ToK Exhibition Skills Builder (part 1)
Building skills is the key to success in the ToK Exhibition.
If you're only going to read one document about the ToK Exhibition then the Subject Report May 22 is the document to read. It's the most definitive explanation of what the ToK examiners are looking for. I look at the contents of the subject report in this post, I mention it here because it informs this post.
This post is about building skills for the ToK exhibition. There is some mystique, chatter and a little confusion about the ToK exhibition. My starting point with any ToK assessment is that it's about skills so we need to identify and teach the skills required for the exhibition.
I'll just take this opportunity to plug the ToK skills map (linked here). Please have a look at that and feel free to suggest any skills that are yet to be added or developed on the map. I will also take this opportunity to beg for a like, subscribe, comment or share if you find these materials useful.
ToK Exhibition Skills.
So what are the TOK exhibition skills? I have developed the following map of the specific exhibition skills which we can use to guide us in our teaching.
At the top are the two meta-skills, these are the overriding skills needed to do about an exhibition I think these are developing an argument for the objects and justifying their argument. However these are fairly abstract skills you need to break them down into tangible things that students can do, practise and develop to do well in the exhibition.I have called these the foundational skills
Foundational ToK Exhibition Skills
The foundational skills are: identifying an appropriate subject, constructing a knowledge link of the object to self, constructing a knowledge link of the object to the prompt, identifying the unique contribution of the objects to the exhibition, and identifying evidence for the objects contribution to the exhibition.
Now that we've identified the discrete foundational skills required for the exhibition we can start to design learning tasks for each of these skills, and we can build these learning tasks into ToK teaching from early in the course.
Teaching the foundational skills.
I created a lesson to help students to develop these skills, the Student Skills Builder proforma can be downloaded here:
ToK-Exhibition-Skills-Builder_-Pt-1-1
The lesson is designed to be given in the first few weeks of the ToK course in DP1, so we can shortcut some of the gaps in knowledge that students will have at this stage of the course. This is done by devising my own prompt, and giving it to the students. In this case the prompt was why do we change pre-existing knowledge ? The main reason for giving them a prompt was that I could then guide the choice of objects in order to build the first skill: identifying an appropriate object. it also gets around any problems of academic honesty of reusing prompts later on etc.
I asked the students to bring an object which had either wowed them, or had changed the way they think about the world. by directing them I was helping them to develop the skill identifying an appropriate object.
We spent considerable time discussing the objects they chose, and why they chose those objects. I then went on to show them how to develop their personal link to the object into a knowledge link to the object. This is the gap of understanding for students at this stage in the ToK Course, That is moving from The Experienced world to the ToK world, their ability to do this will develop through modelling and familiarity with the contents of the course.
Moving from the 'real world' to the ToK World is the key understanding for ToK.
Modelling
Before we got onto to the contribution of the object to the exhibition (what I call the argument )I shared with the students the Exemplar that I have written which is also linked in the web post on this lesson.
The Exemplar Lesson:
ToK-Exhibition-Skills-Builder_-Pt-1_Daniel
At the end of the Exemplar there are a set of questions and annotation tasks which are designed to help the students to identify where in the Exemplar I have linked my own experiences to the knowledge world and the knowledge prompt. So I'm just trying to model that skill for them before asking them to do it themselves.
Now, at this stage we are taking things very slowly - I am modelling how to make the links, and then asking them to do it with their own objects. I am giving them a lot of verbal & written feedback on what they’re doing. This is really the process of creating the ToK Mindset - if you don’t know what that is I made an earlier video on it (linked here) - this is the heart of ToK, and once students have developed The ToK Mindset they have ‘cracked’ ToK.
The last skill that I build in this lesson is the identification & use of Evidence for the claim arising from the object. The Subject Report really clarifies what IB Examiners want as ‘evidence’ for the claim, and this is required to get into the top 3 marking bands.
I hope that you found this post & these resources helpful. If you have any requests for content or resources please don't hesitate to contact me (Daniel@TokToday.com).
Have a great week,
Daniel,
Lisbon, Nov. 22