Awesome IB Internal Assessment Tips
What are Internal Assessments IA's?
In each subject of the International Baccalaureate (IB), students must take an Internal Assessment, or IA, in addition to the Extended Essay and Knowledge Theory exams.
Why are internal assessments important?
Internal assessments offer students the opportunity to earn “easy” grades by completing and submitting an assignment that they have worked on throughout the IB course. Unlike exams, internal assessments provide students with ample opportunity to structure, develop, and perfect their assignments before submitting them to the IB Institute.
It is important that students view Internal Assessment grades as guaranteed results that will positively improve their overall grade. Few people love exams because they are time pressured, which many don’t handle well and get blackouts. They are also only graded on whatever comes to the students mind at the time.
In long term assignments, such as IA’s, the knowledge and skill level of the students as a whole is fairly assessed. They also have ample time to turn to teachers or tutors for assistance with these projects.
IA’s are also better preparation for later life because in most professions you tend to write fewer exams, but encounter long-term projects and submissions all the more often.
What does it mean to have IAs internally assessed?
When you submit your Internal Assessment to your teacher, they are required to evaluate each student’s work and assign them a grade based on the grading criteria. These grades are then uploaded to the International Baccalaureate organization and are often referred to as predicted grades. Your instructor is not required to provide you with this predicted grade, as it often changes.
What grade will I actually receive for my IA?
What happens if my teacher is a strict evaluator?
After the International Baccalaureate organization receives the predicted grade, they ask your school/teacher to send a sample of student work (usually only five) for their reviewers to review. You may wonder why all the papers are not graded, but the simple answer is that it would be too costly and time-consuming for the graders. These samples usually include the highest and lowest scoring Internal Assessments and a random selection from the middle.
The IB staff member who grades them looks at the student samples and grades them using the same grading criteria to determine if your teacher has graded the work too harshly or too leniently. This process is called moderation and is in place to ensure that the teacher does not grade unfairly in comparison to other classes. As a result of moderation, the grade for the entire year for the Internal Exam may stay the same, improve, or worsen depending on how the scorer judges your teacher’s predicted grades.
You might also be interested to take a look at our recent blogs for more learning tips and guides.
If you like to provide your child with a trained tutor after school or during the holidays to help with structure and organization, we have just what you need. At Rundil Tutoring Services, we only have hand-picked tutors who are well versed in these and other strategies and can apply them, whether in IB Diploma, IGCSE, AP, or lower grades. Mathematics, Science, Physics, German, French, English, and more, no matter which subject is complex, our tutors can help.
Our tutors are available everywhere in:
- SWITZERLAND, including Zurich, Basel, Bern, Zug, Geneva, Lausanne, and all other cities.
- GERMANY, including Munich, Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart, Hamburg, Frankfurt, and all other cities and also in Austria.
- FRANCE, including Paris, Strasbourg, Nice, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Marseille, Rouen, and all other cities.
- THE NETHERLANDS, including Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague, Eindhoven, Utrecht, Wassenaar, and all other cities.
Find out more and book your tutor today!
