Preparing+for+Papers+1+2,+and+3

The best preparations begin at the time you begin taking the HEM and/or 20C courses. But there are good preparations to be made even on the eve of the exam.

Develop the assigned study materials and organize them as the course proceeds
According to the IB History Guide, “Candidates are expected to study their chosen sections in appropriate depth in order to demonstrate in-depth historical knowledge and skills”. What is “appropriate depth” and how do you prepare to provide it in an exam?

This means that on the day of the test you need to demonstrate that in-depth knowledge, by writing essays with very clear structure and plenty of supporting arguments and evidence. The most important factor in doing well in an exam is your ability to store, recall and deploy sufficient historical evidence! Essay writing skills alone won't get you far; you must come to know key events and interpretations.

During the History of Europe and the Mediterranean and 20th Century World History Topics courses, I try to prepare you for this by giving you a variety of ways of acquiring and capturing this knowledge. It’s all meant to work as a reinforcing system: You
 * Read the assigned homework, take brief notes
 * Take an online quiz that identifies the key points in each lesson, and which gives you immediate feedback, and the correct answers
 * Listen to a debate or participate in a class discussion on the subject, and take notes or read the outline notes you receive from your classmates,
 * Fill out a review chart whose categories sort events into easily memorable structures of knowledge
 * Practice any online quizzes you did not already master, before the unit content test
 * Take the online unit content test, and receive immediate feedback, with all the correct answers
 * Consult the database of past essay exam questions and examiner comments on past student essay answers; identify clusters of questions that are central to the unit and focus on preparing for those questions
 * Review analytical charts and outline answers to central previous essay answers before the unit essay or DBQ test
 * Take the unit essay test or DBQ test
 * Use all these materials for your review for the midterm, final exam and IB exams.

The key tool you need to develop are the review analytical charts. How many points of evidence are enough to include there? As a rule of thumb, I recommend that you prepare at least thirty specific facts in each chart.

Start preparing charts from the beginning of our studies together! They are much more valuable if they are used during our original coverage of the material in class, to help you capture and organize knowledge in an active, personally-engaging way. So develop your own charts, and use them to integrate information from debate notes or the homework reading.

Understand from the start what content you'll need to know at exam time, and "plan backwards"
By the end of your IB History experience, you will be expected to write knowledgeable essays in a certain number of subject areas. What these topics are is clearly set out in the IB curriculum, as are the major dimensions of each that you may be called to write about. I summarize these topics and their key dimensions on the document, "[|IB History Content Review–Check-off]".

I recommend you use this document as the "highest-level" organizing tool for your content materials archive and topic organization. Then:
 * Group other materials in the categories identified on the document.
 * Analyze each category for gaps and weaknesses in your understanding.
 * Use these categories as a basis for distributing study assignments among your study group.

Identify key exam-taking terminology and techniques, and use your history courses to learn and practice them

 * Indispensable skills
 * What the key "command terms" used in questions mean, and what they require when you set about answering them.
 * How to structure a history essay
 * How to provide what is expected in each section: introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion
 * Useful basic skills for everyone to consider
 * How to make good use of short quotes
 * Advanced skills for consideration by those who would like to qualify for the highest essay grades
 * How to include a historiographical perspective (prominent previous historians' interpretations), explained here.
 * How to challenge the assumptions in the guiding question, explained and trained here.

Understand the full IB requirements
What do you really need to know for the exams? How many topics do you need to prepare?

It's easy to look at the great diversity of questions asked in past IB exams and to conclude that there are dozens of potentially topics to prepare per exam. It's a short step from that observation to the conclusion that there is simply not enough time to do that kind of preparation and perhaps, to give up on doing any preparation at all.

I recommend that you focus on reviewing the central topics from each unit we have done. I expect that this will give you the basis to answer a sufficient number of questions where you can do a good job.

Here I propose an abbreviated list of the topics I think you should try to know for the exams. After each topic, I attach the central question(s) you should be prepared to answer about it.

By mastering these questions, will you be qualified to give successful answers to all questions the IB might ask? No, but your preparing to answer these particular questions offers the following advantages:
 * These are the most obvious, mainstream questions regarding these topics. They constitute the most likely subjects for assessment of knowledge about them.
 * Preparing these questions will lead you to stockpile points of evidence that can be "repurposed" to respond to a wide variety of related questions.

Paper 1: Paper 2: Paper 3 [HL students only]
 * The interwar years:
 * Peace Settlement, 1919: What were the aims of the participants at the Paris Peace conference, and what were the eventual terms of the treaties and their main effects?
 * The "Twenties", 1920-9: How did the international system set up by the Paris treaties evolve in the 1920s?
 * Depression Years, 1929-36: How did the international system set up by the Paris treaties evolve in the 1930s?
 * War (x3: Origins, course and effects: What were the origins of the war? Why did the victor win when it did and not before? What were the war's main effects?)
 * WW1:
 * WW2
 * WW2 in the Pacific
 * Chinese Civil War
 * SIngle-party states (x3: Rise, establishment/policies, effects: What were the origins of the authoritarian leader's eventual rule? What did he do to establish/consolidate his rule? What policies did he and his followers enact, and to which effects?)
 * Hitler's Germany
 * Mao's China
 * Mussolini's Italy
 * [Lenin's Russia--for HL students]
 * Taught in HEM
 * The French Revolution: What were the origins of the revolution? Why did the main events happen when they did and not before? What were the revolution's main effects?
 * Italy
 * Pre-unification, unification: What conditions preceded the unification process, especially during 1800-1849? Why did unification happen when and how it did, and not otherwise?
 * Germany
 * Pre-unification, unification, post-unification events: What conditions preceded the unification process, especially during 1800-1849? Why did unification happen when and how it did, and not otherwise? What policies did the country follow post-unification, and to what effect?
 * Russia
 * The end of tsarist Russia: What were the origins of the revolution? Why did the main events happen when they did and not before?
 * Lenin's Russia: What did he do to establish/consolidate his rule? What policies did he and his followers enact, and to which effects?)
 * Taught in 20C
 * Late 19th century European diplomacy, the origins of WW1
 * The interwar years
 * The course and effects of WW2

Inventory your knowledge base and compare it to the requirements
Here is the overview chart already introduced above, which you can use to check off which of the topics above you are sufficiently prepared for: "[|IB History Content Review–Check-off]"

On what basis are you doing each check-off: Your impressionistic evaluation of your own knowledge? A much better basis would be if you had good review tools on a topic, such as good notes or better yet, good review charts on that topic.

Do you have a review chart that corresponds to each of the required topics above? Such a chart should allow you to:
 * Gather all the most important points of evidence on that topic onto one page.
 * Sort these points of evidence along important categories, which can then serve you as the unifying themes of your essay.
 * Reminder: Two such categories that usually serve the purpose are what I call the "levels" (economic, political and cultural, or similar) and "phases" (long-term causes, short-term causes, immediate causes, or similar).

Many of my assignments over the course of the year lead to the production of just such review charts. At this point, you should be able to dip into your class files and pull out these charts, and organize them into a comprehensive review packet, a kind of "knowledge base" of course materials.
 * [|E-HEM Analytical Charts, 2015-16] This document gives you:
 * Links to the blank charts
 * References to the lesson number on which each chart featured among the homework assignments. You should be able to use this to quickly find your own, filled-in version of each chart.

By comparing the topics for which you do have charts with the complete list of topics above, you should now be able to identify where you have "gaps" in your knowledge base. These are the holes you need to "fill in" in the next step of your preparation for the exams. .

Produce needed additional review materials
Did we prepare in class all the charts that now would be needed to review all the points above? No, that's why you will now need to produce some new charts.

To make this process more efficient, I provide you with pre-formatted blank charts for many topics. These can be found in the pages that correspond to specific topics on this wiki. For example: In the "Germany", "War" and ""Single-Party States" pages.

Where will you get the points of evidence needed to fill in these new charts. Many places, including:
 * Class reading, discussion and debate notes
 * ActiveHistory charts, worksheets and quizzes
 * Quia quizzes and tests
 * Shannon Leggett's incredibly detailed and useful topic outlines, included at the bottom of the page of most content sections on this wiki, and also included here:
 * French Revolution
 * [[file:Fr Rev Outline-Leggett.pdf]]
 * Napoleon
 * [[file:Napoleon Outline-Leggett.doc]]
 * German Unification
 * [[file:German Uni Outline-Leggett.doc]]
 * Russia–19th Century Background
 * [[file:Russia Bckgd Outline-Leggett.doc]]
 * [[file:Alexander II Outline-Leggett.doc]]
 * Russian Revolution and Lenin's Russia
 * [[file:Rus Rev-Lenin-StudyGuide-Leggett.doc]]
 * WW I
 * [[file:WW1-Study Guide-Leggett.doc]]
 * [[file:WW1-Timeline&Vocab-Leggett.doc]]
 * Interwar Diplomacy
 * [[file:Interwar-Timeline-Leggett.doc]]
 * [[file:Interwar Dipl Evts-Grid-Leggett.docx]]
 * Fascist Italy
 * [[file:Mussolini Outline-Leggett.doc]]
 * [[file:Mussolin-Vocab-Leggett.doc]]
 * Weimar and Nazi Germany
 * [[file:Weimar Outline-Leggett.doc]]
 * WW II
 * [[file:WW2 Causes-Outline-Leggett.doc]]

Outline answers to the questions most likely to be asked
Look over the lists of past exam questions that I have provided on this wiki. Compare it to the IB Definition of the given topic. Look at the "Major Areas of Focus" analysis I provide on each topic page. Based on all these elements, write down the questions that you think are most likely to be asked.

Try to work together with one or more classmates. Divide the questions among yourselves and then each one prepare an essay outline for his/her share of the questions. Photocopy or scan and distribute among the team.

Practices I Recommend on the Day of the Exam
1. Spend 5 minutes reading and thinking about the essay choices. Choose the question by asking yourself: Can I answer the entire question that is asked? Do I understand the requirements of the command word? Here is some valuable advice from fellow IB History teacher, Harris-Clippinger.


 * WARNING!! Broad open- ended questions are the most difficult, but are the questions most often chosen by weaker students. (Example: Chose one European country and explain how it was impacted socially and economically by WWI). This type of question requires the most skill in terms of creating an analytical thesis, arguing a point as opposed to narrating all that you know, and additionally, requires great skill in selecting relevant knowledge to present. Weaker students are attracted to these types of questions because they think they know enough about the topic ("Oh yeah... I know something about WWI," says the student to themselves). What they don't realize is that this question requires a student to have detailed knowledge about one countries' economic and social conditions from 1919 to 1939 and that they must argue that these conditions were caused by WWI.
 * You must answer the entire question. How many topics are identified? What is the timeframe that must be addressed (meaning you must comment on the beginning, middle, and the end). When specific dates are given, (example: 1919-1939) ask yourself what exactly happened in 1919 and then in 1939. There was a reason these dates were selected to construct the timeframe.
 * If you are excited to see a question on the test because you are confident that you "know" it, it is vital that you review your thesis, and if you have time, your essay. Confident, excited students tend to narrate all that they know on the set subject in the question rather than analyzing the subject. While this will usually earn you a passing score of 10, you will be disappointed by this result because you felt sure that you "knew" the answer (please read the descriptor for markband 8-10 on the IB Paper 3 scoring guide). Narrating is not answering the question. It is listing out relevant knowledge that implies analysis and makes me connect the dots to figure out how the knowledge should be used to answer the question.
 * Here's an example: Analyze the aims and achievements of Cavour. A student who narrates writes: "he did this, and then this, and then this, and then Italy was united" (an 8-10 score). A better student writes: "Cavour wanted to do these things, and then he did this, and this, and this, and Italy was united" (an 11-13 score because it at least acknowledged the aims). The best student writes "Cavour wanted to achieve these things, and these events illustrate his successes because... and these events illustrate his failures" (a 14-16 score). Do you see the difference? Narrating everything you know on this subject, even if it is detailed, full of dates, and in chronological order, will not help you analyze. Selecting the relevant information that directly answers the set question and then using the information as support to a thesis that directly answers the question is the goal.

2. Spend 5 minutes outlining your response... yes.... OUTLINE!

3.. Write your thesis and introductory paragraph then STOP. Check your thesis to make sure that your thesis directly answers the question that is asked. This step is the most important one. Students who have studied hard, know their history, and are analyzing can still fail an exam if they have set themselves up to analyze something other than what the question set requires.

4. Now continue to write your response.

5. When your are done, draw a line through your essay plan or outline to indicate it is not part of your essay. Include it within the exam answer booklet.