Assessment, ATL Skills & Practicalities

How the design folder works, AI Use Log templates from Grade 6 to Grade 10, ATL skills alignment, unit pacing, strand scaffolding, interdisciplinary units, and contingency planning.

The Design Folder (Portfolio)

Every student, starting Grade 6, maintains a single continuous Design Folder — one per year. It has four clearly labeled sections (A, B, C, D) and is the primary evidence for summative assessment. At Grade 10 / Year 5, the folder should be at e-portfolio standard, typically 12–20 pages per unit, covering all 16 strands in MYP Year 5 language.

Recommended folder tool by grade:

• Gr 6: Word document template, pre-structured by the teacher into A / B / C / D sections.

• Gr 7: Student-maintained Word or OneNote notebook with the four sections.

• Gr 8–9: Google Slides or similar — easier to embed images and video.

• Gr 10: PDF export for the e-portfolio submission format. Students should also maintain a parallel personal portfolio website as their “Who I Am v4” project output.

AI Use Log Templates

Every design folder from Grade 6 onward ends with an AI Use Log section. The format grows in sophistication over the five years. Below is the expected format for each grade.

Grade 6 — half page, worksheet-style

Students fill in a simple table with these columns, one row per AI conversation:

• What I asked: a short description of the prompt (not the full prompt verbatim).

• What AI said: a one-sentence summary of the response.

• What I did with it: kept it, changed it, or ignored it — and a reason.

Teacher provides the template. Students complete 3–5 entries per unit.

Grades 7–8 — half to one page, paragraph + table

Students write a short opening paragraph describing their overall AI use for the project, then a table with these columns:

• Stage (A / B / C / D): which criterion was active when they used AI.

• Tool: which AI tool they used.

• Purpose: what they were trying to accomplish.

• Outcome: helpful / mixed / wrong — with a sentence of detail.

• My decision: what they did with the AI output.

Grade 9 — one page, analytical

Students write a structured reflection addressing:

• The three or four most significant AI uses in the project, with prompt summaries and outcomes.

• At least one instance where AI was wrong, misleading, or unhelpful — how they identified this and what they did instead.

• A reflection on where AI helped vs where human judgment was essential.

Grade 10 — one to two pages, cited-collaborator format

Students produce a professional-grade AI contribution statement of the kind expected in research and professional work:

• An overall statement describing the AI’s role in the project (research partner, pair-programmer, editor, etc.).

• A list of specific contributions attributed to each tool used — cited the way a collaborator would be cited.

• A verification statement: how the student confirmed factual accuracy of AI-provided information.

• A limitations note: what AI could not do or did poorly for this project.

• A self-assessment: what the student did entirely themselves, and why they chose to.

This matches the documentation standards students will encounter in DP Design Technology IA work, university essays, and professional settings. By graduation, Grade 10 students can produce AI-use documentation at the level a first-year university tutor or employer would accept.

ATL Skills Alignment

The following Approaches to Learning skills are explicitly taught and assessed over the five years. Each unit hits at least two. A full mapping would be year-level unit planner work; what follows is the spine.

• Research skills: Grades 6–7 focus on finding and citing sources. Grade 8 introduces structured research plans. Grade 9–10 adds primary research and user interviews to academic research.

• Thinking skills: Critical thinking on comparing existing products from Grade 6 onward. Creative ideation (brainstorm, SCAMPER, worst-possible-idea) from Grade 7. Transfer of skills across domains becomes the explicit Grade 10 skill.

• Communication skills: Technical drawing from Grade 6. Presentation of ideas in Grade 7. Writing for different audiences (end-users vs stakeholders vs peers) from Grade 8. Formal design briefs and case studies at Grade 10.

• Social skills: Peer feedback from Grade 6. Structured critique from Grade 7. Real user interviews from Grade 8. Collaborative teams on one project per year from Grade 9 onward.

• Self-management: Simple planning from Grade 6. Gantt-style planning from Grade 7. Independent pacing by Grade 9. Full project management by Grade 10.

Unit Pacing Inside the Two Months

A reasonable two-month (roughly 16 contact-hour) breakdown — adjust to the school’s actual schedule:

• Weeks 1–2 (Criterion A): Design situation introduction. Problem definition. Research plan. Existing product analysis. Design brief.

• Weeks 3–4 (Criterion B): Design specification. Ideation (quantity first, then quality). Chosen design presentation. Detailed planning drawings.

• Weeks 5–7 (Criterion C): Plan. Build. Document changes as they happen. Teacher formative check-ins at start, middle, and end.

• Week 8 (Criterion D): Testing. Evaluation. Improvement plan. Impact analysis. Folder finalization and submission.

In Criterion A / B emphasis units the weighting tilts toward the first half; in C / D emphasis units toward the second half — but all four criteria are touched every unit.

Scaffolding the Strand Progression

MYP strand language shifts across years. The rule of thumb teachers can use when writing task-specific clarifications:

Teachers should explicitly show students these shifts. A Grade 6 student earning “list the changes” points is doing Year 1 work; a Grade 10 student submitting a list rather than a justified narrative of changes is underperforming the Year 5 standard.

Interdisciplinary Opportunities

Three IDUs suggest themselves from the structure:

• Design + Science (Grade 9 Unit 2 sensors): The sensor-based campus prototype integrates naturally with the existing Nanyao River UNESCO-partnership data dashboard. Students could design a Nanyao sensor housing + deploy a data-collection run + present findings. Science provides the environmental context; Design provides the artifact.

• Design + Language & Literature (Grade 7 Unit 3 PSA): Scriptwriting and audience analysis live naturally in both subjects. A combined assessment could cover MYP Design C/D and MYP Language & Literature criteria on speaking / writing for audience.

• Design + Individuals & Societies (Grade 9 Unit 3 data viz): A global issue visualized — poverty, migration, climate — pulls directly on I&S source analysis skills while Design teaches the visual craft.

Contingency Plans

• If a tool stops working in China: The software stack table lists fallbacks for every category. Penpot for Figma, Scratch local for Scratch online, local Python install for repl.it, etc. No unit depends on a single cloud-hosted tool.

• If budget is cut to 1,000 RMB/year: Delay hardware introduction to Grade 9. Use Tinkercad Circuits simulator (browser-based) instead of real Arduinos for Grade 8. Curriculum still runs — physical computing arrives one year later than ideal but is not lost.

• If budget is doubled: First purchase is a shared 3D printer (~2,000 RMB for an entry model like a Creality Ender clone) — opens up the Grade 7 Tinkercad unit to real printing. Second is a set of decent USB microphones for the Grade 7 PSA unit. Third is a proper camera.

• Class sizes much larger than 15: Hardware kit sizes in Part 5 scale linearly. A class of 25 roughly means multiply the Year 2 hardware budget by 1.7 — the compound lab budget over 5 years still absorbs this within the 15,000 RMB envelope.

• If AI tool access changes in China: The AI strategy is built on Chinese AI models as the default precisely to insulate against this. If a specific model becomes unavailable, alternatives among DeepSeek, Kimi, Doubao, and Wenxin cover the same needs. If all LLM access is somehow restricted, units still function — AI contributions simply reduce to zero for that period, and the AI Use Log records this. The curriculum’s core skills are not dependent on AI availability, they are enhanced by it.

• If parents push for more or less AI: The AI Use Log is the answer in both directions. It demonstrates to pro-AI parents that students are using AI intelligently and constantly; it demonstrates to anti-AI parents that students are using AI critically and with documentation rather than uncritically. The same artifact satisfies both audiences because it surfaces the actual behavior.