Welcome Teachers
Welcome to InThinking Visual Arts!
Thank you for choosing the InThinking Visual Arts website. We put a lot of time and thought into creating these resources and are very happy to share this with you. Teachers are busy people, and art teachers may be the busiest of all! All the information you need to successfully teach IB Art is here-plus a huge selection of resources to support and inspire your daily teaching.
Who are the authors?
Heather has over 30 years of experience in IB Education and the development of Visual Arts resources, including teaching, examining, mentoring, workshop leading, and writing a course textbook, Visual Arts for the IB Diploma ( Cambridge 2017). She is also a painter with a dedicated studio practice. Heather and Shannon met in one of Heather's workshops many years ago, and now Shannon is a co-author of the site and a workshop leader in DPVA. Shannon has over 15 years of teaching experience and is currently teaching at Leipzig International School. She has an interdisciplinary art practice of her own.
We aim to provide you, new or experienced teachers, with advice in designing your courses, the day-to-day teaching, feedback on the examining of the course and supporting the holistic development of your students. This is informed by all these years of experience and our current engagement with the IB.
We are always open to collaboration and ideas, so do communicate with us through the comments or message function.
It is our heartfelt wish that this website may ease your load, save you time, and give your teaching an extra spark, Happy teaching!
Student Access Included
Inspired by our student-centered approach, we encourage you to give your students access to the student section of the website. This is included in your subscription, and you can have an unlimited number of students accessing the site at no extra cost. As IB learners, they need to develop independent learning habits and, even if you are not using the site in your classroom, your students can access our resources, e-book, art activities, and gallery independently. Your students will be actively searching the internet for resources and potentially subscribing to largely AI-generated services. Why not give them access to our expertise?
If you wish to manage directly the content students see you can turn pages off or on (default) or provide them with links to specific pages that support whatever you are currently teaching.
Visit the page Managing Student Access. The new version of the site allows students to have full access to the course, although teachers may hide or assign pages as they wish. The dedicated teacher-only section is not accessible to students.
Relevant, stimulating content
New content is added weekly, with updates and examples that reflect the most current and relevant IB information. We are always on the look out for topics of special interest to art teachers, to keep your teaching informed and enjoyable.
You may also post questions on the forum at the bottom of each page. We usually respond within a few days, and all teachers are welcome to join the conversation, please do!
Overview... Finding stuff
The site is divided into 2 main sections: Teachers and Students. Teachers can see it all, students can only see what is in the student section, and even there you can control what they see by turning pages on (default) or off.
Its a a LOT of material and sometimes you just can't find that page you found last time….try using the search bar ( magnifying glass icon on top right)
For help finding your way around the menu the first time go to Navigating the Site where you will also find some short videos that guide you around.
The Course Components (teachers)
The pages detailing each of the assessed tasks are now located in the student e-book section of the site, available to all students with student access. All student-facing pages have teacher boxes for...
Navigating the Site
For those of us who are visual learners, it might help to think of the site like a tree with limbs ( main headings) and smaller branches (sub headings) and leaves ( sub sub headings). This page has some...
Course Requirements (students)
An overview of the assessment goals and tasks- everything you need to know about the course requirements.
Approaches to Teaching
“Making and teaching art is a varied, complex and evolving practice.”1In this section, we look at ways to approach teaching art to young people, and the philosophical and pedagogical underpinnings...
Assessment
This page has color-coded rubrics for each of the assessed tasks. Scroll down to find the rubric you need. As the syllabus endeavors to make a clear distinction between SL & HL tasks, you'll also notice...
Studio Teaching
This section of the site examines how teachers approach the challenging task of teaching art to students with a range of abilities and experience, managing the studio classroom, and the kind of thinking...
Course Planning
The IB Visual Arts guide (first exams 2027) defines the structure of the new course with a clearer focus on objectives in the first year, saving key assessment tasks for the second year. The guide urges...