Well, I can only summarize in the way that I use them to teach, so I don’t know if it will work well for your class, since every teacher is different. But here’s how I would explain it:

Investigate: this is the research stage. You focus your energies on trying to understand all aspects of what you need to do, you find all the resources you will need to create your project, and you begin to brainstorm what kind of information you will need to include.

Plan: this is the planning stage. You set up a schedule for what you need to do and when you will complete it. You develop an outline describing your project and exactly what needs to be created and how you plan to finish.

Create: this is when you create your final project. You use all of the resources you have from the Investigate and the Planning to create your project.

Evaluate: this is when you look back to see how you did. You look at your finished project compared to your Investigate and your Planning and see if you met your goals. You take time to reflect on what you did, what you could improve on and perhaps seek feedback from others.

Sorry about that! I have updated the post to include the image in my Flickr account so that should solve that problem

The image of the cycle you include here doesn’t load when I try to access it. Is there a way you can send it along to me? I’d like to take a closer look. Thanks!

I think this is a real example of the need for differentiation. It sounds like the problem might not be with the teacher’s unit design, but with the differing needs of her students. In that regard, I would want to make sure that the student has mastered the grade-level content (s/he could test out, do a unique project, or complete the work along with the rest of the class) and then get the opportunity, perhaps to design his/her own project.

Why not sit down with the student to discover what s/he is really interested in and then design an individual project? I know I’ve done that a number of times. Sometimes, when it’s entirely out of my comfort zone, I just look online for project ideas, UbD guiding questions or general research. In my opinion there’s really no excuse for not knowing enough about a topic to let the student learn independently.

Using the MYP Design Cycle makes it incredibly easy to do this as the student can progress through the stages totally independently with only the teacher for guidance or facilitation. The student can determine what s/he wants to investigate and show the teacher before the research starts. The teacher can set standards for the quality of the research without knowing a thing about the content. Then the student can plan what kind of project would best reflect their learning. This can involve the advice of an expert, which is probably just what the student needs. Finally the creation of the product can be conducted either in class or during the student’s own time – either way it’s easy enough to find rubrics or samples online to be able to asses that work even if the teacher is not an expert. The reflection/evaluation should be no problem for any teacher.

Does that help?