General Resources for Chemistry Extended Essays

A good library and IT resources are essential

1. The IB has produced a very helpful page with links to many aspects of Extended Essays. This includes the Extended Essay Guide, The Extended Essay In Practice and Extended Essay Assessment. The current Extended Essay guide is essential. The Extended Essay in Practice contains Teacher Support Material,  Subject Specific Guidance in Chemistry and three videos (the role of the librarian,  initial and interim sessions of the reflection process and the viva voce).    Extended Essay Assessment contains seven authentic examples of student extended essays in chemistry together with their respective RPPFs and examiner’s commentaries. It is worth noting that the examples include essays researched and written using secondary data; these may be useful resources for students who have reduced access to laboratories or are unable to undertake fieldwork.

2. Extended Essay Skills and Practice - Oxford IB Diploma Programme by eKosta Lekanides. This book was published in October 2016.  If you are able to get hold of them the IB also published 50 Excellent Extended Essays and 50 More Excellent Extended Essays as  two CDs but these appear to no longer be for sale. The first contained three Chemistry Extended Essays and the second contained one Chemistry Extended Essay. All four essays received a grade A.

3. Chemistry Extended Essay Reports. Written by the Principal Examiner for Extended Essays. The reports from May 2009 onwards (An example is the May 2015 Extended Essay Report for Chemistry) are still relevant in general as they contain good advice but are no longer relevant as far as assessment and reflection goes. The more recent ones can be downloaded from My IB.

4. The Chemistry Study Guide contains a chapter on Chemistry Extended Essays. This also contains a check-list.

5. Build your own resources by keeping copies of all your students’ Extended Essays (with a record of the mark they achieved) either digitally or as hard copies in the school library.

6. The IB runs online workshops in Chemistry Extended Essays and InThinking runs workshops for Extended Essays in all subjects. There is also a free online two week course developed by Leeds University in the UK in conjunction with FutureLearn and the IB called "The IB Extended Essay: Managing your Research Project”. This two-week course is aimed at students themselves but is also useful for teachers. For more details including how to apply for the course see my blog.

7. IB Prepared produced an Extended Essay booklet written by Finbar O'Farrell (the Principal Examiner for Biology EEs) with contributions from other EE principal examiners. This was for the old assessment (last exam session November 2017) and now appears to now be out of print.

8. The influence of student learning characteristics on progress through the Extended Essay. Journal of Research in International Education, 2 (1) 5 – 14.) . This was the result of a Ph.D. thesis supervised by Dr John Munro of the University of Melbourne. (Munro J. (2003). 

9. For ideas use the Chemistry Journals listed on another webpage on this site. 

10. Read Richard van de Lagemaat's article on 'Writing a TOK Essay'.  A great resource for Chemistry teachers (and students) who have little experience of writing essays. Although this is obviously about writing a TOK essay it nevertheless contains excellent advice and examples of how to write an essay in general. Since all your students will also be writing a TOK essay it is doubly beneficial.

11. Three. The Ultimate Student's Guide to Acing the Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge A paperback written by Alexander Zouev (an ex-IB student). I have not seen this personally but am told that it is written in a very student-friendly way. However the reviews do warn that it is expensive for what it is. It is also very dated as the assessment criteria changed radically in 2018.

For some more specific resources look to the links on the left hand side of the page. Of particular use are what other schools have produced to give their own students.