Middle School
(Grades 6 to 10)
At AIS Osaka, we implement the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP). The Middle Years Program (MYP) , for students aged 11 to 16 (Grades 6 to 10), is an educational framework that is designed as an inclusive, whole-school program by the International Baccalaureate (IB), a not-for-profit organization supporting the education of more than 1 million students every year in over 3,900 schools in 147 countries.
The MYP provides a comprehensive and challenging curriculum that encourages students to make practical connections between their studies and the real world.
What are the highlights of the MYP?
1. Holistic Education
The MYP emphasizes the development of the whole student, addressing intellectual, social, emotional, and physical well-being. The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.
2. Subject Groups
The MYP curriculum is structured around eight subject groups:
Abroad Middle Years Program Subject Group Overviews
Please click on the links below to access the MYP ‘Subject Group Overviews’ for the 2025-2026 Academic Year. These overviews include the concepts, global contexts, and ATL skills in focus for each of the MYP units as well as the content and/or subject standards and the horizontal and vertical alignment of our curriculum.
These documents are revised and updated yearly and throughout the year as teachers reflect on their practices and aim to include contemporary and relevant issues in local and global contexts as well as considering student demographics and interests.
Language and Literature: English
Language Acquisition: Japanese
Arts group: Music and Visual Arts
3. Interdisciplinary Learning
The MYP encourages students to make connections between subjects and understand how they relate to each other and to real-world issues.
Seeing the subject standards teachers are focusing on in each unit gives parents the opportunity to better support their students at home and contributes to a better parent-teacher partnership in students’ education. In addition to these Subject Group Overview documents, our teachers are sharing curriculum on Toddle where they upload the specifics of each unit, such as the learning experiences, worksheets and formative and summative assessments. In order to navigate through the grades, please click on the tabs on the top of the screen to see the unit outlines for each specific year group.
During each year of MYP at Abroad International Schools, Osaka, students complete an interdisciplinary unit where they study a phenomenon through the lenses of two or more disciplines and explore the interconnectedness of the eight disciplines of the MYP through shared concepts. They bring together concepts, methods, or forms of communication so that they can explain a phenomenon, solve a problem, create a product, or raise a new question in ways that would have been unlikely through a single discipline.
4. Approaches to Learning (ATL)
The Middle Years program places great importance on preparing the students for the life beyond and equipping them with the skillset that is crucial to attaining success in life. This is done through incorporating a set of soft skills into each unit and training the students in how to improve these soft skills through the use of toolkits and strategies. The MYP groups these skills under five major categories: self-management, communication, social, research and thinking skills.
5. Global Contexts
Students learn best when what they learn in a classroom setting is connected to the existing world around them. At Abroad this authenticity is achieved through forging connections between the global contexts and explorations grouped under six categories created by the IB: fairness and development, personal and cultural expression, scientific and technical innovation, identities and relationships, orientation in space and time, and globalization and sustainability in each unit of study to provide an authentic learning experience for the students and to remove the barrier between the classroom setting and the world outside. Placing the global contexts and explorations in each unit and providing the students the opportunity to think about how these global issues relate to the subject-specific content establishes a purpose in each unit and enables the students to understand the rationale behind each learning experience.
6. Service as Action
Service Learning is an indispensable component of the IB education and is another key element in establishing classrooms without walls. In order to complete the MYP program, the students need to design and implement projects that identify a need in their local, national and global communities and serve them without gaining a personal profit. These service projects/ activities can be completed in the form of research, advocacy, direct service or indirect service. Engaging in these projects from an early age helps students develop into responsible and compassionate individuals who are committed to making a positive difference in the world they live in.
Some of the projects AIS have completed in the past are:
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Bridge From Your Heart To Orphan Kids' Heart: An initiative where students create a stationery drive to be delivered to the children at a local orphanage.
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Social Media Guidance: An initiative aimed to raise awareness of how to safely and effectively use social media networks to teach other students at AIS to be safe from the dangers of technology.
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Waste of Materials - Recycling Project: An initiative aimed to create a recycling corner where students gather reusable materials and use them in future events/school projects.
The Middle Years Program for Parents