May 2024 Updates & Notices
Wednesday 1 May 2024
May 2024 Updates and Notices
Dear InThinking subscribers
Welcome to the May 2024 Updates and Notices!
In early April, we welcomed our 26,000th student to InThinking Business Management. By the end of the month, we had our 27,000th student join - this is a new milestone for the website. Many thanks for your ongoing support - it is highly appreciated.
With the first exam sessions for the new syllabus now over, we switch our focus to the current DP1 students. For those working on the Extended Essay, some of the latest updates include:
Additional top tips have been added here. Additional tips for conducting the reflection sessions and completing the RPPF, including the CLEAR framework, have been included here.
Top tips for writing essays (and general tips for writing your EE) have been added here. This PPT (shared as a downloadable Google Slide file) has been created by Cindy Colson (Head of Library Services and IB CAS Coordinator at Fettes College, Edinburgh, Scotland. I am grateful to Cindy for sharing this with the InThinking community.
The FAQ section for the Extended Essay has also been updated, following many of the discussions on our InThinking Business Management social media platforms. You can take a look at these here (and also direct your EE students to read these FAQs). Teachers may be interested to know that the IB will launch its new EE syllabus in February 2025 (for first exams in 2027). Stay tuned to InThinking for updates on how the changes will affect you as EE supervisors.
With many of our DP1 students now focusing on the Internal Assessment, several updates have been made, including:
The FAQ section for the IA here. This is vital reading for students.
Formulating suitable IA research questions here. Have a go at ATL Activity 1 with your students prior to finalising their own RQs.
Business management tools and theories for the IA here. Note that there is no expectation for students to use any of the 15 tools from the Business Management Toolkit - there is often confusion about the differences between the "Business Management Toolkit" and "business management tools and theories", so please direct students to the contents on this webpage.
Supporting documents for the IA here. Please make sure your students understand what constitutes as a valid supporting document for the IA and what counts as an appropriate additional or supplementary source document.
Additional top tips for understanding the IA assessment criteria here. Please make sure students are made fully aware of the official marking rubrics prior to submitting a first draft to you.
A comprehensive IA Student Checklist here. I would strongly suggest that students complete this (honestly) and submit this checklist to you along with their first and final drafts of the IA.
For those in November centres, there are still a few more months before the pre-release statement for the Paper 1 examination (due the first week of August 2024). InThinking will have supporting resources shortly after the official release from the IB.
If you wish to join our InThinking Business Management Teacher Support Group on WhatsApp, please check your profile settings to ensure that your full name is displayed along with an appropriate profile picture. Please also check your privacy settings to allow the Admin members to see your full profile. It is important that we all know who the members of the group are for professional communications. We have more than 570 registered teachers in this very active social media support group. The link to join the group is here.
Many thanks to all of you for your continued support of InThinking Business Management. At the time of writing, we have 2,360 registered teachers and 27,024 students from across 115 countries using the website. Content on the website now exceeds 1.37 million words (that's more than 340 extended essays!)
For those in May centres, I wish you and your students well with the remainder of the exam season.
With best wishes for another busy month ahead.
Paul Hoang
