Score the top marks on your ToK Essay

The Top Ten Theory of Knowledge Essay Tips

Posted in: Courses, Education, Life- Mar 02, 2012 2 Comments

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 [...]

How to Meet All of the Theory of Knowledge Essay Requirements

Posted in: Life- Mar 02, 2012 1 Comment

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 [...]

How to Structure a Theory of Knowledge Essay

Posted in: Education, Life- Nov 13, 2011 21 Comments

The following structure is a foolproof, step-by-step method you can use on any ToK essay to get very high marks. It really works. Before you can begin your real/final essay, you’ll need to take the title (something like: “What is it about mathematics that makes it convincing?” and come up with a KI that turns [...]

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Once again, thank you so much to the strangers around the world who have emailed me to say thanks. Here are a few of the things you fine people have said recently:

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Meeting The Economics IA Rubric Requirements

On this, the third of three posts to make sure you score full marks on your Economics Internal Assessments, I want to give you a detailed checklist you can use to check your own work. I have included what the IB says they expect for full marks, and translated that into actionable steps.

How to Structure an Economics IA

This post will go through what you should write in your Economics IA, with step-by-step instructions and with word counts for each section. What you need to know before you write: 1) Avoid writing anything that isn’t going to earn you marks. You’re going to need all the words you can get for your analysis [...]

How to Write the Economics Internal Assessment (Getting Started)

The next 3 posts will provide you with a bullet-proof system for scoring full marks on your Economics Internal Assessments, following the new 2013 syllabus. The IA is a brilliant opportunity to put some marks in the bank and make that 6 or 7 in the course much easier to achieve. This first article will [...]

The Theory of the Firm Rappers

Theory of the firm (ToF) is hard. Well, it can be. (Hey, I just noticed ToF=tough. That can’t be a coincidence). The first year I taught IB Economics, my students really struggled with the diagrams and all of the memorization in this part of the course. But if there’s something I love it’s taking something [...]

How the Best Schools Teach

“Not everything that counts can be counted and not everything that can be counted counts” (Anonymous). This holiday I read two new books that have really challenged my thinking about how to equip children and teenagers for success. They are: Teach Your Children Well (by Madeline Levine, 2012) and How Children Succeed (by Paul Tough, 2012). [...]

How to Make Your Good Extended Essay Great

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know I’m all about finding systems and structures to make challenging things less challenging. Or, to put it more simply, I like to do things the easy way. To that end, I want to show you how to make a few tweaks to your average [...]

How to Change Your Habits in Three Simple Steps

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit” (Aristotle). A lot of what we do every day is habitual. Obviously, some of our habits are good and some aren’t, but they all work in the same way. Think of how powerful it would be if you did the [...]

Resources

The site is getting over 200,000 views a year now! That triples the number of readers I had just a year ago. To make it easier for all of you to use, I thought I should create a central resource page with all of the important stuff on it. If you’re looking for something really useful, it’s [...]

How to Structure Your Economics Essay

It’s important to use your time efficiently on economics exams. In the new (2013) syllabus, you only get 45 minutes per essay. And that’s not much time to do everything you need to do. It’s easy to waste time (i.e with introductions or descriptive writing) that earn you no marks at all. If you use [...]

How to Make a Good Theory of Knowledge Essay Great

The purpose of this article is to help you strengthen the logic and argument of your ToK essay. This is great for making final touches to your work and to help you spot some common mistakes. And it will, of course, pull your mark up. I’m just going to assume that you’re already using my [...]