You may have noticed, under 'What's New?' above, the page Paper 2 Project. This is the headline page for the biggest single upload that I've done so far - 9 full pages, amounting to some 13,250 words, with 8 print-out materials. It represents quite a lot of work over quite a long time. I began the project in April, in cooperation with various teachers around the world, and finished it, ready for publication, at the very beginning of October - with long dormant periods, of course ... in May and June I was swamped with IB marking ... and then various of the group were on holiday.

It has, I feel, been a very productive exercise. It is always useful for groups of teachers to sit down and mark scripts together. This process naturally highlights the way that all impression marking is a debateable process, that impressions depend on semi-conscious assumptions and values, and above all that these assumptions and values really do not have to be shared completely or at all by everyone else. It can be disturbing to find out that other people that you respect really don't see things the way you do - but in the end, to negotiate values makes them stronger in the end.

The prime aim of the project, as I suggest on the headline page, was to 'test-fly' the new Paper 2 marking Criteria. This has certainly helped me to understand them in more detail, and particularly to see how the particular indicators that we all use to mark written scripts can be located and embedded within the necessarily generalised wording of the Criteria. I set out my (provisional) conclusions about this in the page Key Indicators - and I would stress the 'provisional', since unpacking the Criteria will be an on-going process for some time.

Finally, it was a pleasure working with the people who cooperated in the Project. It was fascinating to see some of the acute analysis and commentary that people provided in note form in order to justify their marking of the sample scripts - even if sometimes, in the end, the majority view was different! I certainly learned a lot during the process, and I am sure that was true for the others as well.

I am looking to repeat the process with other aspects of the assessment system of the new programme. For example, I have some initial material for a similar 'Written Assignment Project' ... and it would be great to have some recordings of practice Individual Orals ...

Who'd like to join in with these two projects ? With both the Written Assignments and the Individual Orals, these would obviously just be your first practice attempts - but one can learn a lot from hearing what other people think of the performances, which would in turn give confidence for doing the real thing.

If you would like to take part, simply email me at my InThinking address:   [email protected]