ROAD MAP

Hi everyone,

I think it might be useful at this point if I gave you a "map" of where we are and where we intend to go.

We have looked at four Areas of Knowledge (the Natural Sciences, the Human Sciences, History and Mathematics) and tried to make some comparisons and points of contact between them. We have also, I hope, been thinking about how we employ the various Ways of Knowing in these disciplines. All the time, we are identifying knowledge issues and trying to respond to them.

Next week, you will be getting your 800-word assignment back with comments. We will give you an opportunity to judge what you think your work is worth, and then we will tell you what we think. We will also look at a couple of essays written by students elsewhere and have a go at marking them - I think this will be a very useful exercise for you in coming to understand what a good essay might look like. You will also get some titles to choose from for your next assignment, which will be a full-length essay of 1,600 words - we will give you the Easter vacation and the time immediately afterwards to write this and the deadline will be 28th April.

In the remaining time before the semester examinations, we will be using our lessons to take a close look at the Arts as an Area of Knowledge. We will still need to look at Ethics, but that will probably be postponed until the very beginning of IB2. However, that does not stop you from finding out a bit about this very important area in advance.

We hope very much that this blog will help you in every aspect of your work in this course and beyond, and that includes essay writing. While the blog is probably not a good source for taking material verbatim (why not?), we hope it raises awareness of issues and examples that you might develop.

As we are concentrating hard on essay writing at the moment, there will be no new question of the week today. Instead, we should be focussing on extending the conversation on last week's question because it is designed to help you directly with the essay writing task. So keep the comments and contributions coming on that thread.

I hope this helps us to orient ourselves with respect to the journey. Have a restful but thoughtful weekend.