Putting together a set of labs (practicals)

So, as a new teacher to IB you are slowly getting your head around teaching topic 1, plus you have started dipping into internal assessment.

There are in fact a number of earlier postings in this blog relating to marking students lab work using the IA criteria – just search for IA or Design or DCP, etc.

You are probably beginning to wonder how you are going to come up with sixty hours of lab work – this can seem a little daunting to even the most experienced teachers. Hopefully, your school will already have a good set of labs set up but if it doesn’t, you may wish to look at this web-page (click here).

It contains some ideas for lab work – I wolud not recommend formally assessing the IA criteria for the first 20 labs listed as they contain too much information for the students (although with a little imagination you could adpat these to suit the IA requirements).

However, the design labs are good and from what I have seen of them they could be used to assess design at IA.

At the very least they will be a handy resource to have and a good start in getting your IA programme together