About IB

Sample Course List

Theory of Knowledge

Theory of Knowledge (TOK) is a class taken exclusively by IB students designed to tie together all aspects of the IB curriculum. TOK is separated into two semesters to be taken in the spring semester of the junior year and the fall semester of the senior year. Although it is not recommended, the order in which these two TOK semesters are taken may be adjusted for students with scheduling difficulties; thus, the TOK class should not pose an irreconcilable obstacle to completing the IB program.

TOK at Westwood is essentially a philosophy class that seeks to expand students’ bounds of thinking and thereby prepare them to complete IB essays. Texts studied in the past have included Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World, Edwin A. Abbot's Flatland, and Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, as well as selections from various philosophical texts. A typical class involves a quiz over past reading followed by group discussion on points of interest. Students are highly encouraged to voice their questions and opinions.

Aside from general philosophical study, TOK guides students through several IB requirements. During their junior year, students prepare and give a 10-minute-long TOK oral presentation, giving their views on a topic of choice, often a contemporary problem or issue. Later during the same semester, students write their TOK Essay, a philosophical, 1,500-word response to an IB prompt chosen individually by each student. During their senior year, students are guided by workdays and peer reviews in TOK through much of the work for their 4,200-word Extended Essay (EE).

A student's IB TOK grade is comprised of the TOK Oral and Essay grades as issued by IBO, and this final grade along with the student's IBO-issued EE grade will determine 1) whether or not a student receives a diploma and 2) how many extra points, if any, the student receives on his or her final IB point total. Receiving grades of "E," or elementary, (the lowest possible grade), on both the TOK and EE sections will automatically exclude a student from receiving an IB Diploma. However, higher scores on one or both of these two areas can add up to three points extra to a student's final overall IB grade.

TOK is typically not one of the more difficult IB classes. As long as a student keeps up with reading and essay deadlines and participates in class discussions, he or she should be well on the way to a good grade on the IB papers and orals, as well as on the TOK class itself.

Extended Essay

The Extended Essay (EE) is a required paper that all IB Diploma candidates must complete in order to be eligible for a Diploma. Though students may begin working on the EE at any time, it is due, completed and printed in triplicate, during the first week of December of a student's senior year. IB students may choose virtually any topic on which to write their EE, though their essay must be able to fit under one of 18 pre-determined IB fields:

Generally, with a little modification, any topic can find a home in one of these fields, and students are thus encouraged to use their imaginations in choosing a topic and to pick something they personally find interesting.

The maximum word limit for the EE is 4,200 (with the exception of the three science fields, for which the limit is 3,800), while the recommended minimum word count is 3,500. The EE is designed to be a research-based paper, meaning that hard evidence must be used to back up a student's thesis, not his or her own personal opinions. This also means that a student will not be "expected to make a contribution to knowledge within the subject" by the essay graders. Students are encouraged to rely heavily on printed texts rather than Internet sources when researching for the EE, and many students find the Perry-Castaneda Library at UT contains more than a sufficient number of texts with which to complete their research.

Though, as mentioned before, IB students may begin work on their EEs at any time, they will be given recommended deadlines for completing their research and actual deadlines for completing certain percentages of their essays during their senior year, fall semester session of TOK. A student will not be behind schedule if he or she does not begin working on the EE until the first semester of his or her senior year as long as the deadlines set in TOK are met. Some TOK class time will be used for completing peer critiques of students' EEs, though no class time will be given for writing or researching.

All students are also required to obtain a mentor for their EE, who will help students improve the quality and accuracy of their essays. The mentor can be any individual who is an expert on the topic the student is researching, and is required to meet regularly with the IB student, either face to face or via email or telephone, to discuss the student's work and progress. Past mentors have included various Westwood and UT professors and local businessmen and scientists, as well as individuals in other cities and, in some cases, other countries.

Students' EEs are sent in to IBO to be graded on a scale of A through E. If a student receives an 'E,' or Elementary, on his or her EE as well as on his or her TOK grade (see the "Theory of Knowledge" section for more information), then the student will not receive an IB Diploma. Receiving a high score on the EE, however, can greatly improve a student's chances of receiving up to three extra points on his or her final overall IB grade.

The Extended Essay is seen by most students as both a challenge, but also an excellent way to prepare for college classes, which often require students to produce papers of similar size and quality. The fact that students are allowed to choose their topics of research, however, often makes the EE a far more interesting and enjoyable venture than most normal research projects.