Am I unprepared for TOK?

[chybug]

Up until my sophomore year of high school, my school offered eight periods, however, due to budget cuts, we switched to a seven period day. As a result, TOK was no longer an official "class" offered. Instead, we have TOK one day each week during lunch (which is about thirty minutes long) and we have a "TOK Release Day" once per quarter where all of the IB diploma students meet and talk about TOK-related things.

Not only am I concerned that we barely meet, we have a... not-so-great teacher. She's an awesome person, but we often get off topic. She usually has us watch a youtube video on a current event and we attempt to discuss it, and everything starts off okay, but we end up talking about unrelated things.

We rarely have homework, we've never done any practice writing (I'll be honest, I barely knew we had to write for TOK until I joined this website)... and I don't even know the ways of knowing or areas of knowledge.

Seeing people do projects and write essays makes me feel like we're accomplishing nothing! The year twos at my school say not to worry and that TOK is pretty easy to B.S., but I'm not so sure. Any feedback?

[emantse]

Firstly, I'd like to say, relax a bit.

Our school does not run TOK as an official class either, however it ran TOK with English, so we had TOK maybe 2/7 of the time (just a very rough approximation), depending on just the scheduled events. However TOK took up a lot more time during year 2 going towards the essay and presentation as we had time to discuss it and prepare in class. Edit: We also didn't have (much) homework, just a few handouts.

However I wouldn't say that it's easy (in my humble opinion), unless of course you're already familiar with it (LOL who would be) or a good writer, but essentially you only need to be concerned about the TOK essay (66% of TOK mark) and the TOK presentation (33% of TOK mark). I wouldn't say it's too difficult either.

I honestly think that it's okay that your teacher talks about unrelated things, we did that a lot, but hopefully it helped shape your way of thinking to ponder deeper on knowledge-based questions.

However, I am concerned about the fact that you don't know the areas of knowledge (AOKs) or ways of knowing (WOKs). Perhaps you can ask your year two classmates when (or if, yikes) they ever discussed the AOKs or WOKs and how the TOK sessions were structured leading up to the assessments. I'm also concerned that it's only 30 minutes, but then again, insight on how the teachers prepared for the assessments would be good to hear from the year twos. It definitely helps to have classes set aside to work on the assessments, to discuss the basics of TOK and ask questions about TOK with the teacher.

So advice for you, I guess you can't do much about the class time, but make the most of the class time now but don't stress too much about it. Ask the year twos about their year two TOK class structure and preparations. And next year, definitely make sure you use your time super wisely, ask questions, if needed, definitely research about TOK online in year two if you ever lack familiarity with a certain AOK or WOK. Although TOK and the EE only combine for a maximum of 3, it's nice to have that "+3" and it's not too difficult to get that A or B in TOK, the TOK essay mark bands are quite generous

Edited February 25, 2014 by emantse

[chybug]

Thanks for the feedback! I didn't even realize that TOK was taken seriously in other schools until recently, however, I'm glad I discovered this sooner rather than later! I'll definitely do more research online and most likely do some extra studying next year.

[twilight]

I had no homework for TOK ever. I had TOK lessons 3 times a week, consisting of 2 one hour sessions and a 40 minute session. 1 of the 1 hour session was used to cover content, like the different AOK and WOK. The rest of the 2 sessions we accomplished nothing. I don't even remember what I did in those sessions in IB year 1. In IB year 2, I had discussions during my TOK classes, but well discussions were just discussions, I don't think they helped me for the course itself. I only wrote 1 essay before writing the TOK essay that is to be graded, and I did not even get feedback for that 1 essay. And I only did 1 presentation before my real presentation. So don't worry about it. Just make sure you know what is required by the syllabus. You can read the textbook, though I never read it, but that was because content was disseminated to me. You can also read TOK subject reports. You really gain a lot of insight as to what the examiner is looking for from the report.

[khimberleigh]

I had ToK once a week too (about 50 minutes). In first year, our teacher gave us a few introduction classes then we pretty much had free time to 'work on our presentations' for the rest of the year. Although most people just did their homework for other classes. Nonetheless, I managed to get an A on my ToK presentation using mostly tips from this site and a very small amount of help from a ToK textbook. In second year, my ToK teacher was also my English teacher so for half the year we just used the class as an extra period of English. We only did about 1-2 months of 'ToK' and most of it wasn't actual lessons but just working on our essays and getting feedback. I managed a B for my essay and a B overall for ToK, some people in my class got As for ToK. So as long as you check out the info on this site, have a brief read of a textbook, look at some example essays and get feedback for your work from your teacher you'll still be able to score well despite having very little class time. Also read the examiner's reports! The hardest part of ToK is actually understanding what on earth ToK is. The examiner's reports will tell you what they want from you.