‘Informed by Assessment’ is one of the 6 pillars of the IB Approaches to Teaching. Preparations for Paper 1 happen throughout the two year journey of the DP Language A courses. Quality practice materials are essential for building student confidence. With these, features of text types are discussed and explored collaboratively in class and links to concepts, lines of inquiry global issues, areas of exploration, CAS & TOK ensure that assessment becomes a tool for constructing learning – this is not a dead-end street. The writing of persuasive, evidence-based responses is followed by personalised feedback, reflection & goal setting in the Learner Portfolio.

What strategies do you use to approach assessment in your Language & Literature class? How are you utilising the elements of the 2019 course to deepen and maximise learning of textual analysis? I use Win’s Literary podcast which has some gems such as this one on unseen analysis – worth sharing with students as a way to elevate their thinking.

Feel free to download these two practice paper 1s, modelled on the sample on MyIB, and use as desired. Please note- for the first Practice Paper, Oxfam has since updated the main image on their site since the creation of this paper – see the new image here, if you would prefer to use it instead.

2. Language & Literature Practice Paper 1 – Speech & PSA

3. Student-friendly Paper 1 rubric