Teaching in September can feel like an isolated experience. With so much to do, the four walls of the classroom can become eerily familiar. And for those teaching the IB Diploma, this sentiment is all the more resonant.

Alongside getting the crowded curriculum taught by the end of course, receiving and grading assessments on time and the pressure getting students the grades they will need to enter the universities of their choice, it might feel like there’s little time for collaboration.

There is a danger, however, that if we concentrate only on our own curriculum we are not doing the philosophy of the IB full justice. A close look at its model shows that integration is woven throughout, including through the Core, approaches to teaching and learning, international-mindedness and the IB Learner Profile. 

A Baccalaureate education is bigger than the sum of its parts and while time is the biggest challenge to teachers when trying to collaborate with each other, the benefits of sharing ideas and offering an integrated curriculum are huge. 

The following tips are ways in which I have got staff working together from across the Diploma programme, with the aim of not only preparing students for their final assessments but also to make it clear that the approaches to learning they use in one subject can often be transferred to another, and that each lesson they do fits together within the programme model.

1. Collaboration at its core

A good place to start with integration is at the Core of the IB programme.

The Theory of Knowledge, by its very nature, encourages teachers from across the curriculum to collaborate. Indeed many of the prescribed titles require students to look at a quote on knowledge from the viewpoint of more than one subject area.

An initiative that has worked well in my school is using a ‘TOK passport’ as a starter activity for students in their lessons. In this task, they can work in pairs or small groups to discuss questions based on a knowledge claim that the teacher has given them.

For the knowledge claim given to them, students can ask questions such as: 

• What role did each area of knowledge play in producing the knowledge?
• To what extent is this knowledge valid in other areas of knowledge? 
• Give examples of other subjects in your Diploma Programme where this knowledge is valued.

This allows teachers to prompt students to discuss the knowledge they are looking at across the curriculum.

2. Repeat prescription  

Other areas where staff can use Theory of Knowledge as a way to build collaboration is to ask staff to respond to the TOK’s prescribed titles from their subject’s point of view and respond to the ideas of different subject areas.

I have shared the results of this activity with students as a way to prompt discussion over the prescribed titles. Getting two or more teachers from different subjects to teach all, or parts of lessons, responding to knowledge claims from their subject’s viewpoint is always popular with students.

The core element of Creativity, Activity and Service can also be used to help teachers integrate with other subjects. A staff activity that works well is to get each department to write CAS experiences that work well in their subjects and then go to see what other subjects have written and to highlight where links can be made.

One example of this working is biology and environmental systems and societies linking a regular beach clean to ecology and pollution within their curriculums respectively, and visual art students creating a poster advertising it.

3. Command and conquer

Final exams and assessments throughout the vast majority of the Diploma Programme use command terms to instruct students on what to do, allowing for higher-order thinking skills.

Definitions of the command terms that appear in each subject’s guide are consistent across the programme.

“Analyse”, for example, is defined as “break down in order to bring out the essential elements or structure” and should be dealt with by students in the same way in whichever subject it appears in, be it history, chemistry or visual arts.

Ask teachers to go around the room commenting on a separate piece of paper for each command term on how they use it within their subject area. Ask how the command term is applied in your subject, what teaching resources are in place to support students in using the command term etc.  

This gives staff the opportunity to find similarities between the skills taught in different subjects and learn teaching and learning strategies from each other. It also leads to teachers gaining a more in-depth idea about the common experiences students have in different subjects.

A further way to use command terms to help integrations is to create a command terms glossary, which defines each command term and lists the subjects where they apply. This allows students to see the connections between their subjects and where they need to apply each skill.

Oliver Furnival is interim IB curriculum manager at Tamagawa Academy, Tokyo. For more information and resources to help you set up and run an IB curriculum at your school, you can access Oliver’s IB resources blog (subscription required).