Top tips for tackling your final year of the IBDP
You’re through the first year of your IB Diploma - congratulations, you’re half-way there! But, we all know the road ahead is tricky and the last thing you want is to start off unprepared. That’s why we’ve asked IB expert and Peak Study Resources author, Joe Gauci, to share his top tips for second year IBDP students. Get on top of your studies early and start implementing some of Joe’s advice today, it’ll make things easier as you move toward your IB exams.
Start revision early
Although the IB Diploma exams in May might look a long way off at this point, the time will fly by and you need to start planning your preparation for them now and that includes reviewing and revising topics several times between now and May. Otherwise, the task of revision, if left until March or April will prove too much to cope with successfully. So, start now and draw up a schedule for reviewing and revising each major topic over the coming months. Within that schedule, you must ensure that you prepare effectively for your trial exams, if you don’t revise seriously for them, you will gain nothing from this very valuable opportunity of practising writing under strict exam conditions, including the time constraints that you will face in May.
Make revision active and varied
If your revision is to be successful, it’s not just a question of how many hours you put into it, it is crucial that you approach revision in the correct manner and that means making it active and varied. So, do not just re-read your notes, handouts or textbooks, because that will bring limited benefits. Instead, review your notes and handouts and then condense them, creating key concept, information and data sheets for each topic and sub-topic. This approach engages your brain much more actively and, therefore, is much better at improving your understanding and recall of the topic because you are sifting through the information and then selecting the key points and then thinking about how to summarise them concisely. So, for example, review your notes on Hitler’s rise to power, then create a summary set of notes on a) the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic and b) the strengths of the Nazis. These summary sheets could be several sides of A4 or a couple of big A3 sheets. When you are reviewing your notes or handouts and creating your summary sheets, add to your notes where you identify a gap in your knowledge, for example where you have no statistics to show the extent of unemployment in Weimar Germany in 1929-33, look in your textbooks or at other resources to find the data and add it to your summary sheets.
Other very effective ways of making your revision effective and keeping it interesting are to practise making essay plans and writing hand-written full answers - or word processing them if you are allowed to type your answers in the exams - under timed conditions so you get used to taking questions apart, planning your answers to a range of questions and then writing full answers in the time limits that you will face in May. You may find it helpful to buddy up regularly with another student doing your subject, so you each work up an essay plan to the same question and then compare what you come up with, so that you can discuss different approaches and share the ideas and the evidence each of you have generated, adding some of your partner’s plan to yours and vice versa.
Focus on improving areas of technique
In order to maximise your scores in May, it is essential that in the next months you focus on improving the areas of technique that you’ve done less well on so far in the course. So, if your teacher has regularly fed back to you that your essays are too descriptive or narrative, make sure that for every essay you write this year you focus on keeping your essays analytical and focused on the wording of the question by, for example, writing an effective first sentence for each paragraph which directly links it to the title and directly answers the question. Three things can be particularly helpful in improving technique – 1. Practise planning and answering questions regularly, 2. Look at mark schemes and examiners’ reports so that you fully understand the marking criteria and 3. Look at model or exemplar answers.
I hope that you find the tips above helpful and I wish you every success in your final year of the Diploma!
For more help with your final year of the IB Diploma
We hope you found Joe’s advice useful. If you’re looking for more top tips, guidance, and expert advice on how to tackle everything from tricky subject topics to IB exam skills, be sure to check out our IB Subject Resources Pages. Each page features articles from our IB authors to help students with the hardest aspects of their subjects. If you’re looking for even more support with lots of practice questions, detailed explanations, and worked examples, then visit our Peak Study Resources store where you can buy our popular IB study and revision guides.
