I rec­om­mend that, before you start writ­ing your essay, you pre­pare an out­line. This will help you to clar­ify your ideas and keep you on track as you write. You can pre­pare your out­line by answer­ing the fol­low­ing ques­tions: My KI is… My short answer to the KI is… My first per­spec­tive on the KI is… […]

Here are my top tips for get­ting to top marks on your The­ory of Knowl­edge essay.  All ToK essays are cross-disciplinary; they are never just about one way of know­ing (per­cep­tion, lan­guage, rea­son, emo­tion) or one areas of knowl­edge (math­e­mat­ics, nat­ural sci­ences, human sci­ences, his­tory, ethics, the arts). In gen­eral you’ll want to include at least […]

As you write (before and dur­ing your writ­ing, and then again when you edit) touch base with the grad­ing cri­te­ria. You can find that doc­u­ment here, a. Make sure you under­stand them and then make an effort to adjust your essay so they match the cri­te­ria. ToK expert Richard van de Lage­maat  has done a really […]

Essen­tials You can down­load the new eco­nom­ics course guide here: 2013 Guide. And for those still on the old guide that one is here 2003 Guide. The IB Course Com­pan­ion is writ­ten specif­i­cally for this course. It is very read­able and easy to under­stand. The Eco­nom­ics for the IB Diploma book is also very good. It’s perhaps […]

Here is a rough out­line of how you could struc­ture your TOK essay. Feel free to mod­ify this or take a com­pletely dif­fer­ent approach, as long as you are meet­ing the require­ments of the rubric. The fol­low­ing is the struc­ture I sug­gest you try for your TOK essays. In the end you will be bringing […]

Your col­lege admis­sion let­ter or essay is one of the most impor­tant doc­u­ments you will ever write. I want to show you how to write your­self to the head of the pack. To do that I need to first explain to you the con­cept of Stump Speeches, which are often used by politi­cians. Regard­less of the […]

Speak­ing with your par­ents is one of my favorite things about being a teacher. It’s great to sit down with some­one who knows you so well and can give me so much insight into your strengths as a stu­dent and as an indi­vid­ual. Parent-Teacher con­fer­ences almost always help your par­ents and me (and you if […]

Good note tak­ing is essen­tial for suc­cess as a stu­dent (in High School and Uni­ver­sity all the more). And yet most peo­ple don’t know how to do this well. With this in mind, here is some guid­ance for you, to help you take more effec­tive notes. You are respon­si­ble for every­thing we cover, whether it’s in […]

Get­ting started with your Extended Essay is a major chal­lenge. You have prob­a­bly never writ­ten any­thing this long before. So you might find your­self star­ing at a blank page, won­der­ing how exactly should you begin?I super­vise Eco­nom­ics and Busi­ness Extended Essays (EE’s) and my stu­dents gen­er­ally do very well. So I thought I’d share with […]

One otherwise-average Fri­day after­noon my friend Ari­anne called from the Safe­way two streets away. “Kelsey Gram­mer,” the famous actor from Frasier, “is com­ing!” I’m not sure if this gives you any sense of how small my home­town is? It’s small enough that some­one famous can be spot­ted well before they pass the “Wel­come to Fort […]