Background and rationale

The topic on this website that receives the most comments is Internal Assessment and this is also echoed by the questions asked and concerns raised in workshops. Understandably, as in a sense their marking and teaching is 'on the line', teachers are  worried about the Individual Scientific Investigation and how to apply the criteria when it comes to marking their own students' work. Although it is supposed to be only ten hours work, it does actually count for 20% of the final mark, so students, and of course their teachers, are obviously concerned to do well and achieve the highest mark they are capable of. The IB has tried to support teachers in the best way possible by providing Teacher Support Material (accessed from the Programme Resource Centre of My IB) and there are ten individual investigations that teachers can mark and then compare their marks with the marks and comments from the Principal Examiner. I wrote a blog explaining that although these examples are helpful they are, of necessity, not genuine investigations by current Diploma students written specifically for the criteria, (first examined in May 2016) as no actual IA reports had been submitted and marked/moderated at that time.

In the early years of teaching the new programme some teachers asked for even more examples and guidance. The attached investigation was completely new and invited all teachers to apply the criteria (which are clearly set out in the Chemistry Guide and amplified in the TSM and on this website) and mark it as if it had been submitted by one of their own students. They were told that by all means they should discuss their marking with other IB Diploma chemistry teachers from their own school, as that is what should happen when it does come to submitting actual marks for their own students. However, if you were not one of the teachers who took part in this exercise and submitted their marks in September 2015, it makes sense to complete the exercise before you see the marks given by teachers from other schools. For this reason I have attached the outcome of all the marks and responses I received from subscribing teachers during the month of September 2015 on a separate page.

Since I first wrote this page back in 2015 there are now many genuine examples of IA reports that have been marked and moderated. I have given five such reports in Examples of teacher-marked IA reports and have also included an example of a genuine example of a moderated IA report where the teacher disagreed with the moderated mark and asked me for my comments which are also given.  Even with these genuine examples I would still urge you to mark the IA on rhubarb given below as you will then see how your marking compares with that of other IB chemistry teachers.