Should the first real IB assessment count toward the school grade?

The IB does not impose one universal rule for how an early classroom assessment must contribute to a school report grade. That decision normally follows the school’s published assessment policy and departmental procedures. If the task is mainly diagnostic, giving it limited or no grade weight may produce more honest evidence of what students can currently do. If it is summative, tell students the weighting, reporting method, and consequences of absence before they begin preparing. Whatever the decision, the stated purpose and actual use of the result should match.

How difficult should the first assessment be?

The first assessment should reflect authentic course expectations without assuming end-of-course mastery. Include accessible questions that reveal foundational understanding, alongside tasks that distinguish stronger analysis, application, or evaluation. Avoid constructing a paper almost entirely from the most difficult question types because this reduces its diagnostic value. The content, language, and time demands should match what students have had a reasonable opportunity to learn and practise. Afterward, review whether unexpected difficulty came from the content, task wording, timing, or unfamiliar procedures.

Should students receive the rubric or mark scheme before the assessment?

Students should know the criteria, objectives, and qualities against which their work will be judged. In many tasks, sharing the relevant rubric or explaining mark scheme principles improves transparency rather than giving students an unfair advantage. However, teachers do not need to disclose confidential questions, task-specific answers, or material that would invalidate the assessment. Students benefit most when they apply the criteria to a sample response instead of merely reading the document. Use the current subject guide and school assessment policy to determine exactly what can be shared.

How much timed practice should students complete beforehand?

One short rehearsal is usually more useful than a complete mock examination early in the fall term. The rehearsal should reproduce the important conditions, such as independent work, a visible timer, permitted materials, and the expected response format. Choose a small number of questions that expose likely problems with pacing or interpretation. Debrief the process immediately, asking where students spent time and which instructions caused confusion. Full-paper practice becomes more valuable after students have learned enough content and component-specific technique to make the result meaningful.

How should teachers discuss generative AI before the first assessment?

Explain the school’s AI policy through examples connected to the actual task rather than relying on a general warning. Students should know whether AI may be used for brainstorming, explanation, language support, feedback, or no part of the assessment process. Make clear that submitting AI-generated content as original student work is not acceptable and that permitted use may still require acknowledgment. Also distinguish appropriate learning support from assistance that completes the assessed thinking for the student. When using Jojo AI or another tool for preparation, students should attempt the work first, examine the feedback critically, and produce their own independent response.

What should happen after the first assessment is returned?

Give students time to interpret the result instead of moving immediately to the next unit. Ask them to classify lost marks by knowledge, application, command-term execution, communication, or time management. They should then correct one or two important responses using the relevant criteria or mark scheme. Use class-level patterns to decide what requires reteaching, further practice, or a different explanation. The process should finish with a specific action and a later opportunity to apply that action to a similar but new task.

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What to Cover Before Students’ First Real Assessment

IB Teachers Seasonal Planning IB Study Guides

RevisionDojo Team

•Last updated: 24 Sept 2026•10 min read

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What to Cover Before Students’ First Real Assessment

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What to Cover Before Students’ First Real Assessment

IB Teachers Seasonal Planning IB Study Guides

RevisionDojo Team

•Last updated: 24 Sept 2026•10 min read

Add as a preferred source on Google

Before students’ first real assessment, cover more than a revision list. Students need to understand the task’s purpose, the standards against which it will be judged, the required command terms, the format, permitted support, academic integrity rules, and what will happen after marking.

For an IB teacher in the fall term, this assessment establishes habits for the rest of the course. It should introduce authentic IB expectations without assuming that students already possess end-of-course knowledge, timing, writing fluency, or independence.

Clarify the purpose of the assessment

Tell students whether the task is primarily diagnostic, formative, or summative within the school. They must know how the result will be used and whether it contributes to a report grade.

The IB describes formative assessment as assessment used to guide teaching and improve learning. External DP examinations are summative, but a classroom test that resembles an IB paper is not automatically an official IB assessment component.

Clarify these points in writing:

The knowledge and skills being sampled
Whether the result affects the school grade
Which objectives, criteria, or standards apply
Whether corrections or reassessment are available
How the results will influence subsequent teaching

Weighting, extensions, retakes, missed tests, and late work usually follow school policy rather than one universal IB rule. Present these requirements as local policy instead of attributing them to the IB.

IB achievement is assessed against established subject expectations rather than by ranking students against classmates. This is criterion-related assessment, not grading on a curve.

Students should also distinguish among raw marks, percentages, achievement levels, and final IB grades. A score of 70% does not automatically represent the same IB grade across subjects, components, schools, or examination sessions. Label provisional boundaries as school or departmental boundaries unless they come from an appropriate verified source.

Before the assessment, show students:

The relevant objective, rubric, criterion, or mark scheme language.
An anonymized or teacher-written model response.
The specific features that earn marks.
A weaker response containing a common error.
How that response could be improved.

A rubric becomes useful only when students can apply its language to real work.

Teach command terms and question reading

Students can know the content but underperform because they misread the required intellectual action. Teach important command terms using definitions from the current subject guide for the relevant course and examination session.

A practical reading routine is:

Circle the command term: What action is required?
Underline the content: Which concept, text, method, or case is involved?
Box the qualifiers: What limits the scope?
Check the marks: How much development is proportionate?
Plan the evidence: What must appear in the response?

For example, evaluating normally requires more than listing advantages and disadvantages. Students need relevant evidence, consideration of strengths and limitations, and a supported judgment. RevisionDojo’s guide to teaching IB command terms provides classroom examples, although the current subject guide remains authoritative.

Make the format and timing familiar

A first assessment should measure subject learning, not students’ ability to guess an unfamiliar procedure. Explain the sections, question types, permitted materials, submission method, available time, mark allocation, and expected response format.

Provide a short rehearsal under equivalent conditions. Depending on the subject, this might be a data-response item, a 10-minute paragraph, a source analysis, a calculation sequence, or an oral prompt. The rehearsal should expose procedural confusion without becoming another major assessment.

Teach pacing for the actual paper rather than imposing one formula. A 40-mark paper lasting 60 minutes provides an average of 1.5 minutes per mark, but students must also allow time for reading, planning, and checking. A topic-filtered Questionbank workflow can support rehearsals, provided teachers verify alignment, wording, difficulty, and timing.

Define revision boundaries clearly

“Revise everything” is too vague for students beginning the DP. Give them an assessment map that connects content with the thinking they must demonstrate.

Area	What students need to know
Content	Topics, concepts, texts, methods, vocabulary, or case studies
Skills	Calculating, analysing, interpreting, constructing, or evaluating
Evidence	Data, quotations, diagrams, examples, references, or working
Format	Sections, question types, timing, materials, and submission method
Standards	Criteria, mark scheme features, and examples of successful work

Do not reveal the questions themselves. The purpose is to reduce irrelevant uncertainty while preserving assessment validity.

Recommend retrieval practice, short exam-style questions, corrections, and spaced review rather than passive rereading alone. The RevisionDojo IB resources hub allows students to combine Study Notes, Flashcards, and practice questions according to diagnosed weaknesses.

Address academic integrity before the task

Academic integrity must be taught before consequential work begins. The IB treats student academic misconduct broadly as behaviour, deliberate or inadvertent, that may create an unfair advantage or compromise assessment integrity.

Explain:

What collaboration is permitted and when it becomes collusion
How quotations, paraphrases, images, data, code, and translations are acknowledged
Which calculators, notes, websites, and reference materials are allowed
What assistance may come from teachers, tutors, family, peers, or AI tools
What happens if unauthorized assistance is suspected

The official IB academic integrity policy explains that students cannot submit work they did not create as their own. AI-generated material used in assessed work must be acknowledged when permitted, subject to school rules and task requirements.

Use brief scenarios to check understanding. Asking students to classify sharing an answer, discussing a method, using a grammar checker, or requesting an AI-written paragraph reveals misconceptions more effectively than asking whether they read the policy.

Check access, logistics, marking, and feedback

Confirm approved access arrangements with the DP coordinator or relevant school lead before the assessment. Students should know the location, required equipment, absence procedure, authorized additional time or technology, and whom to contact if an arrangement is missing.

Before administering the task, mark several sample responses. This can expose ambiguous wording, unrealistic timing, and inconsistent interpretations. Where several teachers share a course, conduct a short standardization exercise.

Plan feedback around four useful error categories:

Knowledge: inaccurate or missing content
Application: knowledge not applied to the context
Command: the requested thinking was not demonstrated
Communication: reasoning, evidence, working, or structure was unclear

Students should correct at least one response and identify a precise next action. RevisionDojo’s guidance on turning feedback into learning and avoiding common exam mistakes can support this process. Feedback from Jojo AI should supplement rather than replace teacher judgment and official criteria.

Final teacher checklist

By the preceding lesson, students should be able to explain:

What is assessed and why
Which content, skills, and criteria are in scope
What the command terms require
What the task looks like and how time should be allocated
Which materials and assistance are permitted
How the work will be marked and reported
What happens after results are returned

If they cannot answer these questions, a focused briefing or short rehearsal may be more valuable than another general revision lesson.

Conclusion

Before students’ first real assessment, make the purpose, standards, task language, format, preparation boundaries, integrity rules, and feedback process explicit. The most productive follow-up is an attempt-feedback-correction cycle rather than simply recording a grade. RevisionDojo can support this through its Questionbank, Study Notes, Flashcards, and Jojo AI, while teachers retain responsibility for alignment and final professional judgment.