Getting Organized

Key Strategy

Have your students document each artwork immediately upon completion. 

Rationale: Building this habit in Year 1 alleviates crunch-time stress before the Internal Assessment (IA) deadlines. In Year 2, this allows students to prioritize their Rationales, while you focus on IA marking. 

Associated Benefits: Early documentation fosters independence related to: 

1️⃣ documenting pages in/from the Visual Journal or related process materials;

2️⃣  documentation of the HL Artist Project in Y2.

Student Action: Invite your students to read Documenting Your Artwork and follow the steps to become independent in this process.

Key Strategy 

Require students to organize their work in a shared, accessible storage system (i.e. Google Drive, MS OneDrive, a school-wide computer network).

Rationale: While an LMS (Learning Management System) may work well for daily tasks, assignments, grading, and feedback, it rarely keeps student evidence in one easy-to-export place. 

Associated Benefits: A structured filing system will:

1️⃣ enable documentation on the go to alleviate the potential loss of physical materials (which happens more often than we like!);

2️⃣  maintain file continuity across the two-year program.

Student Actions: 

1. Set up folders: Direct your students to read Organizing Your Evidence and give them class time to set up their filing system, complete with folders and documents for tracking sources. Ideally, students create a filing system in Year 1.
2. Grant Access: Ensure students share or give you access to the folder.

Teacher Workflow Tips: Here are a few quick suggestions, if you’re looking for ways to tighten up your filing system: 

• Organize evidence folders by graduation year: Label your folders by cohort (i.e. Class of 2026) for continuity. Ask students to add their folders directly to yours or use a shortcut system (like in Google Drive - click the eye icon below to see more):

• Standardize File Naming: enforce a consistent format like Last Name_First Name_Document Title.
  • For Visual Journals, place the year first, followed by the month (including a 0) and day (i.e., 26_02_22 for February 22, 2026) so files automatically sort in order.

Key Strategy

Maintain a continuous, single-document feedback log for each student across the two-year program. This file can be linked alongside their evidence folder with view-only permissions.

Rationale: While an LMS enables task-by-task communication with students, parents, and administrators, past comments easily get buried. A single narrative log gives you a broader overview to track improvements from one project or checkpoint to the next.

Associated Benefits: 

1️⃣ Track longitudinal growth: You see progress over time, from checkpoints to final submissions.

2️⃣ Streamlining Revisions: Allows students to quickly see what they need to revise and rework as they move into Y2, without having to hunt through past LMS assignments.

3️⃣ Grading and report writing: Instantly review your past commentary to support narrative comments or grade predictions.

Student Actions: Give your students “commenting” privileges to your feedback document or an exit ticket. They can use this space to reflect and respond to your feedback. Here are a few possible prompts you might offer to your students post-feedback (click on the eye to view more):

Teacher Workflow Tips: To avoid duplicating work, make your log your primary drafting space. You can either: 

• copy your feedback directly into your LMS or
• copy and paste the document link in the feedback section of your LMS. Students can then click to view your feedback within the context of past assessments.

If you have an LMS that already supports you and your students in a meaningful and accessible way, then skip this step.

Downloads:

Simple Feedback Log (template 1)

Comprehensive Feedback Log (template 2)