Chemistry

[ochaya]

I am worry about Chemistry IA because our teacher is giving some of us a bad grades due to poor relationship with him but I still want to get 6 or 5 in chemistry. What can I do?

[Summer Glau]

There's a chemistry subforum on the site, so you could post chemistry questions there next time

http://www.ibsurvival.com/forum/40-chemistry/

Remember that IAs are moderated by the IB. If they feel your teacher is marking too hard, they could raise your IA marks. (though usually the opposite happens, but who knows with the IB xP) Try your best and follow the IB criteria as well as you can.

[ILM]

You can look at this link there is a bunch of important advices in making lab reports:

Follow the criteria, and another time i will give you the general format for the lab report:

This is what is requested to write in your lab report:

i) design:

- Specific Title

- Introduction (Peferable if design)

-Aim and Varibales (2marks)

- Hypotheses (Justified)

-Methodology: i) Materials ii) Procedure (It should contain how you will controll variables and how you will collect data) (4marks)

ii) Data collection and processing:

- Data collection (2 marks) (of the dependant variables)

-Data processing and analysis (2 marks)

-Presenting (Graphs and tables)

iii) conclusion and evalution;

-conclusion (2marks)

-Evalution ( 1) Sources of error: i)Systemetic ii) Random

2) Ways of improvement

*References (Must if design)

So your lab should be complete and word numbers are not important.

This was give by my chemistry teacher who i trust, (He is an IB examiner)

Following the rules and criteria = to nearly full mark, even if your realtion with the teacher is not so good, because IB will take samples.

[dessskris]

Well, even if your teacher gives you veeeeeery bad grades and you think it's impossible for you to score that low (like you can't believe that X% in paper Y is IB Z, where 0<=X<=100, 1<=Y<=3 and 0<=Z=<7), you can check with past year grade boundaries and see if he gave your the correct grade..?

Or since you mentioned poor relationship, you should build a better relationship with your teacher!! Even if you don't like them, don't show it! Act nicely in front of teachers. Submit works on time. Be active in class -- when the teacher asks something to the class, try to answer even if you are not so sure of the answer. Teachers like students like that.

Did he give you IA checklist thingy? Where it is described what you are expected to do for Design, DCP and CE. You should read it. This checklist is the same for every group 4 subject, I believe.

Write as much as possible in CE. Evaluate your procedure, too. Don't forget to suggest improvements. Put as many necessary details as possible.

If you need help with a lab report, come here and we would try to help we have that Chemistry help thread.. I myself have been gaining a lot of help from IBS

[master135]

How can you tell that the mark you have received is because of the poor relationship (its possible) and not what you actually deserved? Do you have a specific example of a marking criterion where you were not given what you think you deserve. Make sure you understand the IB labs markscheme (read the 2009 IB chem document). If you are sure the teacher is not marking properly, have a talk with him/her to justify what you think - you can also try the IB coordinator depending on how willing they are to talk. If the low marking is class-wide there is a good chance of being moderated up (if the labs are good in reality).

[kiwi.at.heart]

If he is marking you too hard your marks will go up when moderated, which is always better that being marked too easy and the your marks going down. But too be honest, if he has taught IB chem for a few years I would think he would know there is no point marking anyone lower than they should and it may be that you aren't filling the criteria for good marks. Even though you haven't got a good relationship with your teacher, ask for his advice on what you could do to improve your IAs (teachers love students that show they really care about their grades) and then if you still have questions come here. There are so many people here that can answer any question you might have. It's helped me quite a lot with my IAs which at the begging of the year I was getting 3s or 4s for and now I'm averaging about a 6.

[Drake Glau]

Did he give you IA checklist thingy? Where it is described what you are expected to do for Design, DCP and CE. You should read it. This checklist is the same for every group 4 subject, I believe.

It's not =/ I know one big one I found by personal experience was Chemistry requires quantitative and qualitative data whereas biology can sometimes be qualitative only and physics can easily be quantitative only. I'm sure there are other differences, but that was the first that came to my head without looking at them all.

[master135]

Did he give you IA checklist thingy? Where it is described what you are expected to do for Design, DCP and CE. You should read it. This checklist is the same for every group 4 subject, I believe.

It's not =/ I know one big one I found by personal experience was Chemistry requires quantitative and qualitative data whereas biology can sometimes be qualitative only and physics can easily be quantitative only. I'm sure there are other differences, but that was the first that came to my head without looking at them all.

This is definitely true - even though generally the criteria are very similar, they are not exactly the same and are interpreted slightly differently for each course and level. Take uncertainties for example, physics is a lot more picky in that aspect than chemistry (which is more picky than biology).

[dessskris]

Did he give you IA checklist thingy? Where it is described what you are expected to do for Design, DCP and CE. You should read it. This checklist is the same for every group 4 subject, I believe.

It's not =/ I know one big one I found by personal experience was Chemistry requires quantitative and qualitative data whereas biology can sometimes be qualitative only and physics can easily be quantitative only. I'm sure there are other differences, but that was the first that came to my head without looking at them all.

This is definitely true - even though generally the criteria are very similar, they are not exactly the same and are interpreted slightly differently for each course and level. Take uncertainties for example, physics is a lot more picky in that aspect than chemistry (which is more picky than biology).

Huh? idk but I first got a checklist in Physics and then I got exactly the same one in Chemistry. I have seen many other checklists, though, so we might be talking about different checklists. Or maybe that checklist was made by the Science coordinator at my school and it was given to all the IB science classes? I don't know. There is no IB logo nor my school crest on that paper so I'm not sure. I will scan and upload it later in case if it might help.

[Drake Glau]

I don't think there is a "IB Checklist". All I know is I've gotten 2 different checklists from chem and bio, and my physics teacher didn't even give us one ...

[master135]

Your teachers may have made their own checklists - for the actual IB markscheme check the IB syllabus (the latest one) under the labs section. This is what the moderators go by (interpreting it slightly differently for each science). You get a mark of 0, 1 or 2 in each criterion such as DCP CE etc based on the rubric in the syllabus. As far as I know you can mix match different lab reports with the highest mark in each criterion separately to get your final score out of 48 marks.

[laryxle]

I think people worry a lot about Chem IA's because you always hear horror stories about moderation, but this leads them to over-worry. Some of the lists of required things that people have posted are a bit over-the-top IMO; i've seen the marked samples of IA's on the IBO OCC and one that get 5/6, 6/6 for criteria have far less detail than what is in these lists. A lot don't have qualitative data, or references for design labs, and they still get full marks. For CE, some get 6/6 for 1 or 2 small paragraphs. Some people write a page and only about 10 sentences are actually counted as relevant by the marker. Be careful with IA's (follow the criteria very closely) but don't go overboard because you'll just end up producing too much, and so much unnecessary stuff.

[master135]

Its true - writing unnecessarily long reports is not a good idea and its important to stick to only whats necessary. As long as your report matches exactly what the criteria says and how the moderators interpret the criteria the report should score decently. You don't need to have anything not required by the criteria (for example - if I am not wrong the new criteria does not even require a hypothesis in reports). However, if it is part of the criteria it is a good idea to have it as part of the report as completely as possible. Its been a while since I saw the reports on the OCC but they did seem to be marked slightly easier than expected. Still, having a moderation of 10 marks down occur (i.e. one full level) is not uncommon, so always best to be safe than sorry.

Edited December 26, 2010 by master135

[dessskris]

this is the checklist I was talking about. I hope it helps a little.

[master135]

this is the checklist I was talking about. I hope it helps a little.

Yup seems right to me based on the new criteria. Its good your teacher has explained each category in more detail for you. As mentioned before, the interpretation (in terms of how strictly each criterion is followed) can vary based on which science it is.