Introduction

An extended essay in chemistry should be one of the most challenging and rewarding tasks experienced by an IB Chemistry Diploma student. Although the work is ultimately that of the student’s there are many other important stakeholders in the process. Too often it seems that the student is more or less left to ‘get on with it on their own’ and even when the supervisor is willing they may have little training in how to supervise the student. I’ve been marking chemistry Extended Essays for more than thirty years and was the Principal Examiner in charge of all chemistry EEs for over twenty years. I firmly believe that all students, provided they are willing to put in the necessary effort, can achieve at least a satisfactory grade and hopefully do better than this. It does not just depend on the student though. The school needs to have the right ethos and support mechanisms in place and the supervising teachers need good training. What I hope to do in this section of the website is to look at the whole process of the Extended Essay and give examples of good and bad practice and advice on how to excel in each of the Assessment Criteria. Since 2009 all Extended Essays in all subjects are marked according to the same criteria. This means there many points that are common to all Extended Essays as well as some that are specific to chemistry. Don’t be tempted to ignore the general points and just concentrate on the chemistry specific points. No matter how good a chemist they are, if a student does not know the purpose of the Extended Essay and how it should be structured they are unlikely to write a good Extended Essay. Note that the assessment criteria for Extended Essays changed radically for essays submitted after November 2017 (i.e. since the May 2018 session and onwards). Whereas there used to be eleven assessment criteria there are now only five.

I have created a separate web page on Resources for extended essays but one document you will need to be continually referring to is the official IB Extended Essay Guide. This should be available from your IB coordinator or you can download it yourself in pdf format from the Resources section in My IB (which can be accessed through the ibo.website) or directly from the IB.)