Adding Units & Lesson Experiences via Quick Add
Clicking the top-right Quick Add (+) icon from any page allows you to create a new unit, assessment task, or upload resources into an existing unit without having to navigate to a class.
Adding Units into your Class
Under the Classes menu, select your class. Next, select the Tasks & Units tile. To add a new unit, click Add Unit on the right.
Create Unit Planner
The Add Unit Planner page is where you will create your unit. Create a title for your unit and fill in the fields with the units' basic information. Required fields will be marked with a *. Click Create Unit and Add Resources once you are done. This will create the unit. You will be able to add more details in the sections below.
Unit Navigation Overview
Once you have entered the units' basic information, you will see the complete in-line unit template.
Note: While ManageBac+ provides default templates for the MYP units, your school can customize this via Settings. This tutorial uses the basic ManageBac+ template as a framework.
Quick Navigation Buttons
At-a-Glance: Provides a read-only unit summary view. This represents what a Student or Parent sees when accessing the unit. Upload a cover image to enhance visibility.
The cover image can be resized and moved to fit the At-a-Glance image field.
Planner: An in-line edit mode allowing you to browse the full unit while editing.
Stream & Resources: Group Tasks, Learning Experiences & Resources in a stream. Add Lesson Plans or identify Learning Support.
Assessments: Add Tasks and assessment coverage details
Collaborative Planning
Real-time Editing: Tap Edit Section on any unit section to edit your unit plan. See edits from colleagues reflected in real-time without having to refresh the planner. Either press Save Changes to save your edits or press Discard Changes to undo unwanted edits.
Online Presence: See if your colleagues are on ManageBac+ and if they are editing a unit section. The current editors' thumbnail will appear next to the sections' header. Your own thumbnail is circled in orange. A green circle on an author's thumbnail will mark if they are currently online.
Collaboration: Multiple teachers can plan collaboratively. The units' authors and editors will appear under the Authors section, with their names also appearing on the section in the planner. The “Edit Lock” feature prevents accidental overwriting, as other authors are blocked from making changes when someone is actively editing the unit section.
Section Navigational Tips
Unit Outline: A menu streamlining navigation, providing a snapshot of overall progress, and quick links to navigate throughout the planner. You can show or hide the menu by pressing the Unit Outline icon.
Ongoing Reflections: Click the speech bubble icon to open the right-hand side Reflection section. @Mention colleagues to bring them into the conversation and leave reflections throughout the unit.
User Mentions: Teachers can @Mention other teachers and admins within unit reflections. This includes unit reflections for all unit components on the Unit Planner (Curriculum, Connections, ATL Skills, etc).
Share & Star: Click the 3 dots icon in any section of the planner to open a drop-down menu with the options to share a direct link to your colleagues, or star a section to highlight it.
Guidance: While editing each section, click on the "?" icon to view the IB MYP From Principles into Practice and/or Standards & Practices notes.
View other Units: Click the unit's name to quickly navigate to other units in the class to cross-reference your planning.
Editing a Unit Plan
Editing a unit is managed under the Planner tab.
- On the right-hand side, you can generate a PDF planner by clicking on Export to PDF.
- View the last time the unit was edited
- Add unit authors to collaboratively build the unit.
- Note: Any teacher who is a teacher in a class of the same subject and year level as the unit will appear as an option in the Add Author list. Teachers can also add themselves as an author directly.
The planning process for MYP Units has been adjusted to reflect the 4 main sections of the Unit Outline.
- PLAN
- INQUIRY: ESTABLISHING THE PURPOSE OF THE UNIT
- ACTION: TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH INQUIRY
- REFLECTION: CONSIDERING THE PLANNING, PROCESS AND IMPACT OF THE INQUIRY
These sections can be accessed in any order and edited as needed. In addition, the tabs for Stream & Resources and Assessment also allow for additional content that is relevant to the unit to be added.
PLAN
In the PLAN section, you can:
- Edit the unit's basic information, such as the title, the unit template (if multiple available),
- Set the Unit start week and duration.
- Share the unit with other grades.
- You can also choose to make the unit an Interdisciplinary Unit, which allows you to share it with other subjects by selecting additional subjects.
- Save it as a draft, or archive the unit.
Please note that the original unit subject is always set to the subject of the class it was created in.
Please also note that you cannot remove a unit's grade level if you are editing from within a class of that particular grade level. If your unit is shared with multiple grades, go to a class of a different grade level to edit the unit and remove the undesired grade.
Click Save Changes to lock in any changes and move to the next section.
INQUIRY: ESTABLISHING THE PURPOSE OF THE UNIT
The Inquiry: Establishing the Purpose of the Unit section now covers a multitude of unit planner tabs from previous MYP unit plan iterations in ManageBac+. We start the section with a list of all Key Concepts and Related Concepts to be selected.
After that are the Conceptual Understandings and Global Context, as well as their Explorations. This is then followed by the Inquiry Questions and Statement of Inquiry.
Because the new Planner is now one continuing document, changes can be made to different sections rather than having to navigate from tab to tab.
MYP subject-specific information can be found and selected in the Curriculum section of the planner.
The different components to see on the Unit Outline can be enabled or disabled for the selected Unit template in Settings. This will allow schools to customise their MYP Unit Planner layout to their needs.
ACTION: TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH INQUIRY
Following the unit Planner further into the next section will show two separate sub-sections:
Assessment and Learning Experiences.
Any information added to the Assessment sub-section of the ACTION: TEACHING AND LEARNING THROUGH INQUIRY section of the Planner will be automatically reflected in the Assessment tab from the top navigation bar.
This reduces the need for teachers to add the same Assessment information in different places of the unit plan.
Standards and Benchmarks
School administrators may add their own standards and benchmarks into ManageBac+, which will then be available for teachers to select from within the unit plan templates. To select standards in a unit, navigate to Curriculum > Standards > Click Edit Section to select the available standards for the unit.
- Click on Add Standards
- Filter for the desired standards using the Standards Set, Subject, and Grade drop downs.
- Select the desired standards. The green standards represent standards that are already selected in the unit.
- Click Add Standards to add the standards to the unit or Add & Continue to add the standards and then select more standards
If you do not see the standards you want to use within the Add Standards process, it may mean your school administrators have not yet enabled them as an option. Please contact an administrator, who will need to follow our Enabling Standards process here.
REFLECTION: CONSIDERING THE PLANNING, PROCESS AND IMPACT OF THE INQUIRY
The REFLECTION: CONSIDERING THE PLANNING, PROCESS AND IMPACT OF THE INQUIRY section of the planner provides an area where teachers can collaboratively reflect on the unit and teaching process prior, during and after the unit was completed. This section is organised by academic year so that teachers can revisit last year's reflections at the beginning of the next/new academic year.
Stream & Resources
Stream View
- Organise your tasks and resources into a visual layout in the Stream by dragging and dropping
- Items in the Stream are automatically shared for Students & Parents to view.
Resources
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Create new resources including:
- Website and Video links
- Upload or Link Files
- Upload Photos
- Write a journal Note
- Uploads from Google Drive
- Use the Resources list to organise unit resources into Plans. Filter for resources by type and click the arrow button for any resource to add it to the Stream of the unit in the selected Plan (if any created).
Note: There is no limit to the number of resources added to your ManageBac+ account, however, each individual file must be under 500MB.
Importing from ResourcesBank
Via Stream and Resources, Import Resources allows you to add unit streams and lesson experiences from other classes in your school where the unit also appears or from across all ManageBac+ schools through the Global ResourceBank (please note that the Global ResourceBank is currently in a submission phase only).
1. Select whether to import resources from your school or the Global ResourceBank.
2. Select the Unit where the Stream and Lesson Experiences need to be imported from.
3. Select which class the Lesson Experience is created in.
4. Select which Lesson Experiences to import and which Resources to include in the stream.
5. Proceed with Import or click Proceed and Import Next if you want to add additional Lesson Experiences to this unit.
This will add these resources to your unit and resources section.
Lesson Experiences
- Create Lesson Experiences via Lesson Experience tile at the top of the Stream & Resources tab
- Enter the Title, Description, and Duration of the experience.
- Resources in the stream can be dragged into a particular Lesson Plan. This allows you to organise the stream across Weeks, Topics or even Learning Support individualised learning.
Assessments
Assessment & Resources
- If you are only looking to create tasks and add assessment coverage, quickly reference this under the Assessments tab at the top of the unit plan
Generating a PDF Planner
Under the Planner tab, click Export to PDF on the right-hand side. You can select from the drop-down menu whether to export the planner with or without all reflections to a PDF file.
- As a form of best practice, it is recommended to download planners as PDFs once a term or academic year, so you have a local copy on file
Planners can also be bulk generated via Insights > Curriculum > Whole-School Curriculum > IB Middle Years > Bulk Generate PDF Planners.
Webinar
The following webinar walks through using ManageBac+ to manage Curriculum Planning in the Middle Years Programme. Topics covered include admin set-up through Settings, editing unit plan layout, requesting Standards Imports, and the Unit planning processes for teachers and coordinators.
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