This sample essay is an excellent example of a student engaging in extensive and high-level research (as will be evident from a quick look at the works cited), and integrating this research skillully into an engaged, mature and personal response to the above topic. The essay began life as a comparison between Antony and Cleopatra and Romeo and Juliet, but once the student started delving deeper into the many books, essays and articles written about Shakespere it became clear that she would be spreading her ideas too thin if trying to deal with two plays. Furthermore, she discovered that the ideas she was most interested - as captured in the title - were more fully formed and more interesting in Antony and Cleopatra, the later work. Romeo and Juliet is referenced briefly, along with several other plays, and the essay works very well as an in-depth exploration of one text. As such, this essay not only demonstrates how far students can go with research, but also how less can be more and how rigorous, thoughtful research can help a student adapt and refine the focus of their essay.

As you prepare students for the Extended Essay, it is important to show them good examples. Students can find the prospect of such a long assignment daunting so seeing what the final product looks like can give them a sense of where they are heading. The following sample essays all received good grades and, while your students may not know the texts, they can still be used to help support students...

This poem was set for the May 2016 SL exam. The student's response below is a rather average one. S/he engages with the poem in a relatively accurate way but the analysis tends towards the somewhat superficial and repetitive, and there is an absence of detailed comment on literary features. It is not without some merit, however - and therefore a good one to show you students so they can identify for themselves its strengths and weaknessess.

Sentence - Phrase - Word is a thinking routine taken from the book Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church and Karin Morrison, and it is a strategy that works very well in the IB Literature classroom. It is a simple protocol whereby students select a sentence, phrase and word from a given text in order to distill what they feel is most important. This process demands that students think about the 'big ideas' or 'deeper meanings' and then connect this thinking to specific details in the text. The outcome can then be used in a variety of ways and often leads to engaging discussions and explorations.

Annotating texts is something we expect students to do by and large throughout the course - but when and how are the associated skills actually being taught? You might well find that some students seem to possess expertise almost instinctively, but many - perhaps most - do not. The notes below are designed to encourage your students to develop these skills by recognising the importance of annotation as a record of reading texts 'actively'. Paper 1 is the ideal to place to focus attention on the importance of this.

The following 10 tips are designed to help students adopt a systematic and effective approach to Paper 1. Many of these strategies focus on what happens in that first, crucial part of the examination, when students choose the extract they will write on and then spend time annotating and planning their response.

Written Assignment 1: One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Reflective Statement: How was your understanding of cultural and contextual considerations of the work developed through the Interactive Oral? In the Interactive Oral we looked into subjects varying from the history of the book 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich' to the conditions in the labor...