However, there exists a disparity between younger students with advanced language skills and their ability to do some of the cognitive heavy lifting of the upper Phases, such as analysis and drawing conclusions.
  •         The alternative, a more generous/sequential use of the Phases – e.g. viewing one year as one Phase, with some Grade 10 students in a Phase 5 class – comes itself with problems that are not to be overlooked:



o   A smaller pool of students taking the language means a far more heterogeneous class in terms of language level and learning needs; for example, if you have only two sections of Spanish in one grade level, you can only realistically have a maximum of four Phases covered in a year group, and even that is a stretch.
o   Students entering the programme after Grade 6 are sometimes awkwardly placed; if you have a beginner Grade 9 student of French, for example, then they may be forced into a group with students in Phase 4. Then the teacher needs to assess some students using Phase 4 criteria, and other students at Phase 1 criteria. Now, having students progress more slowly through the Phase scale doesn’t really take away the issue of having Year 4 French and Year 1 French being taught in the same room, but in terms of assessments, at least, a closer Phase range helps the teacher with differentiation.
o   If you have a smaller programme (e.g. two Spanish teachers for the whole of the MYP), and your school admits students who learned Spanish in prior schools to varying degrees, it can be very hard to place them in an MYP Phase while they are in the same classroom as other students. Similarly, if some students have a Spanish-speaking background and enter your programme, the Phase match is very tricky. Many such children need more advanced assessments for Listening and Reading comprehension (Criteria A and B), and perhaps for verbal Communication (C if spoken), but their writing may nevertheless need major work. If you read the Criteria for the different Phases, you might feel they’re in Phase 5 for listening (Criterion A), say, but in Phase 2 for language usage (Criterion D). You might assign such students to Phase 3, and work hard to vary assessments and projects, but it is a major addition to the teacher’s workload.
  •          Some of the MYP Phase criteria are maddeningly worded and are difficult to apply to foreign language instruction. For example,

o   For the life me, I cannot think of a meaningful way to test a student’s ability to “recognize basic conventions” in Criterion A (listening comprehension), so it is hard to ask more than a single token question about it.
o   Depending on the grade level in which a particular Phase’s criteria are being used (i.e. not every Phase 1 class is a Grade 6 class; you may have a Grade 9 class with Phase 1, depending on your programme), the children’s cognitive abilities and relevant learning needs do not always match the MYP criteria. Speaking again of Criterion A, I have not reliably found a way to ask my beginner Grade 6 students how to “engage with spoken and visual text [what is visual text?] by identifying ideas, opinions and attitudes and by making a personal response to the text.” I am a big fan of having even beginner students make personal responses to comprehension tasks -- this is one of my favourite things about the MYP -- but the idea that a beginner 6th grader in Spanish needs to identify an idea or an opinion in a listening exercise about a person’s family or daily routine or living situation does not seem too compelling to me, so I do not apply this strand as regularly as I check basic comprehension.
  •          Writing MYP-style assessments for your students’ language learning is a herculean task. If you are building your programme from another system (IGCSE?), then get ready to support teachers in finding ways to match the criteria as they are written to their tests.
  •          I support using a Phase standard in looking for DP course placements that hews pretty closely to what the IB recommends. For example, students with difficulties in Phase 3 are in my mind likely to struggle with Language B HL.
  •          The MYP’s Next Chapter usage of Global Contexts and Key Concepts is not always easily applicable to some units of study, particularly for the lower Phases and beginner students, so this element of the MYP is occasionally perfunctory in Phase 1.
  •          Finally, the MYP phases overlap remarkably closely with the CEFR scale of A1 to C2, but nevertheless I hesitate to compare a Phase 3 student, say, with a B1 learner. There are two issues I have with this:

o   The A1-C2 tests are quite unlike the MYP assessment model, so success in the latter does not guarantee success in the former.
o   I wouldn't want parents to interpret scores for learning in a Phase as meaning that the student will pass an external test without targeted test preparation.

  • Nevertheless, I do find it useful to orient myself in the MYP with different CEFR language levels; for example, if I have a Phase 3 class and my students are bored with some B1 materials that I find online or in workbooks, then I have to consider whether I can challenge them further, to include by applying the Phase 4 criteria instead.
I am very interested in other foreign language teachers' thoughts on the Phase system in the MYP!

12 comments:

  1. HI, Casey, thank you for sharing your reflection on the phase system. A lot of the ideas you share are experiences that I come across often, and that are usually solved or worked out when language teaching and learning is conducted as ONE continuum, rather than as an experience broken into 3 programs.
    I have witnessed success when, following the model I mentioned above, bridges in PYP are made by introducing a simplified version of the 4 MYP criteria in order to sensitize students to receiving performance-based feedback, and to begin coaching them to respond to feedback.
    We have found that when students learn to use task-specific rubrics, and we unpack the jargon (such as "recognize conventions"), students do use language at their level to address these matters. How have we managed to do so? Through modelling.
    I am happy to share some ideas on planning across phases with you, Casey. If I do write about it eventually, my opinion will be highly based on the context in which I am teaching at the moment, for context is such a crucial variable in this journey.

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    1. Hi Rafael, good point about the continuum. I think it's easier to view learning as a continuum when you have a bigger programme, with more sections and more students. When you have a smaller programme, students' Phase designations can get them locked into a level that is harder to move. For example, in our Spanish classes we had in Vietnam, numbers were so small that we had the three lower Phases combined into one classroom, and the other students who were in Phases 4 and above were also clumped together. It meant that the difference between the two classes was really the difference between intermediate and advanced, and the jump from one to the other was then so big that it didn't feel like a continuum but almost a verdict instead.

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    2. "We have found that when students learn to use task-specific rubrics, and we unpack the jargon (such as "recognize conventions"), students do use language at their level to address these matters. How have we managed to do so? Through modelling."

      I hereby formally invite you to unpack the jargon of "recognizing conventions" in Criterion A, listening comprehension. What conventions do Phase 1 and 2 students need to recognize, and how do they address the matter of it? If you could model that for me it'd be great. Let us set aside for the moment the question of why the MYP considers the recognition of conventions in videos to be a compelling enough skill to center assessments around it for beginners.

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  2. BTW, Casey, I refer to the CEFR a lot. This practice has helped me gain and share clarity with my students about expectations, and has also empower me to inquire into how much I can do with the "grammar/language" in each level.
    I believe that having a clear definition and understanding of what being successful in a phase looks and sounds like is crucial for teachers to either promote students, or to identify areas of opportunity. One thing I like to talk about in my independent concept-based teaching workshops is "readiness" for a new level. I have always been fond of telling students what they need to achieve and sustain in order to go to the next level.
    You have a fantastic exploration here, Casey, one of the items that does not let the MYP Curriculum people sleep, in my opinion, and one that I am always keen to share views on.
    Many thanks for these ideas you share.

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    1. Good to hear that the CEFR can inform MYP teaching for various reasons! The nuts-and-bolts language rules and content that textbooks assign to various CEFR levels (e.g. passive voice verb constructions are a B1-level skill) help us put content into the MYP phase system too -- passive voice comes in our Phase 3 German class, which can be as late as the fifth year of German studies, or as early as the second year of the MYP if students came from the PYP with intermediate German.

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    2. "I believe that having a clear definition and understanding of what being successful in a phase looks and sounds like is crucial for teachers to either promote students, or to identify areas of opportunity. One thing I like to talk about in my independent concept-based teaching workshops is "readiness" for a new level. I have always been fond of telling students what they need to achieve and sustain in order to go to the next level."

      Glad to see this point addressed -- if it's indeed a continuum, like you said, then where does one Phase end and another Phase begin? We ask ourselves this question a lot. Sometimes we opt to keep students from advancing to new content and harder criteria because we want to promote mastery of language basics, but that can be dispiriting for students whose comprehension is high but whose grammar is poor. The MYP only gives you one Criterion to assess grammar and vocabulary, and even there it's only one strand out of three, so the question of readiness is a tricky one to put a number on using the MYP scale. If it's a school with lots of consensus and good will then you can usually convince parents of the need to consolidate things before moving on, but when there's a difference of opinion between parents and teachers (or especially between one teacher and another) then I find it quite complex to make these calls within the MYP Phase system.

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  3. My experience has put Phase 3 more at A2+ and Phase 4 as B1. The MYP and DP guides appear to suggest this too, as a minimum of Phase 4 is suggested to do HL in the MYP guide. The DP guide suggests a minimum of B1.

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  4. Thanks, I didn't know that the official IB guides would use the CEFR system at any point. I like your estimation of Phase 4 and B1; if you look at the intellectual sophistication needed for Phase 4, then B1 language skills seem necessary to achieve it. How many years of language learning would go into your programme's Phase 4? In our German programme, that's about six years of classroom German, sometimes more.

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  5. I really wonder that is that possible to write 150 words in phase 1 children?

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    1. If Phase 1 is Grade 6 and it is in the first half of the year then you can even think of asking them to write 50 words or 100 words. If Phase 1 is Grade 9 and is the second half of the year then you might ask for much more. Use your best judgement. If the results of a 150-word assignment are very weak and error rates far too high, then make the assignment smaller and tighten the task.

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  6. Can you give me some examples for objective C&D

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    1. C and D are the most combined criteria by far. C is for Communication, so give the child a basic writing assignment ("introduce four of your family members and write what their hobbies are and write their ages"). Give them a score for C for how well they fulfilled the task in terms of the information provided: did they give interesting details about family members' hobbies, or was it just basic, repetitive listing? Combine that grade for C with a score for D: grammar and vocabulary. Set a standard for your students for the grammar and vocabulary they have to use in order to get the highest score: do they need to use a certain verb construction without error? ("My father likes to play rugby, my mother enjoys playing bridge", etc.). Do they need to use at least ten vocabulary words from a list without notes? How many misspelled words will you allow before the highest scores are no longer achievable? Etc. This is an example of the most basic kind of writing task that combines C and D. You can do this with basically any writing or speaking assignment. Just conceive of C as the score for what they say, and D as the score for how accurately they say it.

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