Thank you to Paul Petit, a world class Personal Project teacher for everything you taught us!

Checklist

The grader is searching for certain things in your report, and will tick them off as they go awarding points. So, make sure everything in the checklist is included in your report. An easy way to do this is to structure your report in a way that makes it obvious you have included them.  

The project will start with a title page and tabel contents then should adress the 4 bands of criteria, before ending with your appendices. 

The structure:

• Title page
• Table of contents
• Criterion A
  • Introduction to why you chose your project.
  • Reason for your chosen global context
  • Project goal and why it's complex
  • Application of prior-knowledge from classes.
  • Reasearch process - outlining how you developed research skills
  • How you checked source reliability with examples
• Criterion B
  • Criteria
  • Planning process
  • Timeline
  • Time management and self-management skills.
• Criterion C
  • Brief description of finished project
  • Challenges encountered during process and how you overcame them
  • Thinking skills
  • Communication and social skills.
• Criterion D
  • Evaluation of project against criteria
  • Reasons for such evaluation
  • What knowledge and skills you gained
  • Refer to evidence or process journal
  • How your project influenced your perspective on your chosen global context
  • Development as an IB learner. Atl skills and IB learner profiles.
  • Powerful conclusion
• Appendices (up to 10 pages)
  • Criteria chart
  • Timeline
  • Around 10 examples of process journal entries, which are referenced in report.
  • Images from process journal
  • Evidence of final project.
• References

 

Criterion A: Investigating

Reccomended length: 700-900 words

IB Descriptors: 

• Students define a clear goal and global context for the project, based on
  personal interests.
• Students identify prior learning and subject-specific
  knowledge relevant to the project.
• Students demonstrate research skills

Introduction

This is a very short paragraph on why you chose your project. If your project has an element of service, make sure to show how much you care about others, and how it will help people. IB examiners love this kind of thing. You could also talk about your projects connection to your later life. 

Global context

Explain how your personal interests led to your chosen global context. Next state how you narrowed down the global context to your specific personal project. State the global context in a well defined way.

Goal

State your goal, that you chose at the start of the project. Also state 2 reasons why this goal is challenging.

Examples for why your goal is challenging:

• Complexity
• Advanced knowledge
• New skills
• Time constraints,

Prior-learning

In this you need to show that you were able to transfer skills gained in your subject-specific classes to your personal project.

For example if you learnt soldering in Design class and you used it in your project that is prior-knowledge. Another example could be how you learnt some research skills in humanities. 

Include examples of prior-knowledge from 2 different subjects. They must be relevant, and should be referenced in the appendices. 

Research Process

This is the most important part of Criterion A. 

I reccomend you structure it like below:

• Use of website and books to gain the required knowledge for your project.
• Use of website and books to find way to achieve your end goal
• How you made sure to only look at relevant and reliable websites/books. (You never used wikipedia, right?)
• State you used the CRAAP test to evaluate your sources. https://libguides.ioe.ac.uk/evaluating/craap 
• Example of a source you evaluated with the CRAAP test.
• Show how according to the CRAAP test this source is reliable. Go through each part of the test. 

Criterion B: Planning

Reccomended length: 500-700 words

IB Descriptors: 

• Students develop criteria for the product/outcome.
• Students plan and
  record the development process of the project.
• Students demonstrate
  self-management skills.

Criteria for outcome

Create 4 specifications, that you would've wanted at the start of your project for your project to meet. Detail exactly what the best possible outcome for each specification is. If you have too many specifications, it will be difficult for you.

I reccommend that you create a table containing each specification as a column and grade bands as the rows. Then in each cell you write specific criteria that you need to meet to obtain the grade band. I'll provide a template criteria chart. To save words put this table in your appendices and in the actual report inlcude a quick summary and why you chose them. 

Criteria	Specification 1	Specification 2	Specification 3	Specification 4
7-8
5-6
3-4
1-2



Planning

To show you did lots of planning write out the timeline you originally created for your project. Again, keep it short in the report and put a more detailed version in the appendices. It could also be a good idea to put in this section, a timeline of how things actually went, to show what aprts of your plan you changed.

Self management skills

Detail how you feel you showed good self management skills. Include examples from you project. 

Specific skills to look at could be:

• Time-managment (planning ahead inorder to finish in time)
• Always being prepared with equipment and supplies
• Organisation (keeping an organised system for your process. I.E process journal)

Criterion C: Taking Action 

Reccomended length: 700-1000 words

IB Descriptors: 

• Students create a product/outcome in response to the goal, global context
  and criteria.
• Students demonstrate thinking skills.
• Students demonstrate communication and social skills.

Demonstration of product

This mark will come mostly from your presentation of your product, so in the report keep it brief. State exactly what you presented in the presentation

Demonstrate thinking skills

This can be done by showing the ways you overcame problems, while working on your project. 

Talk in depth about when you used thinking skills during the project.  I reccomend talking about three challenges you encountered how you used thinking skills to overcome them. Reference your personal project entries always. 

Types of thinking skills:

• Ctritical thinking
  • Recognizing problems
  • Interpreting data and identifying trends
  • Revising understanding
  • Proposing solutions
• Creativity and innovation
  • Generate new ideas with knowledge.
  • Create novel solutions to problems
  • Design new machines/media and improve ones. 
  •  Visible thinking strategies
• Transfer
  • Apply skills and knowledge in unfamiliar situations
  • Overcome problems using knowledge from other subjects.
  • Show the connections between different displicines.

Demonstrate communication and social skills.

Explain how being social allowed your project to progress. This could be as simple as asking some for help with your project, or being given acess to previously inaccessible information or resources because of how you interacted socially. 

Explain how you communicated with people to gain advice and help with your project. 

Examples of people you may have communicated with:

• Personal project supervisor.
• Experts (interview)
• Experts (online forum or email)
• Teachers
• Parents
• Peers

Criterion D: Reflection

Reccomended length: 800-1100 words

IB Descriptors:

• Students evaluate the quality of the product/outcome against their criteria.
• Students reflect on how completing the project has extended their knowledge and understanding of the topic and the global context.
• Students reflect on their development as IB learners through the project.

Evaluate product against criteria

Go through all the different specifications you outlined at the start and simply grade your self based on the criteria you set. Make sure to explain why you chose this criteria and reflect on what you could've improved. Do not give yourself full marks for everything this will ironically not get you top marks. Make sure you lack in one or two sections so you can do some quality reflection on improvment. 

What knowledge and skills you gained

Reflect in detail on how the project extended your knowledge and skills in certain areas. What matters is not whether you succeeded and met your goal but whether you learnt something, which can help you life. 

Talk about how you knew so little before starting the project but now you are an expert in your topic. 

How project changed understanding of global context

This one is difficult to understand. They basically want you to look at the global context and explain how you have realized the global contexts importance and seen examples of it.

For example if your global context was:  Scientific and technical innovation the impact of scientific and technological advances on society and on the environment. You could give examples of how you technology having a positive/ negative imapact on the environment and how important this is. 

Development as IB learners

Inorder to improve yourself as an IB learner you need to improve your Approach to Learning (ATL) skills and your IB learner Profiles.

During the report you will have mentioned many of the ATL's so you are basically summarizing all of them in one paragraph. 

Then write a paragraph explaining how you improved upon at least three IB learner profiles. These must be relevant and have examples. 

Conclusion

Give a final reflection and write something powerful to end your essay leaving the examiner in awe of your project. 

Appendices

The appendices are where you will put your personal proejct entries, evidence of your project and other things which you want the examiner to see but don't want to take up space in your report.

Rules for appendices:

• You can have up to 10 pages of appendices. 
• You can use any font size, as long as it is still readable.
• You can include images.
• You can have multiple entries on one page.
• Your entries should have a data and a title. 
• Each appendice, should have a number for easy referencing during your report.

 

 

 

 

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