Here, we look at how to score 7 in IB Chemistry. Not an easy task by any stretch, but one of our teaching team of IB Examiners here, gives you her top tips on how to do it.
Margarita, an IB examiner with 27 years of teaching experience, tells you how to score a 7 in your final IB exams.
Students need to have a good understanding of the key IB Chemistry concepts to score a 7.
My top tip is that students need to have a good understanding of the key concepts. Plus, the context in which these concepts can be used. So this means when they read the free response questions they need to straight away pick up the key concepts that they need to connect together in order to answer that question. Because the answer can be in bullet points as long as the key concepts are in their answers – in these bullet points or short sentences. This is my first tip. It’s important that a good deep understanding of a concept and how it can be used in the answers.
Use mind maps based on the Chemistry syllabus for revision.
Another tip for IB Chemistry is that students can do special revision before the exam by making mind maps and peer tutoring each other, as long as they don’t leave any gaps in the understanding of any of the units and they need to try while they are making mind maps they need to try to connect every single concept from units of kinetics with other concepts and other units from other parts of the syllabus. Because chemistry, I believe, is a very sequential science and subject and, therefore, every concept can find its connection with the other units and the most fundamental concept in chemistry is bonding.
It can help to use the subject guide, as a basis for your mind map.
Bonding should be the number one topic for revision if you are aiming for a 7 in IB Chemistry.
Therefore, I recommend brushing up on knowledge of bonding because every question around any other topic is deeply connected with bonding. Any property, any reaction, can be easily explained with the bonds that exist in particular reactions or what kind of products should be expected to be produced. So it is key that they have a very secure knowledge of the bonding concept and bonding is a very, very broad topic.
Tactics for multiple-choice questions are important.
When they approach multiple-choice questions which, this year, are going to be 10 percent more for their final exam, they need to read carefully (because sometimes the IB puts a little trick there) they need to read carefully what the question is about, underline the keywords and then try to eliminate the impossible answers.
Usually, that is easy, but sometimes there are two answers that are quite similar and could both sound correct. That’s why the IB tests which one is the best answer, which means that one of them is more general. The other one is less broad and, therefore, the one that is the right answer is the one that covers most of the situations in Chemistry.
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These are my top tips to help students score 7 in IB Chemistry, and if you have any more questions please ask. Aim for a 7 in IB Chemistry!
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For more detail on the Chemistry IB course click here for the subject guide. Then for the HL Chemistry IB course click here.
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