Why This Matters

You've now heard "key concept," "global context," "ATL," "statement of inquiry," and "criterion" — often in the same sentence, often with no explanation of how they relate. So you learn each term in isolation, like vocabulary flashcards, and you still can't answer the basic question: when you open a blank unit planner, why does this field exist, and why does it sit there, next to that one?

That gap — knowing the parts but not the system — is exhausting. You end up filling in planner fields to satisfy a template rather than because you understand what each one is doing for your students. This article puts the parts back together so the planner stops feeling like a form and starts feeling like a tool.

Understand the Idea

Start with a distinction that unlocks almost everything else: the MYP separates the written curriculum (what's planned — your unit plan, your intended objectives), the taught curriculum (what actually happens in the room — your lessons, activities, questioning), and the assessed curriculum (what you actually measure and how). Good MYP practice is these three staying aligned. A common source of teacher frustration is a mismatch — you plan for deep inquiry, teach mostly lecture-and-worksheet because time ran short, then assess with a task that doesn't match either. None of this is unique to MYP; naming it just makes the mismatch visible.

The unit — a block of connected lessons built around one focus, typically several weeks long — is the object that holds everything together. Almost every MYP component exists to answer a question about that unit.

Three components function as what we'll call three lenses, because each one filters the same content through a different angle:

  • Key concepts are broad, transferable ideas (things like "change," "systems," "connections") big enough to apply across every subject, not just yours. A related, narrower set of related concepts sits underneath, specific to your subject group.
  • Global contexts are broad, real-world lenses (the IB currently groups them into a small set of named areas — confirm the current names and their associated "explorations" in your subject guide, since exact wording is maintained and occasionally refined by the IB) that connect the unit's content to life beyond the classroom.
  • ATL stands for Approaches to Learning — a set of transferable skill categories (things like research skills, communication, self-management) that MYP units deliberately teach and practice, not just assume students already have.

These three lenses converge in a single sentence you'll write for every unit: the statement of inquiry, a concise statement that connects the key concept, a related concept, and the global context into one idea worth investigating. It's the unit's thesis.

Assessment works through criterion-related assessment: each subject group has a small set of assessment criteria (broad categories like "knowledge and understanding" or "communication" — exact criteria names and strands are set by subject and do change over time, so check your current subject guide) against which student work is judged, using level descriptors rather than a single percentage grade. This is different from norm-referenced grading, where a student is ranked against peers.

See It in Practice

Here's an annotated walk through a typical blank unit planner. Field names and layout vary by school and by planning platform (some schools use the IB's own planner template, others build their own in a shared document or LMS) — but the underlying questions are consistent enough to recognize anywhere.

  • Key concept field answers: what big transferable idea should students still understand five years from now, after they've forgotten the specific content? A Grade 9 Individuals and Societies unit on migration might use "systems."
  • Related concept(s) field answers: what subject-specific idea sharpens that big idea for this content? For that same unit: "movement" and "causality."
  • Global context field answers: why does this matter beyond the classroom, and through which real-world lens are we looking at it? Perhaps a context oriented around globalization and sustainability — check your subject guide for the current official name and its exploration statements.
  • Statement of inquiry field answers: what is the one sentence this whole unit is trying to help students understand? Something like: "Migration systems reshape both the places people leave and the places they arrive."
  • Objectives field answers: which assessment criteria will this unit actually address, and at what depth? Not every unit hits every criterion.
  • Summative task field answers: what will students produce to show they've met those objectives, and how will it be judged?
  • ATL field answers: which transferable skill will we deliberately teach and practice here, not just hope students already have?
  • Learning experiences field answers: what will students actually do, day to day, to get from not-understanding to understanding?

Weak use of this planner: a teacher fills in "systems" as the key concept because it was used last year, writes a statement of inquiry that could describe almost any unit ("Systems affect people"), and never refers back to either while teaching. The fields exist but do no work.

Strong use: the teacher chose "systems" because migration genuinely functions as a system with inputs, outputs, and feedback loops, wrote a statement of inquiry specific enough that a wrong topic (say, a unit on poetry) obviously couldn't use it, and returns to that sentence explicitly at least twice during the unit — once to frame it, once to check whether students can now explain it in their own words.

⚠️ Common trap: Writing the statement of inquiry last, as a summary of what you already planned, rather than first, as the thing that shapes what you plan. If you can swap it out for a generic sentence without changing anything else in the unit, it was written backwards.

Apply It

Pick a unit you're already teaching or about to teach — it doesn't need to be labeled "MYP" yet. Go through the planner fields listed above one at a time and, for each, write down what you're already doing implicitly, even if you've never called it by that name.

For example: you might already ask "why does this matter to students' lives?" before starting a topic — that's your instinct toward a global context, even unlabeled. You might already choose a summative task that requires application, not recall — that's criterion-related thinking, even without official criteria language.

🧭 Planning decision: Write these matches directly into your actual unit planner document, even in rough form — one line per field, "what I already do → which field this maps to." By the end you should have a first-draft planner for one real unit, not a hypothetical one.

Where you find a genuine blank — a field with nothing to map to — that's not a failure, it's information. It tells you exactly where this unit needs the most planning attention before you teach it.

Avoid This

Symptom: fields feel interchangeable. You write the same sentence-ish content in "statement of inquiry" and "learning objective," unsure of the difference. Fix: ask what question each field answers (use the list above), not what content sounds right there.

Symptom: the statement of inquiry never comes back up in class. Students could not tell you what it says a week into the unit. Fix: post it, refer to it explicitly at least at the start and end of the unit, and ask students to restate it in their own words.

Symptom: objectives are chosen after the summative task is designed, to match whatever the task happens to test. Fix: choose objectives first, based on what matters most for this content, then design a task that genuinely requires them.

Check Yourself

  • Can you state, in one sentence each, what question the key concept field and the global context field answer — and how they differ?
  • Can you identify, in a unit you teach, one field you're already doing implicitly and one that's currently blank?
  • Do you know whether your school uses the IB's own planner template or a locally adapted one?

Continue Learning

Next step → Article 3: MYP vs Traditional Teaching, where you'll see exactly what changes in your daily planning sequence once these components are in play. Download the Annotated Unit Planner (field purpose guide) to keep beside you while you plan.

📌 Official source: Check your current subject guide or MYP: From Principles into Practice for the authoritative current names, wording, and structure of key concepts, global contexts, ATL categories, and assessment criteria.