Skip to main content

How to prepare for IB examinations!

Here we share our best tips for students who are soon to graduate!

Courtney Librizzi avatar
Written by Courtney Librizzi
Updated over a week ago

Is this your final term before the exams? 

Great! You've come to the right place 😄

Here are some of our most effective tips for exam preparation. Read and bookmark this page, you will need this in the upcoming months. 

REVIEW CONTENT

Review the table of contents for your subjects. Make sure you have covered all the reading. Look at the percentage of the book you have completed, along with the symbols (checkmark) on the left side of your page. A blue checkmark means you have completed all the readings for that subtopic, while the blue circle means you still have readings to complete. Focus your time on completing the reading and answering the Section Questions at the end of each section. Don't forget to celebrate when the symbols are all blue!  

Check your progress in the table of contents—blue checkmarks mean done, blue circles mean not yet. Finish readings and section questions!

 Make use of our highlight and private note feature - select what you believe to be important parts of a text on which to base your own notes. This will help you, for revision purposes, to identify the main areas of the text that you need to review.

Use Highlights and Notes to mark key parts of the text—helping you focus on what matters most when it’s time to revise.

Writing your notes is an essential part of processing and understanding information. By putting something into your own words, you’re actively digesting and making sense of that concept, as well as committing it to memory.  If you need more help understanding how to use our Highlight and notebook feature, check this article.

Student highlights text and types a note in the Notebook, showing how personal notes aid understanding and memory.


Review all the helpful tips in the textbooks to prevent possible mistakes and to help you prepare for the exams

 Exam tip boxes: You'll find them throughout our content where our authors, who are often examiners themselves, explain 'dos and don'ts' to help you perform well in the exams. 

Concept boxes: Provides support for the key concepts of the audience, context, purpose, meaning and variation.

Concept boxes help you understand key ideas like audience, context, purpose, meaning, and variation.

 What you should know boxes: To use for revision purposes, it summarises the learning objectives of the subtopic. This is important to check when preparing for the exam, as it will allow you to identify the areas you need to know about a specific subtopic, before heading into the next one. 

Study skill boxes: You will find them throughout our content where our authors highlight links between topics or provide tips for how to remember an important point.

Study Skill boxes highlight topic links and offer memory tips to help you better understand and retain key points.

Practical boxes: This will help you with the key practicals

Practical boxes guide you through key experiments and hands-on activities to strengthen your understanding.

These are only a few examples of the many different boxes with helpful information that we have to offer. To find out more about them check out this article.


REVIEW PRACTICE QUESTIONS AND ASSIGNMENTS

Improve your strength for each topic. You improve strength levels by practicing in the Practice Center - take questions and get the right answer to increase the level of the strength bar. Focus on the things you studied at the beginning of your first year to ensure you revise what you haven't studied for a long time!

Work your way through the Exam Style Questions - these are new questions in the format of exam questions. Time yourself when you answer them to see if you are up to speed! The questions come with mark schemes and example answers which is great, as you can compare your solution and get an understanding of what you will need to do to get full marks.

Student answering timed Exam Style Questions with visible mark schemes and sample answers for comparing and improving exam skills.

Test your stress levels with the Strength Battle - you can battle our Kogbot just to get a feeling for how fast you can answer the questions. With a 60-second limit, you will learn to understand your stress levels and hopefully also learn how to handle stress so that you don't go blank during exams. Alternatively, have fun while learning and have a healthy competition against one of your classmates; this way, you can compare and discuss your responses while having fun.

Race the Kogbot in the 60-sec Strength Battle to test stress, improve speed, and compete with classmates for fun and learning.

Review the past assignments your teacher has sent you. From the table of contents, you can access all the questions your teachers have sent you over the years. Review your old answers to identify questions you seem to have struggled with and revise the reading section for those questions. 

Access past teacher assignments via the table of contents. Review old answers to spot struggles and revisit related reading sections.

We know exam prep is difficult, but putting these tips into practice will allow you to prepare and get ready for your exams. Try your best, and hopefully, Kognity will help make it a little easier! 

We wish you the best of luck with your exams, and we will keep our fingers crossed. You will do great! 

Did this answer your question?