The course at a glance
We know from experience that many of you out there will be teaching this course for the first time and that it can be a little overwhelming to get your head around all the things that you need to know about and try to achieve. With that in mind we are putting this page together to try and help. On the site as a whole we have lots of advice about getting to greater depth with the topics and all the elements of the course, but on this page, the idea is to help you get started and keep it all in some kind of perspective.
One of the things that it is really important to remember is that, despite all the elements there are to tackle and remember, fundamentally it is just a mathematics course. There is a clear syllabus and the most important of all the goals is to teach and practice all of the objectives on the syllabus. Here they are at a glance, along with the suggested time allowance for them.
Syllabus at a glance:
Syllabus at a glance:
Syllabus at a glance:
Syllabus at a glance:
Syllabus at a glance:
Syllabus at a glance:
As you make your way through the syllabus above, you need to have this key assessment schedule in mind. For Standard Level there are 2 exams and some coursework and for Higher level there are 3. What is really important here is that you have access to the example papers. You need to have these easily to hand and looking at them as you teach so that you know what kinds of questions your students will be expected to answer. You should ask your department leader and/or your IB coordinator for these.
The next thing to do before you start is to make sure that you have easy access to the following....
- MYIB - this is the IB online hub for the course and syllabus. Your school has to arrange access to this for you and you should nag your IB coordinator until they set up access for you.
- The Subject Guide - This is the official detail description fo the course and teachers should be familiar with it. On MYIB you will be able to access this essential document either as a PDF that you can print or a series of webpages. It all depends on how you prefer to work, but I like a printed copy near my desk that I can very easily flick through.
- The Teacher Support Material (TSM) - Also on my IB this offers an extensive collection of example work from students
- Past Examination papers - As mentioned above, these are crucial and schools have to buy these packages for their staff. See your department leader and/or IB coordinator
- Full Access to this website - We would say that of course, but we know that we offer a huge amount of resources including detailed elaborations and advice on all the main ideas, huge amounts of original practice and exam style questions and rich ideas for bring the syllabus to life in your classrooms. We also have an extensive ' Internal Assessment Center - For students and subscribers can give access to their students.
- An account on studyIB.net/mathsapplications. Pay attention to this section on the calculator that is free for all users. If you subscribe to thinkib.net/mathapplications (this website) then you get a free premium account to studyIB.net/mathsapplications with the same details as do all members of your department.
Getting to know this course and preparing yourself for teaching it is something that needs to build up in layers. The points above make the first layer. Get familiar with the syllabus, the assessment examples and make sure you have access to the essential documents. If you can manage this in your first term then you are doing very well and will be doing great work for your students. We will add more layers here, but were just keen to help get you started with the most important ideas and help to keep it in perspective!
Everyone's experience of these is different and, philosophically I think it is easy to underestimate the importance of getting in to the right philosophy. A key driver of this course is that, often, the emphasis is on using technology to do the 'calculation' while students concentrate on choosing the appropriate process, using it correctly in context and knowing how to interpret the result, also in context. As such, one aspect that is easily overlooked is that there are not many marks awarded for calculation and the expectation is that students are fluent GDC users and can calculate quickly. For example, it is unlikely that they will vere be asked to work out the mean from grouped frequency data by hand, but they will need to know how to set up their GDCs to do it quickly and get 1 or 2 marks for their efforts. See advice below the image.
Your GDC support resource - You and you students can all have free access to this page on our sister site studyIB.net studyib.net/mathsapplications/page/1054/your-graphical-display-calculator which has a full list of skills required along with video explanations of how to do them all. Access anytime, anyway on a computer or a mobile device.
TOP TIP - If you are new to this, rusty or need time to get up to speed, be honest with your students and do this together with them. From my experience, students are pretty quick to catch on and its a great opportunity to give them some meaningful agency. Access to the site above should help! Good luck.
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Whilst it seems obvious, it can be fairly daunting, but you you do have to have a sense of how the whole will fit in to the time and space in your local context. If you are lucky, you will already have a scheme in your department that works, but even those sometimes need adjusting to the new year. To start with you might like to look at the Schemes of Work page where we have some ideas for you including some tried and tested schemes that do work. Then you might want to consider the following points....
- A textbook is a great way to start. Consider just using the scheme in the textbook you offer. The next year you will know more about what you want to do differently.
- Use the schemes here on this site - these are all resourced and ready to go and, once again, you will know what you want to differently next time.
- Make sure ou account for disruption like school closures (holidays), school events, school trips and so on. These can creep up on you.
- You have to work within your school's calendar too. Mock exams tend to be scheduled as blocks. Have a good think about what you want to get done before each of these. The same is true of report cycles. It can really helpful to build this in to your planning.
- Think about the timing of the Internal Assessment. For new teachers, it might be an idea to save this until later in year two so that you can make good progress through the syllabus. Again though, you might want to fit in with the other maths teachers and a whole school approach to due dates.
When unit planning is described as an 'official process' it can sound intimidating. When you realise it is just what teachers do anyway then it becomes much more approachable. That said, the act of writing it down does bring it in to focus and is a useful thing to do. What has worked for me in the past is the idea that it can build organically. Start with a new document (or what ever space you want or need to use) and take it one step at a time...
- Start with the syllabus items that you want to include in the unit
- Write down some of the activities you plan to do. We have lots of these on the website here, You can list them by name or use the links if your space is interactive.
- Put down a provisional time line including the assessments you plan to use along the way. This might typically involve some assignments along the way and then an end of unit test of some description. Use the guidelines for hours to help you here (see the first section)
This is the layer that we will all be doing anyway. It is just an essential part of teaching. After this you can go back and add more layers. This may not even happen until after the unit or when you are planning for next year. This is what I mean by letting it build organically. Then the next layers look a bit like this....
See this example - Unit 1 - Numbers & the world around us. Many of the activities we publish on the site make reference to the approaches to teaching and learning opportunities that they offer which makes it easier for you to add the layers by identifying the opportunities your plan creates for,
- Differentiation
- Concept and enquiry based approaches
- Research and self management skills
- Exploring local and global contexts
- Theory of Knowledge (ToK)
- CAS
- IB Learner profile attributes
From my experience of working with teachers, much of the above is present in lessons and it is easy to find some examples. Please don't imagine that every lesson, or even every unit has to have them all. The idea is that over time, you will have offered a range of opportunities to your students.
This is 20 percent of the final grade but might occupy a higher proportion of your planning time the first couple of times through. Again though, like most things, there are levels to this and you will be more comfortable with a bigger range of ideas with experience. Hopefully you have lots of institutional experience to help you, but either way, don't miss the extensive section on Internal Assessment we have here on the site, especially the Internal Assessment Center - For students which you can give to your students to let them help themselves a fair bit. It is not easy to simplify the task, but we will have a go here...
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
Introducing Internal Assessment:
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