IB Art SL concern

[Furichi Abe]

I'm just wondering....

Is it normal to have just one year of IB Art? I heard that other IB schools have their Art for two years. In our school, we only have 1 year of IB Art while we had MYP Art in our sophomore year. I'm a junior and I'm already testing for IB for two of my classes (Math Studies II SL and Art SL, I know that having one year of Math Studies is normal because I'm in SL but I haven't heard anything of having just one year of Art). I'm done with all the work that I had to do except for my IWB but I'm still wondering why we had just one year of Art instead of two... is it because of the fact I'm in SL?

Edited April 7, 2014 by Furichi Abe

[Emmi]

My school did this as well. We only have SL visual arts, and it only lasts one year. Also, math studies is not meant to be one year, but two years. My school did this too. It's a really weird thing US schools sometimes do for some odd reason, considering how IB is meant to be a two-year program. I think it hurts students, but it's not my decision to make.

I think in my school we would have had a lot more people getting 6's and 7's if the course was a two-year course instead of one year. It kind of makes you have to rush through to get enough works and IWB pages to submit rather than learning to explore your theme and develop as an artist. I know for a fact I could have gotten higher than a 5 if I had more time to develop my theme, as my artworks in the later part of the year were much more complex/developed than those at the beginning/early middle, but I didn't have enough time to make anything new and had to submit what I had.

[Furichi Abe]

My school did this as well. We only have SL visual arts, and it only lasts one year. Also, math studies is not meant to be one year, but two years. My school did this too. It's a really weird thing US schools sometimes do for some odd reason, considering how IB is meant to be a two-year program. I think it hurts students, but it's not my decision to make.

I think in my school we would have had a lot more people getting 6's and 7's if the course was a two-year course instead of one year. It kind of makes you have to rush through to get enough works and IWB pages to submit rather than learning to explore your theme and develop as an artist. I know for a fact I could have gotten higher than a 5 if I had more time to develop my theme, as my artworks in the later part of the year were much more complex/developed than those at the beginning/early middle, but I didn't have enough time to make anything new and had to submit what I had.

My IWB is in an abysmal state, I barely have 70 pages and I need 20 pages to be submitted tomorrow and I'm still making more pages that are better than my other pages. I do agree about what you said about this hurting students. We didn't have enough time to do good research about our artists nor did we show any significant development.

Also, just wondering...again... did your school give you fixed IB classes? Because our school gives us fixed classes. We have no choice but to take all the classes that we have now. The only option they gave was either taking Math Studies I or II (MS I takes their exams in their senior year while MS II takes it in their junior year).

[Emmi]

Some were fixed for us, but we did have a little bit of choice. We all were required to take HL English A1 (equivalent to literature now) and HL History of Europe, regardless of your ability in the subject or your language ability. Just moved here from overseas with not that great English proficiency? HL English A1. Struggle to analyze literature? HL English A1.

The science options were HL biology, or SL or HL chemistry. You picked between that.

We had math studies, SL math, and HL math. You could only take HL math if you had taken every math class available prior to 11th grade, and you had to have A's in everything. The math teacher also had to recommend you for it. Otherwise you went to SL or math studies, no exceptions.

Our elective options were SL psychology, SL and HL music, SL visual arts, and theater but I'm not sure at what level. We could pick one of those if we didn't want to take a second science. We also did ab initio/SL/HL French, ab initio/SL/HL Spanish, and SL/HL Latin which you could choose based on how many years you had taken the language and how proficient you felt in it.

My school was really geared towards someone who wanted to go into a humanities or liberal arts field, and not really so much sciency or engineering-type stuff.

[Thrashmaster]

My US school doesn't have one year classes of any kind. Art SL, Art HL, and math studies since it was mentioned, are all two years along with everything else. We even split ToK so you do one semester Junior year and one semester Senior year (I have no idea actually if this is common or not. My guess is that that is not the way it usually is).

So, to answer your question: SL art kids (such as myself) can have a two-year program.

[Garrett !?]

1 year courses seem to be common only if you live in the US. At my school all SL courses are 1 year long except SL Math which is 2 years because IB only allows you to take two exams your junior year and almost all the IB students at my school take their other two SL classes and exams junior year. We also have fixed classes as everyone is required to take HL English A Literature, HL History of the Americas, and SL Math.

[crimson.threads]

I'm late to the party, but I thought another view point would be good.

No, there are no one year courses in my school for IB.

Every subject has a class twice a week for four hours total per subject (including TOK) in IB1, and in IB2, 4 hours per week for HL subjects and 2 hours per week for SL subjects, including TOK.

The only exceptions are students who take the Maths SL exam at the end of IB1, because they are at the level of our HL maths students but opted to do SL maths.

The IB is a two year program, so trying to understand why schools would try to cram two years worth of study, despite it being a SL subject, coursework biased etc, doesn't make any sort of sense to me whatsoever, unless that student shows exceptional ability in that subject.

This is also especially if it.... in a way, hurts the school's final marks- a school is in the end, a profit making business- and the better their results, the better their reputation and therefore the increase in their ability to charge higher prices?

[Garrett !?]

The issue with doing IB over two years for my school is that we aren't able to fulfill all of the state graduation requirements because the school is a public school and has a certain requirements not mandated by IB that have to be followed. While this might lead to lower scores, the school will still get funding either way as long as you get the diploma. So it doesn't matter if you get a 30 or a 45. Oh and charging prices doesn't come into affect because US public school is free.