IB Assessments: Does Teaching Match Content?

That dreaded phrase: “you will have a summative next week”—the one that makes students enter panic mode immediately; the one that leads us to doubt our knowledge and understanding of the course.

The thought of completing a formal assessment can surely be scary, especially in IB; such tasks define our semester average, accumulate toward our predicted grades and affect our GPA. We often find ourselves ignoring our sleep schedules to stay up late studying for ‘that big summative assessment tomorrow’. Yet, it does occasionally happen that we walk out of the classroom the next day feeling shocked that the test included nothing we studied.

But is this true? Do tests not match the respective unit? Do you sometimes feel as though your summatives do not reflect the content taught in class?

While this is probably something we are all familiar with, it is rare that our tests, especially in IB classes, do not focus on the topics of class discussion. The assessments are designed to have a balance of not only questions that test our raw knowledge, but also to test our application skills with unseen questions of various styles, with the latter being the questions that ‘trip us up’. As students, we can agree that basic questions testing our knowledge are usually more straightforward or ‘easy’ than application questions; it’s in the names! So why is it that we are sometimes left with the impression that ‘we were never taught this in class’?

Well first off, it could be a studying mistake. How many times have you skipped over a page in your notebook because it was not important, or you thought it would be very unlikely to appear on the test? Don’t lie, we’ve all done it! More seriously, when studying for a test I have found only one thing to work for me: practice, practice and you guessed it, more practice. The stacks of past paper and exam-style questions accumulating in my room are almost too tall to measure, but they do their job well. The repetition of practice questions feels like a real drag, but it is a major help when preparing for those tricky application questions that can really twist your final grade.

Furthermore, we have all been in that situation when the test had a portion of the questions that were not linked to the current topic. The concepts as old as the very first unit, or even more recent ones, sometimes pop up on tests, giving us all that scare and panic that lasts for the remainder of the test period, and maybe even longer. In IB, teachers love to include old concepts to ensure our understanding; in maths class, for example, we are often reminded that everything builds on “those one or two concepts from trigonometry”, and that they will continue to show up.

Ultimately, I think you can agree with me that our teachers only have the best intent and interest for us, and when it comes to testing, they include questions they know we can achieve based on what they have taught us in class.

To sum up, our tests are not designed to trick us, but rather to ask us to demonstrate our understanding and application of the content taught, throughout the year. So, when you are taking your next summative test, just remember, you have been taught the content and you are able to answer the question!