Remember, Remember: November Updates
The November 2026 exam session is in full swing, with the English B exams held last week. To all of your students who sat these exams, we hope the marking gods smile kindly upon them. Here in the UK, after months of glorious (sometimes too hot) weather, the mercury has begun to drop. Coupled with the clocks going back for daylight saving time, we’re heading into the cold, dark months of winter. No such problems for Susan in Indonesia. Lucky her! At least I get to attend Guy Fawkes' Night and see a burning effigy of the man who tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament 400 years ago!
We recently hosted our first-ever InThinking Think-In Short, a free 30-minute webinar where we walked attendees through the new site structure and showed how to make the most of our Student Access feature. We will host more free Think-In Shorts in January and February, at times that let subscribers in different time zones join at a reasonable hour!
You don’t need to wait for an InThinking Short to start using Student Access, though. This allows you to set tasks from the site, some of which are automatically marked, and give feedback to your students. You can also track progress in the markbook. Personally, I find this really useful, but maybe that’s because I know how to use it!
I’m currently teaching ‘Born a Crime’, and the Paper 2 reading and listening activities are easy to set in class or for homework. When I was away leading an IB workshop for InThinking, I set tasks for my students to complete and checked in to see how they did. I recommend watching the video guide to setting up Student Access here, and this video on setting tasks for your classes.
We’ve been busy creating brand new content for you, including all-new Themes pages and downloadable posters for you to print and put up in your classroom. We’ve also completed the makeover of the Paper 1 Text Types Expectations pages, our most popular part of the site. You can now find a model text for every text type, based on a Paper 1-style exam prompt.
New York City Languages
According to the Endangered Language Alliance, New York City has speakers from over 700 languages: "With speakers of approximately 10 percent of the world’s 6000-7000 languages, the New York metropolitan...
Polar Bear Tourism
Polar bears may look cute, but they are known for being dangerous to encounter in the wild. Yet, many tourists make a special trek to Churchill, Manitoba in Canada to try their luck to see one. This page...
Friends
The TV show Friends depicts twenty somethings living in New York City in the 1990s, yet somehow this show is still relevant and popular today. What is it that makes this show connect with younger generations?...
Gen Z at work
Gen Z is heading to the world of work! One question is will Gen Z conform to the the current working conditions or will it shape them in new and different ways. Outside of work, people use fashion to...
Equity Analogies
While people often talk about the importance of equality, the concept of equity is closely related. This page explores this concept through a video and an article. Both texts have comprehension questions...
Text type expectations
The pages in this section give you everything you need to know to produce an authentic version of each text type in the exam. There are detailed notes on the features of each text type, a model text in...
IB Posters
One of the challenging tasks is integrating IB language into your classroom. We know how difficult it can be to plan your year while trying to decorate your classroom in a warm and academic manner. This...
We are working on further Themes pages and are excited to offer more mock exams for listening and reading. These are currently undergoing quality control tests, with schools trialling them to ensure they are appropriately challenging. You can expect to see them next month. First up, we'll have Higher Level exams, with Standard Level to follow. These will be published only on the Teacher Only pages, so you can use them as mocks with your students.
Finally, thanks to those of you who completed the questionnaire sent out by InThinking Central. If you didn’t, you can still do so here. We’d love your feedback on the site and welcome any suggestions on how we can make your life easier as a busy English B teacher!
This blog has just about hit 450 words (the minimum for a text on the HL Paper 1 exam), so I’ll leave it there!
Take care and happy teaching.
Joe and Susan