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Blog posts

The excitement of discovery 9 December 2022

Something to enthuse your students about how fantastic chemistry can be. This 7 minute video produced by NASA is well worth watching and showing to all your students, particularly when you are covering... more

Concept-based assessment 13 November 2022

There is an interesting question on the 2022 November examination paper which is worth exploring particularly as the IB moves toward concept-based learning and assessment which will be embodied in the... more

5+ is different to +5 20 September 2022

In many ways this blog follows on from my last one 'Training students to think critically'. Recently Natalie Brink, who teaches at Shekou International School in China, asked a very sensible and valid... more

Training students to think critically 8 September 2022

Young children are naturally curious and parents and teachers should actively encourage this curiosity. Questions which generally start with "How.." often require factual answers (e.g. How does this work?... more

Intergalactic-mindedness 15 July 2022

Maybe with the advent of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope the IB needs to be less parochial and broaden its horizons by encouraging intergalactic-mindedness rather than just international-mindedness? more

Some thoughts on the May 2022 IB Chemistry examinations 30 May 2022

About a year ago I wrote a blog Thinking through multiple choice questions on the difficulty of writing good multiple choice questions. This is partly due to the fact that because the numbers of words... more

Anti-Markovnikov addition 16 March 2022

Imagine the International Baccalaureate started in the nineteenth century and that it is now 1872. You are an IB student looking for a research question for your internal assessment. You have just read... more

Initial reflections on the new programme 31 JIB Docs (2) Teamary 2022

The new IB Diploma chemistry programme to replace the 2016 programme was due to start in August/September 2021 with the first exams in 2023. It was initially postponed for one year then for a further... more

Covering the mandatory practical areas during lockdown 26 November 2021

With the omicron variant now spreading rapidly through many countries there is real concern that many schools will be finding themselves in lockdown due to Covid yet again. One of the parts of the syllabus... more

Greenhouse gas bulletin and COP26 25 October 2021

A useful source of data for both EEs and IAs is the Greenhouse Gas Bulletin which is published annually.The latest publication (which came out today, just one week before the start of COP26 in Glasgow)... more