Hey guys! Those of you who follow me know I’m a senior in the IB program at school. Over break I was reflecting on all the things I’ve learned over my years in IB classes that help me succeed and I decided to share these tips with you guys to help out any fellow IB students.
CLASSES IN GENERAL
- Make a summarized study guide after each unit. This will come in handy for practice IB tests and the actual IB exam at the end of senior year. You will have a couple pages per unit to study instead of combing through all your notes from 2 years of curriculum. Trust me it’ll make studying easier
- For in class essays bring your own watch so you don’t have to keep looking at the clock
- Give yourself 10-15 minutes to outline your response to an in class essay before jumping in. This helps organize your thoughts and the essay is written in a way where the grader can understand your ideas much easier
- For classes like English and foreign languages participate in class. This is the best way to practice your speaking skills for the exam. The people who participate in class almost always do better than those who don’t.
- Always do practice problems from the IB textbooks (especially math) because there will be extremely similar questions on your test and the IB exam
- For history and science classes create a list of essential terms and define them for yourself. These will help you recall info during a test. (In my school our history department would decide our essential terms and we would find the date definitions context and significance of these terms. This really helps for essays)
- Read and reread the material for your English class. Once for the general plot and another time for actual analysis. It’s too hard to do both at once
- For paper 2’s in English memorize a few scenes from each novel that you deem important and then integrate those into your essay. There is no way you’re going to remember every scene in two entire novels. (While you’re at it, memorize a few key quotes form each novel it will show you have a deeper understanding of the texts and boost your score)
- Make sure you choose an Extended Essay topic that you enjoy. You’re never going to want to write 3,000 plus words on a subject that you have no interest in. There are some subjects that seem easier to write on but it will be just as hard to write on those subjects if you don’t pick a topic you’re passionate about
- Don’t pick an Extended Essay Topic that you haven’t taken as an IB class. Chances are you won’t know how to write a formal paper in this subject and this can lose you major points.
- DO NOT write the entire thing in one day. It’s not possible and you will end up with a terrible grade.
- Talk to your supervisor multiple times. Email them over the summer while you work on it or even skype them. It’s their job you’re not bothering them. They are there to help you.
- Don’t pick a supervisor who has never taught an IB class before. They will not know how to help you write at an IB level and in the way that IB wants you to structure an EE.
TOK (THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE)
- If you take TOK after school always bring extra food or set up a system with your class to bring food because I guarantee you will be hungry if you stay after for the extra hour and a half
- Participate!!! You can’t get graded if you don’t talk in a seminar based class like TOK. It doesn’t matter what you say, just talk. I promise you that it will make a difference and you will start to improve if you keep doing it .
- Don’t worry, everyone is just as lost as you are. TOK is extremely confusing, complicated, and mind boggling. It’s philosophy, it’s supposed to be like that. Enjoy it because there’s not
other class that will make you question your entire existence.
IA’s (INTERNAL ASSESSMENTS)
- Make sure you buy/borrow the sources early because they might not come in time if you don’t
- When doing research, read the abstract first (fully don’t skim). T his will give you a good idea as to what the source is arguing and you can decide if it’ll be beneficial to you before trying to skim through 200 plus pages of work
- Don’t try and write it all in one day you need to do an adequate amount of research to get a good grade and it will be obvious to your teacher if you haven’t done enough research
- Your teachers often times have a lot of sources you can use for your paper. Ask them what they have on your topic before you go out to buy your own sources
So that’s all the tips I’ve accumulated so far! I hope this helps any current and future IB students. Good luck!!
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