Introduction

The chemistry contents of the Core and AHL part of the syllabus should be familiar to practising Chemistry teachers. It mainly contains the sort of basic Chemistry that can be found in any good text book for 16-19 year old Chemistry programmes whatever the system. Some may find that compared to their own national system that there is more Organic Chemistry  and less Physical Chemistry than they are use to. Others may lament that testing for the presence of particular ions or looking at the Chemistry of groups in the Periodic Table other than Groups 1 and 7, which are still on their own national curriculum, are missing in the IB. If you have one or more of the text books written specifically for the IB and access to some good general text books then you should have little difficulty finding examples and explanations for the concepts you are required to teach. Perhaps the two areas where there may be less familiarity are the concept of entropy and the whole of Topic 11 on Measurement and data processing which are not found in many other comparable national syllabi.
 

 

Contents

The syllabus

This section takes an overall view of the syllabus but then in a separate link concentrates on those areas of the syllabus where there are mistakes or problems in the written IB Chemistry Subject Guide which are not perhaps immediately obvious.

 

 

Teaching the topics

I've gone (actually I'm still going!) through each of the topics and produced a separate page for each sub-topic. Each sub-topic starts with some sort of introduction - often a pause for thought to get you thinking a little bit deeper about the sub-topic. For example, VSEPR theory appears so useful as it enable chemists to predict shapes and bond angles but actually when you examine it in more detail it is not quite so straightforward as it seems. I've then basically listed what has to be covered during the teaching of the sub-topic and how to teach the topic including tips on what to emphasise. I've given the references to the pages in my books where the basic material that needs to be covered can be found and further suggestions for additional resources including often embedded videos. You can just click on these and they are ready to play. On the right are suggestions for practical work and also a list of basic new vocabulary which may be helpful to those who do not have English as their first language. Finally for each sub-topic I have made up completely new short answer questions. These can be given either as homework or as tests and detailed answers are provided. They are designed to encourage students to think as well as testing basic recall as I believe strongly that the student who understands each topic will be the one who achieves best in examinations and more importantly, will be best prepared to continue with their education at university.  

 

 

Relationships between topics

I find that many teachers nowadays tend to teach in a modular fashion. Often this is to fulfil the requirements of the various syllabi which tend to set out the topics individually and also the examinations. Certainly in the UK at the moment students take their A level  exams in modules and in a sense once they have sat the exam for one of the modules they can more or less forget about that branch of Chemistry for the rest of the course. The IB syllabus is also set out into eleven topics and perhaps it is tempting to teach these as separate entities. To some extent the exam does mirror this, particularly in the order of the multiple choice questions in Paper 1. However in Paper 2 the first question, which carries a considerable number of marks, is a Data Response question which will cut across several topics. I think it is much better practice to teach holistically and this section is an exercise in making relationships between each topic and the other ten during your actual teaching of each topic. This is followed up by one carefully worked through example for you to use with your students which leads to some interesting Chemistry.

 

 

Making links with TOK, ‘Aim 8’ and the International Dimension

This is unique to the IB and teachers often struggle to make meaningful links as opposed to false or trite links to Theory of Knowledge, ‘Aim 8’ and the International Dimension. What I have done in this section is to take each of the eleven topics in turn and give several detailed examples of links to all three of these different areas that you can use when teaching your students. By combining these examples and also relating the current topic to the other ten topics you will increase both your students’ understanding of Chemistry and, perhaps just as important, their enjoyment of Chemistry . They will be able to see the relevance of our subject more clearly and begin to question more as well as be better prepared to take the final exams.

 

 

Multiple choice questions by topic

Ultimately students need to be good at answering multiple choice questions. There are many already in circulation but most of these come from past IB papers.  In this section there are tests of twenty questions each provided for every Topic at both Standard level and Higher Level (for those large topics such as Bonding there are four tests - two at each level). The tests are downloadable to give to students and there is also a downloadable pre-completed answer grid for you to mark them quickly. The tests can be given either as tests or as homework. The unique ‘selling point’ about all the more than 450 questions on the tests is that not only are they are all written in the IB style for the current programme but they are all completely new so students (and teachers) will not have seen them before.