As regular readers know, in addition to teaching Beginning and Intermediate English Language Learners English and Social Studies, I also teacher mainstream ninth-grade English classes and an International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge class (and it looks like I’ll be teaching two TOK classes next year!).

In addition to IB Diploma candidates, I heavily recruit other students that are not taking other IB courses, including students who have previously been in my ELL classes.

I thought readers might be interested in some recent projects we’ve done there, and you can see more at our TOK class blog.

After we study each individual Way of Knowing and Area of Knowledge, small groups create posters and make short presentations that usually include:

* What they think the three most important things they’ve learned are and why they’re important.

* A picture they draw along with an explanation of how it’s connected to the WOK or AOK.

* A favorite quote from our textbook or materials we’ve studies and why they think it’s important.

* A Knowledge question.

Here’s a photo of one poster after we studied Human Sciences:

humansciences

As TOK teachers know, IB added several new Ways of Knowing and Areas of Knowledge to the curriculum this year. I’m finding it difficult to fit them all in, so, for two of the new ones — Religious Knowledge Systems and Indigenous Knowledge Systems — we just spent three days each studying each one.

Taking some questions directly from the new TOK Guide, I had students work in small groups, providing a number of links to resources, and had them develop a short slideshow and presentation using this outline:

What is this Area of Knowledge about?

What practical problems can be solved by applying this knowledge?

What makes this Area of Knowledge important?

Show the connections at least three Ways of Knowing have to this Area of Knowledge.

Here are some slidedecks and you can see more on our class blog:

Indigenous Knowledge Systems

More PowerPoint presentations from Sabreena

Religious Knowledge Systems

More PowerPoint presentations from Thien Y Huynh

Religious Knowledge Systems

More PowerPoint presentations from Pratishma

I’d love to hear ideas on how I can improve these assignments, so feel free to leave a comment!