Experimental programme & IA
- Virtually everything you need to know about practical activities and internal assessment for IB Diploma Chemistry
- How to design and set up your own IB Chemistry practical programme
- Full details on more than 35 excellent practicals including pdf worksheets for students
- Suggestions for other resources to gain ideas and specific details for practicals suitable for the IB
- Advice and examples for Scientific Investigations
- Teachers' notes for all the practicals containing background information and useful tips
- Full details and advice on how students can maximise their IA marks and guidance through the moderation process
- Suggestions and advice on using secondary data
The Collaborative Sciences Project explained together with suggested ways to run it in your school
- How the Inquiry process is central to the IA
- Examples of marked and moderated student IA reports
- Help and resources for setting up a new Chemistry laboratory including a full list of suggested equipment and chemicals
Introduction
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Practical work is an important component of IB chemistry. Approximately 25% of the total teaching time should be devoted to the practical scheme of work (40 hours at SL and 60 hours at HL). This includes the ten hours devoted to the Scientific Investigation which makes up 20% of the final assessment mark under the heading 'Internal Assessment' with the external examinations providing the remaining 80%. Practical skills are also examined to a small extent in Section B of the externally assessed Paper 1. The 40 or 60 hours devoted to the practical scheme of work also includes ten hours spent on the Collaborative Sciences Project, although this is not assessed.
Much of the practical work will likely involve experiments in a school laboratory. However practical activities can be interpreted quite liberally. For example, a well-planned visit (as opposed to a 'tourist visit') to a university research laboratory or industrial site such as a power station or sewage works, virtual labs or molecular modelling can also be included. Similarly data obtained from secondary sources or simulation experiments rather than hands-on practical work is also acceptable.
One of the great strengths of the IB practical programme is that there are no 'set' or 'prescribed' experiments or investigations that your students must undertake. However there are some experimental techniques that need to be covered. These are listed under Tools in Covering the skills. For example, all students should perform a titration and also determine the molar mass of an unknown gas etc. but the precise ways in which these are done is left to the teacher or student. You are completely free to design your own practical programme but it should be used as part of the scaffolding to introduce students to the skills they will need to complete their Scientific Investigation. This can be quite daunting for a teacher new to the programme but what I have tried to do in this section is cover everything that you will need with many suggestions and examples. The great strength of being able to design your own programme, most of which does not have to be assessed, is that practical work can be fully integrated into good chemistry teaching.
Your practical programme does need to be formally recorded on form "Record of Experimental Programme" which can be downloaded from My IB. This is a form for each class (set of students) which details how the 40 hours (SL) and 60 hours (HL) have been spent, but it does not have to be sent to the IB. It is retained by the school so that it is available if the IB asks to see it at, for example, the five year review of the school's programme. Details about the form "Record of Experimental Programme" and how to complete it can be found on Submitting IA marks & samples for moderation.
Why do practical work?
It is worth getting students to consider why practical work is so important. Ultimately, of course, chemistry is an experimental science and the whole of chemistry is based on observations. Some of the reasons are:
- to re-enforce the theory
- to develop theory from practical observations
- to learn specific techniques
- to gain confidence in manipulative skills
- to develop an appreciation of the benefits and limitations of scientific methodology
- to address the IB assessment criteria (only for the Scientific Investigation)
- to have fun
When devising your own programme you should bear all these aims in mind. Just the ten hour Scientific Investigation will be assessed according to certain criteria and samples from some students will be sent to the IB for moderation.
Links
The main links accessible on the left and below breakdown as follows:
'Hands on' practicals
Detailed examples of 37 specific experiments most of which can could be used for both Standard Level and/or Higher Level although a few are only really suitable for Higher Level students. Each practical has teacher's notes and a worksheet for students.
Internal Assessment
This section provides full information and details on how to organise the Scientific Investigation and how it is assessed and moderated. It contains useful tips on how your students can achieve high grades together with genuine examples of IA reports that have been marked and moderated. For those who are interested there is also a page showing how the assessment of the practical component of the course has developed over the past six decades.
Collaborative Sciences Project
Explains what the collaborative sciences project is, how to organise and deliver it and how students can reflect upon it.
A new laboratory?
Designing and equipping a chemistry laboratory. Includes a suggested list of equipment.