5 Back-to-School Essentials for IB Students
Our evidence-backed, back-to-school essentials list, from 10 years of helping students achieve top scores
Vero is Head of IB Languages at RV. She holds an Educational Bachelor's degree in Secondary Education. She has 25+ years of teaching experience in international schools in Argentina and Belgium, is an IB Language and Literature examiner, and is an IB workshop leader.
This is it. The first week of your DP program has passed, and you are trying to retain the massive amounts of information your teachers are giving you. You can visualize the wave coming at you … or maybe not.
My favorite metaphor for these first weeks is a manual car, with a stick shift. Some students start slow and take a long time to gain speed … your teacher starts relatively slow but switches gears much faster than you’re ready for, and when you realize it, they are going 150 km/h on the highway and you are at 40 on a small avenue. This blog post is meant to help you be ready for the switch!
1. Fix confusing topics as soon as possible
At school, you go in and out of classes, and the new information piles up. You might have 4 or 5 different classes in a day. Sometimes you do not have time to really take in what the teacher has said, and you leave the Psych class with doubts, but now you have English. The switch from one class to the other puts a pin on the doubt. Do not wait until the next class to try and get the topic; do not add it to your “mental note” of things you need to check later. Go home, go over your notes, re-read the book chapter, and try to explain it to yourself (you can use your phone and record yourself)
Take the time to fix the doubt before it becomes a threat.
2. Have a system
Create one system that works to keep track of your material and questions.
Some options are color-coded Post-it notes, side notes in your notebooks, or a document with checkmarks. My advice is to make this visible. If you have a great document but only open it once a week, it is not useful or effective. If you use sticky notes in bright colors that stick out of your notebook or book, you will see them all the time. Removing a sticky note, or checking an item from your list will release dopamine and make you feel accomplished, giving your brain a reward signal.
Make sure you do some every day.
3. Study smarter, not harder (well, study smarter and harder)
Work on meaningful retrieval of information. Once you have done your practice questions, you have re-read, or made your charts, close everything, and say out loud what you remember. Speaking and listening engage different parts of your brain; the more active your brain is, the better your memory will work. Want to spice it up? Walk around too! It is harder to zone out if you are moving.
Revise every subject (TOK, CAS, EE too!) every single week. Just showing up in class is not enough. Dedicating time to a subject over time improves long-term memory storage and will become a habit. You want to have fresh access to knowledge, and if you do not touch your notes for a week, pouff! Something new will “push” the content further and further into the abyss.
Finally… what do you do when your teacher gives you back assessed material?
- Shove it into my backpack and never look back
- Go home and read the comments in detail
- Check my mistakes and correct them
I was a teacher long enough to know what you answered and what you really do!
Although reading your teachers’ comments is important, the most important step is to look at your mistakes and try to understand what went wrong. If your error is consistent (you always miss a step in a calculation, you forget to support your essays with evidence), make a note and ask your teachers to help you overcome the hurdle.
4. Follow the process
Most of your assignments rely on a process to be completed. There are steps to follow, and your teacher usually breaks down the tasks into smaller, bite-sized steps. Not completing the steps will result in missed opportunities for personal revision and teacher feedback.
Seeking early guidance and correcting course as you go will avoid bigger mistakes. If your bio experiment is flawed and you do not identify the issues at the very beginning, your IA might be doomed from the get-go.
5. Your teacher is your ally
Your teacher is the expert. Ask questions, seek clarification, and do more for the classes you are struggling with. Teachers want students who are engaged and we do want to help you! Reach out to your teachers and ask for help.