This year, we got the uniquely rewarding experience of
working on our personal projects. We will be the first MYP (Middle Years
Programme) batch, and we are required to do the personal project in year 5
(grade 10), but because, the batch previous to us did the personal project in
grade 8, we also got the opportunity to do it once before the final one in
grade 10. As this was an internal personal project, our teachers will assess it
and give us feedback, whereas in Year 5, it will be sent to the IB for additional
assessment.
So what is a Personal Project? In MYP, we choose a
topic that
interests us, and then we research, plan and finally take action on
the plan. We then exhibit and present our projects at the end of the year,
where parents, students and teachers from across the school come to see it. One
of the outputs of the project is a product that we have created.
There are three components of the project: process
journal, written report and the product.
The process journal consists of an account of meetings
with the supervisor, and various processes that the students went through. We
also scribble down what little work we do every day. We set deadlines and
goals, and we try to achieve them. It is a long process and we try to make the
plans as realistic as possible so we are able to achieve them.
The report contains four major sections,
Investigation, Planning, Action Taken and Reflection. In the first section, we
write about primary and secondary research conducted on our topic.
In the planning section, we write about planning and
the processes involved in achieving our project goals.
Action taken is a section where we write about what we
did and how we did it. We also write about the various stages of making the
product. We include the process record from the process journal in the report.
Reflection is the part where we reflect on our process
of making the product. The skills we learnt, the obstacles we faced. There are
many life skills we acquired in the process, as to how to manage time and how
to balance our work with other activities. We also reflect on the whole
process, and our performance, including how we can improve it next time.
Our exhibition and presentation was on 22nd April. We
were all very enthusiastic and a bit nervous also. It was an experience that we
will never forget as there were many visitors to whom we explained our projects
and from whom got valuable feedback.
