MYP Sciences Year 1

MYP Sciences Year 1 is the first of five courses that take a student from the start of the Middle Years Programme to the on-screen eAssessment — taught the way a good science teacher teaches: a puzzle first, an experiment you run yourself, then the explanation, the story of how humans worked it out, where it is used today, and questions with answers you reveal only after you have tried.

Who it is for

Students in MYP Year 1 (typically age 11–12) anywhere in the world, and any older student who wants the foundations of physics, chemistry and biology rebuilt properly. It follows the IB MYP Sciences framework — key and related concepts, global contexts and the four criteria A–D — and the IB’s own modular unit sequence for Year 1. No previous science course is assumed; the first unit teaches how to be a scientist from the beginning.

What is inside

Six units, each with five full lessons, five check-yourself quizzes and a 90-minute end-of-unit test marked to the MYP criteria:

• Unit 1 — Being a scientist: observation and inference, measuring and uncertainty, variables and the fair test, tables and graphs, conclusions and evaluation.
• Unit 2 — Movement: distance, time and speed; distance–time graphs; acceleration and speed–time graphs; forces and Newton’s first law; stopping distances, sport and space.
• Unit 3 — Energy: stores, transfers and energy bar charts; kinetic and gravitational potential energy; conservation, efficiency and Sankey diagrams; thermal energy transfer; energy resources, the greenhouse effect and the energy choices countries face.
• Unit 4 — Living things: the seven life processes; structural and behavioural adaptation; classification and the eight ranks; the five kingdoms and the vertebrate groups; binomial names and dichotomous keys.
• Unit 5 — Cell structure: cell theory, prokaryotes and eukaryotes, plant and animal cells, specialised cells, the microscope.
• Unit 6 — Everyday materials: particles and states, elements, compounds and mixtures, solutions and solubility, separating mixtures, properties and uses of materials.

How each lesson works

• StadiraLab — a virtual experiment in almost every lesson: set the variables, run it, record readings, plot the graph, download your data and a printable report for offline marking. Pendulums, ramps, free fall, friction, a bouncing ball with a live energy bar chart, insulation, a solar panel, germinating seeds, a woodlouse choice chamber and more.
• Structured notes with a “Why?” justification for every rule, worked examples step by step, and check-point questions of eight kinds — predict, explain, calculate, spot the mistake, true-or-false with a reason, put in order, apply, what-if — each with a reveal answer.
• How we found out — the history of each idea, from Galileo’s ramp to Pasteur’s flask — and where it is used now.
• Science now — what is happening in 2026, how AI is used in each field, and the mindshift from memorising to applying.
• Think like a scientist — a criterion task you write your answer to first, saved on your device, before comparing with a model answer.
• Probe deeper — six exam-style questions with marks and answers in every lesson.

Assessment

Every unit ends with a 1 hour 30 minute test in the format of the MYP on-screen examination: Task 1 knowing and understanding (Criterion A), Task 2 an investigation (Criteria B and C), Task 3 science in the real world (Criterion D). You take it against the timer, then mark it yourself with the full mark scheme and a level grid — and a course reference, The examiner’s rulebook, lists what the IB’s own subject reports from 2023 to 2026 say loses marks, so you learn the habits of a top-level answer from Year 1.

What you need

Any device with a modern browser; paper and a pen for working; squared paper for graphs. No laboratory is required — the kitchen experiments use everyday items, and StadiraLab provides the rest.

What comes next

MYP Sciences Year 2 continues the same units of the IB sequence (interactions, infectious diseases, cell functions, the periodic table, atoms, Earth and space), and Years 3–5 lead to the eAssessment, with the MYP Sciences eAssessment Practice course providing past papers.