How does your school apply IB?

[robertomx]

So, I was just wondering... how does your school deal with IB? Do they make it tougher? Or do they keep it normal? Or make it easier? For example, do they set a minimum of CAS hours greater than 150 or limit the amount of hours you can spend in a single activity? Do they grade you, say, ''generously'', and then you get disappointed when you get your actual grade? Are your teachers actually qualified for IB? Are they well aware of what IB asks for? Are they able to answer ALL your doubts regarding the programme?

In my case:

- IBC: He knows everything, but he doesn't make sure that the teachers know everything unfortunately.

- CAS: the minimum is 150, and we can do anything for any time.

- ToK: ToK sucks at my school. The teacher knows nothing. Seriously.

- EE: there's two people: your actual 'tutor' and a teacher that sets the due dates. Overall, it's nicely handled.

- Spanish a1 HL: exams are easier than the actual ones, idk if my teacher is unaware that hl students don't get guiding questions and such, and that it would be way better to just use past papers. Oh and, everything we know about IB-requirements for this subject is because of our own 'research', because she doesn't explain anything. For example: we were unaware that there are 3 options for the second world lit and we would probably be unaware of that absence of guiding questions in ib papers if we had relied on her fully.

- English a2 HL: we didn't even know how papers looked like... again, if it weren't for that research... she didn't even tell us anything about the criteria used to evaluate the IAs.

- History HL: actually, we know everything of the ib-related stuff in that subject thanks to the teacher. He's the only one that has fully answered every single question regarding anything related to the subject itself and to the evaluation, he's the only one to apply ib-style exams, he's the only one that teaches ib-style.

- Chemistry SL: The only thing the teacher let us know was the IA criteria. We never do anything ib-related,apart from IAs. So, we didn't know how a Chemistry paper 1,2 or 3 looks like.

- Mathematics SL: We used to have our IBC as a teacher and, since he knows everything, we knew everything about the maths evaluation. But now we were assigned to a new teacher, and he really really really doesn't know how to teach IB maths. So... we're screwed. Also, we've done 3 IAs...but none of those count,, because the teacher assigned us tasks from past evaluations.

- Visual Arts SL: meh. all we do there is sit and work. and talk. and listen music. the teacher just wanders around the classroom and kinda supervises that you get some progress done.

So practically, it's somewhat tougher than the actual programme, since nobody, except for the IBC -and he's a lot of times not in the campus-, knows what IB requires exactly, and hence we were never sure of what to do before we dedicated ourselves to investigate on our own.

How is it with you?

[__inthemaking]

I would say we do everything the program requires, except my school is tougher in terms of predicting your IB grades.

The IBC and teachers use "backwards translation"..so basically in Feb/March, when they have to send in predicteds, they look at our school marks. Say I got a 96% in biology SL, then they predict me a level 7. If I had gotten an 88% in bio SL, then I would be predicted a 5, etc. Same thing in english A1 HL, I got a 91% in english, so I'm predicted a 6 in it.

All of our predicteds are like that, but the thing is, for most subjects, 80-100% is a 7, so we tend to have lower predicted grades, which makes it harder to get into university..you have to do really well in IB in order to get high predicteds.

So yeah, my teachers don't grade generously at all, in fact they lowball ALL of our marks so that we won't get our hopes up if we were predicted 6 and then get a 4. Instead, they just predict the 4 so we'll be joyous when we get a 6.

We only had to do 150 hours for CAS minimum but everyone ended up with more. All of the teachers are very qualified except for the two economics HL teachers..it's the first year we had econ HL at my school and both of them had no idea what they were doing..I really think I failed the exam because I was so unprepared for it.

[homeroom]

In terms of CAS hours, my school is a bit hard: let's say you did 40 hours in one area of community service, in order to receive all the 40 hours, you have to do a minimum of 10 hours in another area of community service.

Marks wise? Our teachers don't predict lower or higher, they try to give you what you will get on your final exam (except for French...all the French teachers give you a higher mark!). All the IB teachers at our school are pretty well qualified, at least 7 years of IB (mind you, I've heard from my friends that the physics HL and SL teacher can not teach, and the highest predicted grade was a 6 - he only gave one 6!). I'd say my teachers prepared me well for the exams - they forced us to do tons of old IB exams, and they gave us assignments that were about the same difficulty level.

Edited June 11, 2008 by homeroom

[Lan]

i thought the requirements for Ib is all the same across the globe, isn't that so?

[Agneisse]

My school is pretty lax about CAS and dumbs down some classes (Business, ES, Math Studies) to boost their Diploma Candidate numbers.

[robertomx]

i thought the requirements for Ib is all the same across the globe, isn't that so?

well.... not exactly

it is true that the requirements for ib are the same, but some schools apply either tougher or easier rules (obviously if they're easier its worse for candidates). For example, the minimum for CAS hours for any ib student is 150, but i know people in schools that require students to do at least 250 or so. So the actual thing is that schools set their own requirements for their ib students, and as long as they meet the minimum requirements for the programme, the ib's okay with it.

[yodude888]

Our school actually invented the IB... (my mom's teacher founded it!)

Therefore, it's a pretty good IB school (at least I think it is, don't really have a point of comparison)

[Bandev]

My IBC was so intensely into everything to do with IB that he had some of the other IB kids brainwashed by the time IB2 started.

My school was quite slack though with CAS.

TOK was intense and well managed, my teacher is the smartest person I have met, and I loved it.

EE were well managed (eg. you had to have written a certain amount of words by a certian date), but boy did everybody loathe their EEs.

English my teacher knew it all.

Spanish ai, my teacher was pretty tough marker which was annoying because the other teacher was an easy marker. But she is a good teacher.

Geo, my teacher was fired 3 days before the final exams.

Bio awesome teacher, an examiner so he knew what he was doing, just a really nice guy too.

Chem knew what was going on, an easy marker but he knew it, and warned us.

Maths knew what was going on, a fair marker, but crappy teacher.

So all in all I think my school was a tad on the easy side.

[Gwib]

Over here, it's:

---Misc---

- CAS - Minimum 150, but we only need 140 if our folder is nicely presented

- ToK - Terrible. Brings boring to a new level. If we did some INTERESTING READING it would be excellent, but we stick to a strict syllabus and follow it to the letter, exactly what ToK is about -cough-

- EE - Alright, but we only get a tutor, and my tutor is a newbie. I'm his first EE! I've had to get help elsewhere since he's having teething problems.

---Subjects---

- Biology HL - Brilliant, no complaints but the teacher is a tad monotonous

- English HL (A1) - Very interesting, but we havn't even started discussing WL and I'm worried about that

- History HL - Brilliant, teacher is great

- Chemistry SL - Hard, and the teacher is quite blunt sometimes, but alright

- Mathematics SL - Terrible. No IA done and teacher is failing us. In our mocks, around 70% of the class got under a 4

- French SL (B) - Don't know yet, first year taking French B

So my highers are excellent, but my standards need higher standards (pun indended)

[cereja]

At my school they just recently changed the CAS requirements. Before, you could only do up to 20 hours for the same activity. Now you can do whatever, as long as you have more than 1 activity.

As far as classes go...

English HL - we just read and discuss books... nothing more. We did both our world lit papers this year and we'll revise them next year.

Comp Sci HL - the first year was pretty easy

Spanish SL - hated the teacher. Even though he was a native speaker, he knew nothing about grammar or the IB requirements. Didn't prepare me at all for the exam. Wasn't anywhere near challenging - good for me to catch up with other hw.

Physics SL - we don't have HL in our school for physics, but the teacher's pretty good. He overstressed us about the exam. Very tough when it comes to grades.

[nimarta]

In our school, IB students are cream of the crops so to speak. We are given extra importance but work load and expectations are extremely high and only a handfull are allowed to do the IB

[hamani]

In my school I do not feel that we are overly stressed by all of the teachers. Some are pretty tough while some others aren't. Like our English A1/A2 and Arabic A1/A2/B/Ab initio are the coolest ever. While the maths department are really strict.

[cranberry_isle]

our school is much easier.

Because in the US it doesn't matter what your IB grade is when it comes to getting accepted to college... the focus is all on your class grade. (based on points for everyday homework, quizzes and chapter tests) only 70 percent of last year's seniors earned the diploma. there are only a few sevens each year, spread throughout the subjects. A lot of the kids just take IB because their transcript will say they did, helping their college applications, but do the EE only enough for the completion grade from the English teacher, and worry about the IA's just enough to get a decent score from their teacher, helping the grade that the college WILL see.

A few years ago, our valedictorian slept through the IB tests because he had already gotten accepted to uni based on his class grades.