Introduction
Writing strategies and critical reflection are essential for mastering the art of report writing for the MYP Personal Project. This process can be a challenging task for students, as they must strike a balance between structure and creativity while ensuring clarity and alignment with IB requirements. Without proper guidance, reports often tend to resemble extended diary entries rather than well-structured academic documents.
According to the Middle Years Programme Personal Project Guide (May 2021), students are required to demonstrate their engagement with the inquiry cycle by summarizing their experiences and skills, organized around the core objectives of planning, applying skills, and reflecting. By incorporating effective writing strategies and emphasizing critical reflection, supervisors can help students structure their reports methodically while also encouraging meaningful analysis. This not only makes the process more manageable but also empowers students to confidently showcase their learning journey.
Understand the MYP Personal Project Report
When guiding students through the MYP Personal Project report, encourage them to see it as a reflection of their learning journey. It provides an opportunity for students to showcase their achievements, their engagement with the project, and their application of critical thinking to overcome challenges. As supervisors, our role is to help students understand the key elements of a successful report, from clarifying its purpose to effectively organizing its structure. Below are essential components to help guide and support students through this process.
Purpose and Learning Goals
The MYP Personal Project report goes beyond simply describing a student’s actions; it emphasizes how and why they approached their project. It highlights their learning goals and their engagement throughout the process.
Why is this significant for students?
- It encourages them to reflect on their growth as learners.
- It allows them to demonstrate the application of Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills such as critical thinking, research, and communication.
- It ensures their process aligns with the learning objectives, documenting their journey rather than focusing solely on the final product.
For students, the Personal Project serves as a platform to question, challenge, and learn. Whether it involves developing a new skill or exploring an area of interest, the report provides evidence of how meaningful this experience has been. As a supervisor, guiding students to approach their report purposefully will enable them to fully articulate and showcase their growth and achievements.
Explore more about the purpose of the MYP Personal Project.
Guiding Academic Writing and Command Terms
When teaching students to write their MYP Personal Project reports, it’s essential to recognize that this is not a typical academic essay. The tone combines both formal and informal elements as students narrate their experiences, document their inquiry process, and cite evidence following correct conventions. While sentence starters, like those provided by universities, can support academic writing, guiding students to understand command terms (e.g., state, outline, explain, evaluate) is crucial, as seen in other MYP/DP subjects. Academic writing in the Personal Project requires students to use these terms effectively to meet the IB criteria, which demands clarity of thought and articulation. However, many students struggle to distinguish between terms, such as “describe” and “explain,” making deliberate practice and guidance essential. Encouraging consistent practice and providing scaffolds, such as examples or sentence stems for command terms, can help students navigate this challenge.
6 Report Writing Strategies
It is important to note that evidence must be included for all the strands of the criteria (page 25, MYP Personal Project Guide, updated May 2021). The guide mentions the importance of communicating clearly and concisely to demonstrate the elements of the report and reach the highest levels of the criteria. Here are four writing strategies that may support students writing with supporting evidence.
PEE (Point-Evidence-Explain) Strategy
P-E-E, which stands for Point, Evidence, and Explain, is an effective writing strategy that helps students organize their ideas clearly and persuasively. Students begin by stating the point they want to prove or develop, support it with specific examples or evidence, and then provide detailed explanations to connect the evidence to their point. This approach is particularly useful when students are writing about how they decided on their learning goal and product or when explaining how they demonstrated Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills to achieve their goals.
- Point: State your main idea or claim.
Example Starter: “The primary goal of my project was to…” - Evidence: Support your point with detailed examples or research data.
Example Starter: “For instance, my initial research revealed…” - Explain: Connect the dots by explaining how your evidence supports your point.
Example Starter: “This shows that…”
By grounding arguments in evidence and analysis, this method ensures clarity and alignment with the project’s goals, research findings, or conclusions. Writing structures like P-E-E scaffold students’ ability to communicate effectively within the MYP Personal Project report.
ICE (Introduce-Cite-Explain) Framework
The ICE framework, which stands for Introduce, Cite, and Explain, is a valuable strategy for helping students integrate evidence into their MYP Personal Project report. This technique is particularly useful when students are writing about how they developed appropriate success criteria for their product. Since the project is inquiry- and research-based, students are required to use research findings to create robust success criteria or product specifications. These criteria guide the creation of their product and serve as a foundation for evaluating its quality.
In this section of writing, students can employ the ICE strategy to structure their explanation effectively. Using ICE, they can introduce their set of success criteria, cite relevant research or journal entries to explain the rationale behind their decisions, and highlight the significance of this evidence in developing meaningful success criteria. Additionally, students will need to clearly include the evidence of their success criteria in the report.
How ICE Works:
1. Introduce: Begin by providing context for the evidence. What is the evidence, and why is it important?
Example Starter: “Through my research, I discovered that…”“
2. Cite: Identify the source, whether it’s a journal entry, research article, or interview.
Example Starter: “This aligns with the research I gathered from…”
3. Explain: Conclude by explaining the relevance or significance of the evidence. How does it support your decisions or claims?
Example Starter: “This evidence underlines the importance of…”
By incorporating the ICE framework, students can present their research and success criteria in a logical and professional way, ensuring their report is credible and demonstrates their ability to synthesize information effectively. This strategy helps them organize information clearly, connect evidence to their decisions, and articulate their process confidently.
If you are interested in teaching students how to use ICE writing strategy, check out Fountain Middle School Teacher’s Programs and Strategies Website on ICE writing structure.
SRE/CEI (Statement-Reason-Evidence or Claim-Evidence-Interpretation) Technique
The SRE and CEI writing strategies, introduced on teachthought.com, provide effective frameworks for structuring arguments and evaluations in the MYP Personal Project report. Both strategies emphasize clear connections between claims, evidence, and their significance, making them especially valuable when students evaluate their product based on established success criteria.
SRE (Statement, Reason, Evidence)
As described on the website, “SRE is an initialism representing three central tenets of arguing and argument-making (and thus writing): Statement, Reason, Evidence (or Example, Explain, or Expand).” This structure encourages students to move beyond merely stating and describing by organizing their writing in a logical and persuasive manner. Critical thinking stems provided on the website can further guide students in their thought processes and writing development.
CEI (Claim, Evidence, Interpretation)
Similarly, CEI is introduced as “an initialism referring to Claim, Evidence, Interpretation,” described as a useful complement to SRE. This framework helps students articulate their claims, back them with relevant evidence, and interpret the significance of their points, fostering critical evaluation and insightful analysis.
How SRE/CEI Supports Evaluation in the Personal Project
These strategies are particularly effective for addressing the assessment objective of evaluating the product based on success criteria. The SRE/CEI technique enables students to seamlessly connect their claims, supporting evidence, and interpretations, fostering clarity and critical reflection.
- Statement/Claim: Begin with a clear and bold claim.
Example Starter: “The project’s success was largely driven by…” - Reason/Evidence: Provide supporting evidence or rationale to back the claim.
Example Starter: “This is because the final product met the…” - Interpretation: Explain the significance and connect the evidence to the claim.
Example Starter: “Thus, it highlights how my planning phase…”
By incorporating SRE and CEI, supervisors can guide students to organize their evaluations logically, strengthen their arguments, and provide meaningful insights into their outcomes. These strategies not only ensure an organized and convincing report but also encourage students to think critically about their learning journey.
Reflection Strategies
To support students in developing critical reflection skills, there are several effective protocols they can use. Reflection should be an ongoing and regular practice rather than a one-time task. I encourage you to check out my blog post: 6 Reflection Sticky Notes, where I discuss simple yet impactful ways students can engage in regular reflections and document their thoughts in their process journals.
Another valuable resource is my blog post: Student Engagement: Why Check-In and Check-Out Activities Support Learning with 10 Essential Ideas. This post offers additional strategies to help students reflect critically and deepen their learning experiences.
Here is What? So What? and Now What
The Here is What, Now What, So What framework is a reflective writing strategy that helps students clearly structure their thoughts. By describing a situation or task (“Here is What”), explaining the actions they took or changes made (“Now What”), and evaluating the significance or impact of their experience (“So What”), students can critically analyze their learning journey. To support this process, I adapted prompts from Portsmouth University’s comprehensive reflective writing guide. These prompts provide practical guidance for students to articulate their reflections meaningfully and meet assessment objectives. For more details and examples, refer to my blog post: Reflective Writing Guide.
ESP + 1
I think PZ’s thinking routine ESP+I: Experience, Struggles, Puzzles plus Insights is an excellent tool to help students reflect on their personal project learning journey at the end. This thinking routine can help students write to respond to the assessment objective “explain the project’s impact on themselves or their learning”.
- Experience: Share what you went through.
Example Starter: “My experience working on this project was…” - Significance: Highlight the importance of the experience.
Example Starter: “This is important because it…” - Perspective: Reflect on how your views have shifted.
Example Starter: “I now understand that…” - PLUS One: Add what you would do differently next time.
Example Starter: “In the future, I would…”
CARL Reflection Framework
Finally, the CARL framework of reflection is worth mentioning. I came across this reflection framework while preparing for my job interviews. CARL stands for Context, Action, Results, and Learning. Originally designed for professional contexts like job interviews, this framework can also guide students in analyzing and articulating their experiences in a clear and purposeful manner. For more details, visit the explanation of the CARL reflection framework on the University of Edinburgh’s website.
Sentence Starters
As an English second language speaker, I learned to write academically by reading and mimicking other people’s writing. Looking back, I wish my teachers had explicitly taught me the characteristics of academic language and guided me through the process during school. Similarly, the majority of my students are non-native English speakers. While many of them have kept detailed notes in their process journals, translating this information into the formal academic report format can be challenging.
When guiding students through their MYP Personal Project report, it’s common for them to struggle with how to express their ideas effectively. Since universities often provide sentence stems to help college students organize their academic writing, I’ve adapted this approach for the MYP Personal Project. I created targeted sentence starters to help students write to specific purposes, such as introducing, explaining, evaluating, and analyzing. These resources can provide students with the scaffolding they need to organize their ideas, write with confidence, and address the assessment criteria effectively.
Conclusion
Mastering the MYP Personal Project report requires careful guidance from supervisors to ensure students achieve planning, clarity, and meaningful reflection in their writing. Encourage students to simplify the writing process by setting clear goals, using sentence frameworks to stay focused, and integrating evidence effectively from their process journal.
The report represents an opportunity for students to demonstrate the skills and insights they have gained throughout their project. As supervisors, our role is to help students stay organized, adhere to the IB criteria, and write with purpose and confidence. Supporting them with these strategies will set them up for success and help them navigate this challenging but rewarding task.
Resources
- Use These Sentence Starter Tips to Strengthen Your Writing by Grammarly
- Sentence Starters: Useful Words and Phrases to Use As Sentence Starters
- Sentence Starters, transitional and other useful words
Reference
- Middle Years Programme Personal Project Guide (for use from September 2021/January 2022), updated May 2021
