How to Ace your Internal Assessments
From Ibstudy
There is a set of guidelines to follow in order to do well on pretty much all of them. Here's how you do it:
- Get an idea of what your Internal Assessment is all about, and start thinking of topics.
- Get a copy of the criteria for the Assessment, and keep it handy. PDF copies of all the IB documents can normally be found online with some searching, even though it's illegal for anyone to make them available.
- Read through the assessment outline
- Choose a topic based on the guidelines set out in the assessment outline. Start your research and writing, so that you know what you're talking about.
- Read through the criteria carefully, going over each of the descriptors separately. If the criterion you're reading goes from 1 to 4, don't read the all the descriptors for 1,2 or 3. Just read #4, and mentally check off each thing you have to do as you go along, thinking for a second about how you can fulfill this particular part of the criteria. For the more complicated tasks that the criteria sets out, you might want to jot down a note about how you're going to do it. You'll be surprised how simple most of the criteria are. For example, for the conclusion of your Historical Investigation, there are two things you have to do to get full points: state something that agrees with your analysis, and state it clearly. The criteria says nothing about the completeness of your conclusion, so don't make it complicated. This is where my favorite rule comes in: if it's not in the criteria, you don't have to do it!
- Get going! Now that you know exactly what you need to do for the full grade, do it! Physically check off the criteria as you fulfill them, then come back and check again afterwards.
- Show your draft to your teacher, and ask them to be as critical as possible. Take their suggestions if you agree with them. If you don't agree, consider them anyway. Just don't ignore them completely. Teachers normally know what they're talking about.
With any luck, you'll get full points!
