New Handbook

As some of you may be aware, the new Handbook of Procedures (HoP) came out last week. For the less-experienced teachers out there: the Handbook of Procedures is a document for administering the IB Diploma. It contains the guidlines for running internal assessment and the forms for documenting all internal and external assessment. For DP coordinators, this HoP is a very important document. In fact in many schools, the coordinator usually prints out the necessary forms for each subject teacher, and has them take it from there. This is not really 'best practice' however. Subject teachers have a responsibility to study the relevant pages of this document, in order to run oral exams properly and communicate directly to the IB. Your coordinator does not always know your subject needs as well as you! In the future, more and more administration will happen directly through subject teachers. In fact, as you will learn from this blog post, students will be communicating directly with the IB in the near future. 

Finding the new HoP

This year the Handbook of Procedures (HoP) came out as a website only (though a PDF can be downloaded at the top of the website). It can be found here :

OCC > Diploma Programme > Studies in Language and Literature > English A: Language and Literature > (heading) Diploma Programm publications (third document from the bottom).

Click on 'Section B' at the top of the HoP website. In the left margin you see B1a Language A: Literature. Our course (B1b Language A: Language and Literature) is below this. If you click on it, it expands. Unfotunately, for some reason, every time you click on a link in the Lang/Lit course, the Literature course collapses by default. This can be tricky if you are looking for Lang/Lit specific information. This is a construction error, which will be amended, I'm sure. It is currently possible to navigate through Lang/Lit pages, but you must go back to the main heading every time. 

For many, the release of the HoP was the moment of truth for this new course. We had been waiting for forms for written task rationales and further oral activity reflective statements. There were a few interesting surprises though. Here are a few points to consider with this new, digital HoP.

First of all, for two types of assessment (Paper 1 and Paper 2) no forms are necesary at all. Let's take the others one form of assessment at a time:

• Further oral activity - Schools will have to come up with their own way of documenting students' performances. The old forms for this from A2 were not complicated anyways. If one sets up a table with three colums: Date, description of activity and marks, then you have already come a long way. This form will never be sent to the IB anyways, though the IB reserves the right to ask for some kind of documentation of student performance. Here is a sample form that you could use:  FOA form
   
• Individual oral commentary - The IOC should be conducted as it has always been conducted in the past. The HoP states clearly how schools should organize this. On the HoP, click on the link to Internal Assessment. As you read the narrative you will see a link to a document called '1L&LIA' (this stands for 'group 1 - Language and Literature - Internal Assessment). This form is for submitting both IOC and FOA marks. As you can see, you have to add them up and divide them by two. If you are sending off a sample recording to a moderator (a process which will soon end with uploading), then this form must be attached to the recordings (i.e. CD) of each cadidate that is moderated. Make copies of these forms before sending them. 
   
• Written tasks - In 2013 we will send off written tasks with cover sheets that can be found on IBIS. Yes, you read that correctly. Similar to old Language A2 written task cover sheets, you will be asked to give a brief overview of your course, including the topics for Parts 1 and 2 and the texts for Parts 3 and 4. Unlike previous years this PDF is writable, meaning that you can fill it in digitally, print it off and attach it to the tasks that are sent to the examiner. 

If, for any reason, you have a question about these procedures, you should contact your IB DP coordinator or IB Answers.