The Examiners Report from the May 2016 Session

November 18, 2016

The examiners report from the May session is now out. Have you managed to see it / read it? As ever, the report does not ‘look very use friendly’ – it’s just a heap of text! But the contents of it can be quite revealing. The main highlights for me were: 1, The...

Colour

November 7, 2016

Topic 13 is one of my favourites – how do you find it? In this topic, we start to explore complex ions the reasons why these ions are coloured. How do you deal with this topic. I like the fact that it is very visual. It can make a nice transition from topic 3 which is...

Nh, Mc, Ts, Og

October 31, 2016

Do these letters mean anything to you?  I expect not so please don’t worry if you have not seen them before. That said, they are the symbols for the most recent addition of elements to the periodic table. To give these new elements their official names (and proton...

C3L6 (Cambridge Chemistry Challenge)

September 30, 2016

Have you heard of the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge? If not, it is definitely worth a look (http://c3l6.com). The website is primarily aimed at UK students in the ‘lower 6th’ – this is equivalent of IB1 but the chemistry itself is very worthy of all IB students and is...

Seeing Forces

September 26, 2016

Try asking your physics teacher if this is possible – they will probably give you all sorts of (boring) physics examples – for example, gravity pulling down on a book or a boat floating or an airplane flying. But I can guarantee that none of them well tell you...

Approaches To Learning Flipped

August 10, 2016

ATL flipped? What an earth does this mean? Last month I wrote a post on the IB’s ideas about how you, the student should approach your learning in class – this is what is termed the ‘Approaches to Learning’ and it forms part of a wider focus on the IB called...