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January 11, 2012

Periodicity – Topic 3 and 13

Filed under: Chemistry — Tags: , , , , , , — David @ 10:42 am

This follows on from yesterdays posting – just a couple of ideas for labs work you could carry out when teaching this topic. I should stress that this is only a list of ideas / suggestions and that if you intend using any of these ideas to assess for IA, please ensure that they are given to the students in the appropriate format.

  • Discuss similarities and differences between elements in the same group – this lends itself to a lab on the reaction of some group 2 metals (calcium, magnesium (possibly) strontium and barium. You could look at how some of them react with water, the solubility of hydroxides and sulfates.

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November 9, 2011

ICT in IA – Use of computer models / simluations

Yesterdays posting dealt with the use of spreadsheets in IA to draw graphs. I provided you with a link to a document that you could use to teach students how to draw ‘good’ graphs. If you remember, this could also be linked in with the second ICT aim in IA, ie, the use of software fro graph plotting.

Today’s posting is really an extension of this.

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November 8, 2011

ICT in IA (2)

Filed under: Chemistry — Tags: , , , , , — David @ 9:57 am

How many times have you asked students to write up a lab report that needs a graph to be drawn and ended up marking one of those poorly drawn excel graphs?

You know the ones I mean, the graphs with no grid lines on the x axis and that silly comment box ‘series 1′! We have all been there I am sure.

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November 7, 2011

ICT in IA

Filed under: Chemistry — Tags: , , , , — David @ 3:03 pm

There are a number of good ICT exercises to be found on the OCC.

However, the following exercise has recently been brought to my attention and I think it is particularly good.

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October 20, 2011

HL internal assessment – some thoughts

Filed under: Business & Management — Tags: , — Paul Clark @ 3:53 pm

IB websites may not always be the easiest to navigate, but they are generally comprehensive in coverage even if you have to dig deep to find what you are looking for and then combine available information. I think internal assessment in Business and Management tends to fall into that ‘dig deep and check for additional information’ category.

Let’s examine where we should be looking for supporting material. Naturally we start with the programme guide. There are two essential pieces of reading from the printed guide; pages 48 to 54 on assessment details and 55 to 68 for the assessment criteria. It would be expected that all teachers and students would have a good working knowledge of the relevant HL and SL details from these sections – after all this is the most basic of information. We also have additional and essential information on the OCC that is not in the guide; for example full information on word counts. On that basis, it should be expected that supervisors of the IA access these additional materials and make their students aware of the requirements. The problem is that every session, it is apparent that students appear to unaware of even the guide information, let alone the additional information available on the OCC. Though a minority fall into this category; it is a surprisingly significant minority. Indeed, students from the same centres frequently make similar mistakes session after session, despite the feedback afforded by the moderators, examiner reports and through requesting moderator reports.

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October 16, 2011

Experiment-Resources.Com

The IA in IB Psychology is a challenging endeavor that requires a good understanding of research methodology as a starting point. The website Experiment-Resources.com provides a wealth of information of value to students. The site was set up by psychologists who had been struggling themselves to understand the complexities of the research process. Since then the site  has grown into a detailed and comprehensive resource for researchers. In particular it is good in providing the basics as well as information about such concepts as within and between subject designs, confounding variables and so on.

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October 11, 2011

Would you mind answering a few questions?

Filed under: Business & Management — Tags: , , , — Paul Clark @ 11:13 pm

The doorbell rings and the first parcel of internal assessment samples are delivered, even though the remnants of the extended essays still sit on the table. The samples inside the parcel represent hours of hard work put in by both students and their teachers. However, it is also the beginning of a process that highlights the effectiveness, or otherwise, of the preparation of the students for assessment.

Whether internal assessment, or extended essay, without doubt one constant will be market research. The quality of the final product is influenced greatly by the quality of the research; primary or secondary. Secondary research sets the context and places the firm within its market and primary research adds the specifics about the firm and its key stakeholders.

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September 26, 2011

Putting together a set of labs (practicals)

Filed under: Chemistry — Tags: , , , , , , , — David @ 7:28 am

So, as a new teacher to IB you are slowly getting your head around teaching topic 1, plus you have started dipping into internal assessment.

There are in fact a number of earlier postings in this blog relating to marking students lab work using the IA criteria – just search for IA or Design or DCP, etc.

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September 23, 2011

Lab skills

So, you have taught your classes everything they need to know about moles and molarities.

You have run over the IA criteria with them and have talked in depth about data presentation and errors. What next?

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September 13, 2011

Teaching Order

So, you, are a new teacher and need to teach IB for the first time.

What do you teach first? For many teachers (probably all teachers) you will beginning with one of three topics….

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