Teaching SL & HL together

Teaching SL & HL together in the same class

One of the items on my list of Essential resources is try to organise it so that you can teach Standard level and Higher Level students in separate classes. Unfortunately in many schools you may have no option but to teach them together. I’ve been really lucky in my teaching career in that I have always had classes large enough to teach Higher Level and Standard Level separately. One of the questions I am often asked at IB Chemistry workshops is how do you teach them together if you have to and, of course, I cannot answer from direct personal experience. Some years ago I posed the question to some experienced teachers who do have to teach Standard and Higher Level together and asked them how they coped and what advice they would give.

I'm extremely grateful to Antoine and Paul for providing the following two very helpful replies. (I have updated their replies slightly to take account of the fact that now only one option is required.)

Advice from experienced teachers

1. From Antoine Giusti

Combined HL and SL classes are my norm. When I first started running the Chemistry course at Maartens College here in Holland I was almost ripping hair out of my head but now I have settled down into it. The fact that the classes were relatively small made no difference.

I have 5 lessons of HL per week. The SL students join for 3 of these lessons and I make sure that 2 of the HL/SL lessons are a double lab period.

I try to choose the option so that the SL material overlaps with the HL as much as possible. I have to rethink my structure for the coming year due to the curriculum change (I had a class with only SL students this year).

I try to organise my lessons so that at the start of each new topic I have a few lessons with both HL and SL together. I then cover the HL points making sure that I have done the relevant SL theory first to lay down the background.

Sometimes if I run too far ahead with the HL I give them some other work to do until the SL catches up. Occasionally I cancel the class.

If the SL runs too far behind I try to find a lesson when they are all free and I call them in for extra lessons. Of course the larger the class is the harder this is to do due to timetable clashes. But somehow over the past 4 years I guess I have been relatively lucky.

Occasionally it works the other way round with HL behind the SL, but then I do my combined class anyway – the extra theory often helps the SL students.

As far as labs are concerned till now, my SL students do almost the same number of hours as the HL but this year I am going to trim that back a bit.

I think that the changes in the curriculum will make it easier for me to have these combined classes but I can tell you more about that this time next year.

Hope this helps you,

Antoine

2.  From Paul R. Harrison

Like Antoine, mixed SL/HL is the norm for me and has been in three different schools over the past eight years. I thought this was normal until following discussions in this forum in the past and at workshops. In my opinion, it was harder to mix the two together logically in previous programmes because of the need for more than one option. The shift first to two options for each level and now to just one option for each level has made it more manageable and made the option more of a genuine choice.

Timing of lessons helps. I currently have 6 lessons per week, two of which are HL only, the rest mixed. This gives me sufficient time for both over the two years.

Like Antoine I also tend to go over the top with lab work for the SL students, but I try to counter this with HL-only labs in the HL-only lessons rather than trying to cover all of the lab work in one combined session. Where I do have combined sessions, there is a higher expectation in some cases for the HL students. For example, a kinetic lab investigating the effect of temperature may ask HL students to calculate activation energy but not necessarily the SL students (although I encourage any that want to try).

The choice of the option can greatly help the time management too. I am opting for Option B: Biochemistry  partly because I can extend the AHL kinetics section into enzymes, and this works quite well.

Paul

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