At IGBIS, Students Burnish Skills With Membean

IGB International—Malaysia's only school to deliver the full continuum of International Baccalaureate programmes— implemented the IB curriculum because it aligns with their goal of developing inquisitive, informed, and compassionate graduates. Students benefit immensely from the nurture, inclusivity, and challenge IGBIS fosters through quality courses, highly trained staff and world-class facilities.

Despite the benefits of the IGBIS approach, scholars grapple with the challenges of such rigorous coursework. With a wide range in backgrounds—as well as an array of languages, interests, and aptitudes — IGBIS students need practical, engaging tools to enhance their skills. Programme Coordinators Maria Morgan and Rosalinda Lima had prior experience with Membean and recognized its potential to increase literary skills for IGB students. With this goal in mind, they introduced Membean with an initial focus in the Middle Years Programme.

Flavia Godja, who currently uses Membean with Middle Years Progamme students, is pleased by how Membean complements IB. At times, Flavia's students display the typical reluctance of middle-grade kids. However, her responsive approach and Membean's ease of use yield appreciable results.

“Membean's context sentences and question types are a fantastic way to teach reading comprehension because they provide scaffolding to understand word meaning. I just have to remind my students to slow down and read carefully!”

By pairing Membean with simple, organic feedback, Flavia is able to cultivate the skills students require in all facets of their IB experience.

“Membean is really useful to improve reading comprehension and develop a complex vocabulary. Kids who may not always score well in language acquisition see gains and are proud. They learn to engage with text and recognize context cues.”

Though teachers at IGBIS have only recently begun using Membean, they're excited to enhance student engagement by leveraging programme metrics and friendly competition. Given IB's promotion of scholastic independence, Rosalinda particularly appreciates opportunities Membean provides for self-directed learning. Students can reflect on their learning style to determine preferred pathways. They may choose to focus on roots, context clues, word association, or engaging images to enhance understanding.

“One of the things I like most about Membean is its multi-modality. This aligns with the IB philosophy and its self-reflection processes by providing students a choice based on their maturity and how they work best.”

As students and teachers at IGBIS have identified more benefits to using Membean, conversations regarding expansion are underway. IGBIS plans to incorporate Membean into the DP programme soon, and Maria is confident they will do so to best effect with creative collaboration and incisive feedback from Membean's support specialists. Of her experience so far, she mentions that “the level of support we get from Membean is outstanding. We're really, really pleased.”