InThinking Subject Sites
Subscription websites for IB teachers & their classes
Disclaimer: InThinking subject sites are neither endorsed by nor connected with the International Baccalaureate Organisation.
IB Approved Workshops
English B
IB DP Category 1
Stockholm, Sweden, 19 - 21 September 2025
Find out more
English B
IB DP Category 2
Berlin, Germany, 3 - 5 October 2025
Find out more
Language B (generic)
IB DP Category 2
Online (IB Approved), 17 - 19 October 2025
Find out more
Find all InThinking Workshops at
inthinking.net
Blog
M25 HL Paper 1 Unpacked
Since the May 2025 examination session, I’ve seen much discussion on various social media platforms about Paper 1 in both time zones. While we can’t reproduce the prompts verbatim on the site for copyright...
The Communication Relationship
by Mark McGowan When the last iteration of the ToK syllabus was released, I created an image to communicate the idea of Knowledge and the Knower. I called it The Communication Relationship. It depicts...
Musings On…The Individual Oral
With the M25 exam session rapidly approaching, some teachers may have completed their Individual Oral Assessments (IOAs) and turned their attention to exam revision. For others, though - myself included!...
The Schwa
I find the schwa /ə/ a fascinating sound. As the excellent webcomic on the right, XKCD, humorously observes, it’s the most common phoneme in the English language and can usually be found in unstressed...
Dialects
I grew up mainly in Yorkshire, in the north of England. Yorkshire is an area with a strong local identity. My father was a Yorkshireman, and proud of it … and of course I absorbed the feeling. One part...
SL versus HL
How do we define the difference between SL and HL for Language B? This is important because we wish to make sure that each student is placed in a course of an appropriate level; and also because teachers...
To B or Not to B?
The IBDP is notoriously tough, and for good reason. Perhaps understandably, students (and their parents) will look to game the system if they can when it comes to course selection. After all, they want...
Prejudices
A teacher recently posted a Comment expressing concern about how certain students expressed homophobic/transphobic views in their written texts and also sexist/racially inappropriate /offensive comments...
Handwriting
How do we write? Or, to be more precise, how do we expect, or require, our students to write? I have recently read an article in El Pais on the issue of how handwriting is gradually being side-lined by...
Colson Whitehead
I have been ill recently, which gave me plenty of time to read a couple of novels by Colson Whitehead, who is a much-admired black American novelist with a couple of Pulitzer Prizes to his name. The novels...