ToK Essay Starter Activities
Brief ToK Essay Starter Activities: As the May 24 ToK Essay Titles are released teacher colleagues are planning how they will prepare students to write those essays I thought it would be useful to share a few resources that I have used with students in the early phases of the Essay process.
ToK Essay Activators
The ToK Essay Activators are questions that students can use at the beginning of their ToK Essay Planning Process. They are a way to start to understand the essay title. They’re the foundation of thinking.
The video explanation of this resource is linked here, and below.
A more detailed explanation of how to use these can be found here.
Link to FREE resources:
The "How to do the ToK Essay" video series.
Connect ToK Concepts to Knowledge Arguments.
The ToK Essay tests a number of fundamental skills, including:
The identification of ToK Concepts in the PT.
The extrapolation of ToK Concepts from the PT, and into knowledge issues.
The development of knowledge arguments (relating to the PT) based on the Knowledge Issues & concepts identified.
ToK Teachers can design a range of activities to help students develop and extend their skills in these areas. This could include familiarisation with the ToK Concepts (through games and drama). Here I present slightly more advanced skill development, the skill of connecting the ToK Concepts to Knowledge Issues.
The task is fairly obvious, but can produce quite developed / deep discussions amongst students. The students are asked to draw a line between the ToK Concept and the Knowledge Issue, and explain the connection.
You can swap out the Knowledge Issues to make them more focussed on specific Prescribed Titles, AoKs etc.
A more detailed explanation of the task, with related videos can be found at this link.
You can get a PDF copy of this graphic organiser at this link.
Other resources:
We have many other resources to help both teachers and students with the ToK Essay, and we will be publishing May 24 specific resources in the coming weeks. In the meantime you may find the following useful:
66+ Videos on writing ToK Essay, ToK Essay issues, RLS that can be used in ToK Essay etc.
80+ Blog Posts on the ToK Essay.
Lots of Student Specific Resources to help with you ToK Essay.
If you have questions about the ToK Essay, or suggestions for new content, I'd love to hear from you: Daniel@TokToday.com.
Stay Toktastic my friends,
Daniel, Bangkok, September 2023