The May 2018 finals are slowly approaching, so I thought that I would make a list of some tips for revising history!
Understand the terms You have to know what e.g communism and capitalism mean, or what the differences between a one-party state and an authoritarian state are, to get a true understanding of the historical events. If you don’t know what they mean, there is no way you can fully understand what is happening, as many of the conflicts between countries were caused by ideological differences (e.g basically the whole Cold War)
Watch youtube videos “Ib history + *historical event*” has become my favourite youtube search! You can find so many videos that explain historical events in a very simple way. Videos are a great way to revise something really quickly, and you get a visual idea of the events!
Watch documentaries Youtube videos explain things in a very simple way, but watching documentaries helps you get all of those details that will give you the extra points in the exams! And in most cases, history documentaries are suuuper interesting, so it doesn’t even matter that you just spent 45 minutes watching a video instead of reading a book.
"Mindmap wallpaper” This means that everytime you make a mindmap, you stick it on your wall. You should see what my wall looks like right now, it’s just covered with mindmaps from Imperial Russia to the end of the Cold War. Mindmaps in general are a really good way of putting everything together (and visualising things), and if you remember something that you didn’t add before, you can add it on the map really easily. And when the mindmaps are on your wall, you see them all the time and won’t lose your notes.
Practice, practice, practice “IB history past papers” -google search is your best friend! Read through the questions on the past papers, and think how you would answer all of them. You don’t have to write full answers for all of them, but having an idea how you would answer something is really helpful. The most common questions (at least for European history) are related to the rise of a leader, their economic and domestic policies and what the impact of *insert an event* had on *insert a country*
