Written by cats and a hamster

October 6, 2017

It’s Extended Essay time in the Northern Hemisphere (perhaps it’s always Extended Essay time everywhere), and I’m sure that all students and supervisors are scrutinizing resources very carefully. How careful do you have to be? I thought I’d...

Searching for the Truth

September 20, 2017

Continuing my thoughts and writing about fake news, fake web pages, teaching search skills, and ultimately, trying to find the Truth of a matter, this post brings together for your consideration two web articles which are not new, but which work well together. The...

Pump up your verbs, please

September 11, 2017

In all of your essays, whether they are demanded for your Written Assignments, your commentaries, or your Paper 2 essay, you can win the heart of your examiners by moving beyond the conventional verbs you use to talk about literature.  Show, demonstrate, characterize,...

Are you new to DP History?

August 23, 2017

For those of you who are entering DP Year I there may be a degree of trepidation about what is to come.  There are plenty of websites and blogs out there that are dedicated to ‘telling you like it is’, which usually comes in the form of fear-mongering with...

‘Talk nerdy to me’: Delivering a winning IOP

August 16, 2017

The challenge of standing before your classmates and not just getting, but holding their attention,  is not a small one; in fact, that part of your audience is even more of a challenge than–yes–the attention of your teacher.  It’s true that she or he...

‘War and Peace’: why not?

August 7, 2017

If you may have found that summer and all its anticipated pleasures are sometimes not quite meeting your expectations, why not do something daring?  People, not just your peers, but just about everyone who reads at all, probably looks at a novel of the length of...