IB Update
TOK Networking Day 11 November 2022
Santa Sabina hosted the first face-to-face networking day for Theory of Knowledge Teachers from schools across NSW and the ACT. The following schools were represented: Monte St Angelo, The German International School, St Andrews Cathedral School, Redlands: The Central Western Academy, St Ursula’s College, The Riverina Anglican College, MLC, Canberra Grammar School, Newington College, Queenwood and Narrabundah College. A mixture of 25 very experienced and some relatively new teachers of ToK had an opportunity to share ideas on how to teach and resource this critical part of the Diploma Core and how to prepare the students for the two assessment tasks – the exhibition and the essay.
The first session was facilitated by Britta Jensen and Rod Studdert and focused on designing and resourcing the course including formative assessment, strategies for engaging with contestability and the how of critical thinking in relation to the knowledge framework and the 12 concepts. The second session was facilitated by myself, Natasha Kempers and the 35 Year 11 students who actually held their exhibition in the library for all the participants. This opportunity will have provided the students with some very useful insights prior to submitting their final exhibition draft.
The two final sessions were dedicated to the ToK essay which is completed in Year 12. We were very fortunate to have an experienced examiner – Christine Volk – lead this session with the support of Annie Thomson. We all found the insights into what was actually expected in an essay – namely coherence, clarity and critical thinking very useful and our students will benefit from Christine’s very useful presentation of what makes a good argument and what does not. We all agreed that this networking day should become a yearly event as the sharing that occurred was invaluable. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the facilitators and the Year 11 presenters for a very successful day.
Julie Harris
Dean of IB
