Jump to content

HL History-- coping or not?


schouston1991

Recommended Posts

Hey guys,

Alright so I do HL History and i abcolutaly LOVE it.

However, man there is soooooo much course content involved! Is any one else finding the class one of their most stress full subjects or not? Just wanted to know how everyone is coping and what sort of strategies they use to keep up with everything.

Our teacher is forever giving us hand outs and photocopies chapters out of various textbooks and i find it terribly difficult to find the times to summarise it all constanlty. Its crazy

-wb

-soph x

Link to post
Share on other sites

history was a ton of work for me, but if u keep up and keep refreshing yourself about what you've learned, the exam'll be easy to prep for. The notes are really important caus u'll be using them to study for your exams instead of having to flip through 3983742 books last minute... you can also just highlight key points on your handouts.. that's also effective, but I find that it's harder to commit to memory the things I highlight instead of note-making

o and what I also found helpful was a timeline and a list of quotes that u can potential use on your exams

Edited by cixelsyD
Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey guys,

Alright so I do HL History and i abcolutaly LOVE it.

However, man there is soooooo much course content involved! Is any one else finding the class one of their most stress full subjects or not? Just wanted to know how everyone is coping and what sort of strategies they use to keep up with everything.

Our teacher is forever giving us hand outs and photocopies chapters out of various textbooks and i find it terribly difficult to find the times to summarise it all constanlty. Its crazy

-wb

-soph x

sophie :D i know mr humble gives us ALOT of work, its crazy, but these holidays what i've done to help me get through it, is read one JSTOR article, do notes on it and then put it away. So each day or every second day i do a different handout. it's just easier that way instead of doing it all at once.

And the textbook work is realllllllllllllly annoying and hard to concentrate on but what i do is i sit down, i read a paragraph, i summarise and then i get up go for a walk and sit back down again. works great!

goood luck! :D

Link to post
Share on other sites

timelines are really helpful. we did eerything all out of order, so it help put it into perspective. also, which histroy are you doing? i did histroy of ther americas, and hen we did the rise and rule of single party states, it was helpful to make a chart, about the ruler, and his rise to power, how he maintained it, education, forign policies, domestic policies, propaganda, ect. that is what helped me the most in the end.

and for different wars i made cause and effect charts two, and major battle.... alos very very helpful.

Link to post
Share on other sites

timelines are really helpful. we did eerything all out of order, so it help put it into perspective. also, which histroy are you doing? i did histroy of ther americas, and hen we did the rise and rule of single party states, it was helpful to make a chart, about the ruler, and his rise to power, how he maintained it, education, forign policies, domestic policies, propaganda, ect. that is what helped me the most in the end.

and for different wars i made cause and effect charts two, and major battle.... alos very very helpful.

Really? Whenever we did timelines in History, I found that they were useless [to me, unless you consider the following as a timeline]. I find it much easier just to make a list of terms (no chart) in chronological order, and then write their definition/historical significance/results under them. I found that I never had enough space to write on a chart, and I would always leave out important information whereas in a list, I could just blah blah blah on about everything and try to memorize. :)
Link to post
Share on other sites

Really? Whenever we did timelines in History, I found that they were useless [to me, unless you consider the following as a timeline]. I find it much easier just to make a list of terms (no chart) in chronological order, and then write their definition/historical significance/results under them. I found that I never had enough space to write on a chart, and I would always leave out important information whereas in a list, I could just blah blah blah on about everything and try to memorize. :)

i would take my notes and readings and from that i would make a chart. i also had the term list, but i never really found it helpful at exam time. the charts helped me. i didn't put them on the exam, i just found it helpful for the type of questions that i chose to answer. i seriously wrote three answers on Castro in the exam.

Link to post
Share on other sites

History is my most homework-heavy class. About once every month and a half we have to write three essay outlines, then buddy up with friends who chose other outlines and learn nine or ten essay outlines. We then have to write an essay based on one of the outlines.

Our teacher decided to do our EEs early, and gave us assignments to help us through it if we wanted to do it in History. If you didn't want to, you did a practice HI.

Apart from that there's the occasional map to colour (we long for these, as they're an easy several marks)!

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I love it! Best class.

I started off with 6.5's and 6's. Then I dipped into the 4.5's and 5's. Now I'm back to the 6's and 6.5's and just got a 6.5 in my exam! However, I can never get a 7. No matter how hard I try, how many pages I write, I never seem to get that one magic number. :P

Link to post
Share on other sites

Our class comprises of readings and class discussions. If he assigns us anything, it's a paper. Thing is, I was stupid enough not to take notes during those discussions, and that's one year down the drain. He also mentioned something about a syllabus change, but never really went into detail. Anyone hear about this?

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

I find history one of the easiest subjects I'm studying. At the same time it's also my favourite subject. I don't really find it that much work, but it might be because I enjoy reading history books on my free time and have read several books on most of the topics I do my essays on. What I like in the IB History programme is that in order to get top grades you don't need to know that many things well, it is enough to know a few topics well. For example I was able to get a 7 in all 3 papers by knowing only Spanish Civil War and Russia between 1917-1941 (well had to write one comparison between the foreign policies of Hitler and Stalin, without having studied for Hitler but it worked all right).

As to when it comes to timelines I've never done them, or considered doing. I normally concentrate on grasping the concepts of the topics I'm studying. I concentrate more on reasoning what was going on, why and how was it done. The facts normally come automatically after I've understood the stuff.

And to IA:s, our teacher basically gave us some advice and a deadline somewhere next January (I'm starting IB2 this August). I was planning on doing during the Summer, but found out that I really don't have time. I'm definitely looking forward on doing it, I think I have quite an interesting idea for my topic and look forward to finding more information about it.

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

History is great but it can be tricky with so much to learn, quotes to store in your already flooded memory banks, historiography to consider... the list is endless.

I find it helpful to learn, not memorise. That way, recall is easier.

But what's the difference between learning and memorising?

Learning is when you have sufficient knowledge to be able to teach the topic two/three weeks after you've done the test in class.

Memorising is a useful tool, but not the best way. (In my opinion)

Link to post
Share on other sites

i belive that the syllabus is new for those testing in the 2010 exams. IB changes the syllabus every few years.
According to my teacher, the new syllabus is going to be harder than the current one, so i guess i'm lucky to be in the last year with the old syllabus <3

Like many people have already said, I also find History hard because of allll the reading and memorising. Our teacher gives us so many handouts as well!! But luckily I'm not doing too badly. I just make sure i read through all the info I'm given, highlight handouts, and reread through the day's notes made in class. Note taking is also pretty useful, sometimes just the action of writing notes helps to get things into my head, but maybe that's just me because when i write notes i tend to say in my head what i'm writing lol

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...