IB Courses: Group 1 sample (Lang & Lit)

Our teacher guide for Language and Literature is Georgia Larson.

Links:

Language A: Language and Literature Subject guide

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Transcript

Jon Peterson 0:00

Welcome to IB Matters. In this series, we're building an audio catalog of IB Diploma Program courses and CP core experiences designed for students, parents, counselors, teachers, and colleges around the world. Each episode gives voice to the syllabus, the real learning, and the student experience behind every course. I'll have the subject brief linked in the podcast notes if you'd like to use it as a reference while you listen. Hi, in this episode, we are describing the IB Group 1 Lang and Lit or Language and Literature course, and our teacher guide is Georgia Larson. So hi, Georgia.

Georgia Larson 0:33

Hello there.

Jon Peterson 0:33

So why don't you talk a little bit about the uh course and you know maybe how long you've been teaching the Langan literature course?

Georgia Larson 0:39

When our school adopted uh the IB program back in 2005. That's when it was um mostly a literature course at the time.

Jon Peterson 0:48

So why don't you give us a little overview, the syllabus highlights, uh how the internal assessments work or what they are, and how the exams uh and so on work.

Georgia Larson 0:57

Really. Um we've uh always thought about this course as helping students to be critical readers of the world around them. That's what was so attractive about the course, the fact that it included both literature and non-literary texts. And so that's at the foundation, a balance of both of those kinds of texts is at the foundation of this course. And as far as like what the course is trying to get students to think about is looking at a range of texts, as as wide a range as possible, and taking a look at how those texts uh looking at the context of those texts, looking at the various stylistic and rhetorical and strategic elements of those texts. Um, and I it's pretty exciting in that way.

Jon Peterson 1:43

Yeah. Can you give an example of some things that are non-literary texts?

Georgia Larson 1:48

So we have enjoyed teaching a wide range of non-literary texts, uh, including advertisements and photographs and infographics. We have at some point included a podcast, like we're talking about now, really interesting one. And the kids really respond well to those texts because it's the kind of text that they see in the world around them.

Jon Peterson 2:12

Okay, so the word text, you know, for many of us, text means words on a page, and it's not necessarily that definition.

Georgia Larson 2:18

That's right. That we've learned to broadly define the word text as to mean something much bigger. Sure. Yes, we're always talking about words in um the language and literature class. But we also include a study of images, and we uh include a study of colors and different different elements like that that might show up on a non-literary text.

Jon Peterson 2:41

Sure. So how does that look when it when you say study? What are you doing with these non-literary texts or even the literary text?

Georgia Larson 2:47

So I've always this is how I've always said it with my students. We are constantly asking these two critical questions, maybe even three. How is that text written? What's going on there? Whenever we approach a text in our course, we have the students consider two key questions. First, we ask the question, how is this text written? And of course, that's trying to get at the style choices. The actually the word that's in the curriculum is authorial choices. So what are the author's choices here? And we try to get them to think about that broadly with um, IB isn't necessarily concerned about whether or not students can label things uh with of some official list of terms, although you know, some terminology is important. The most important thing is that they can really describe the text well. And then um after that we ask, why is it written that way? And so um they have to be able to interpret some kind of meaning from those choices. And of course, at the the backbone of it all, the thing that those comments point to, at least in the um, I know in the way we structure it at our year one is really focusing on what is called a global issue. The global issue is a big part of specifically the oral exam, the internal assessment that's part of the course.

Jon Peterson 4:11

Yeah, why don't you talk about that oral exam? I think that's one of the unique features of this course.

Georgia Larson 4:15

The oral exam involves a student selecting an extract from a literary work and a non-literary work that they have studied throughout the course. Those extracts are meant, again, it's meant to be just a portion of the text, but they it's not that they only understand that little portion, rather, they are to analyze that text, that piece of the text as well as relate it to the text that it comes from as a whole. As they make comments about those texts, they are to point to a global issue that they establish. And that global issue is it's writing a global issue statement is always kind of a wild experience, right? Because um we have to try to get kids to move beyond just um mentioning or pointing out a topic, like um saying a one-word thing like environmental issues or something like that. We have to challenge them throughout this process to be able to put that topic into a statement. What is the text saying about environmental issues, for example? And the IB has been very helpful in terms of offering a list of global issue areas, subject areas that we can use as a launch pad for that, writing that global issue statement.

Jon Peterson 5:30

So for clarity, this is a one-on-one with the teacher and the student, and it's recorded.

Georgia Larson 5:35

It is. That's the challenge of it, and it's also the beauty of it. It's the one time, you know, in in our American schools, we tend to have a lot of kids in the classes, right? And big class sizes, and it's hard to get one-on-one experiences in in in our context in public schools. But this is a great moment where a student will sit down one-on-one with the teacher and talk for 10 minutes about two texts. The only thing they can come to the table with is a copy of the extracts that they use and an outline, um, and not necessarily a detailed one at that. So it becomes certainly students can prepare for this world and should prepare. I always tell my students, um, if you're not preparing, don't ever come to the you'll be in trouble. Don't ever come to the table thinking you can just wing it, as they say. Oh, sometimes they'll say, Oh, I'll just wing it. I'm like, yeah, that won't happen. But uh, they must prepare. And so it's it is kind of an odd thing though, because it's a as much as it's a prepared thing, it's meant to also be somewhat uh an extemporaneous conversation, if you will, that starts out one-sided with the student making some comments, and then for the remaining five minutes of the experience, uh the teacher then asks a series of questions of that and the point of the questions is to help maybe fill in some gaps, extend some thinking, the student thinking, and to have a little bit of an interplay between the teacher and the student.

Jon Peterson 7:08

So talk about that a little bit. Um, you know, from the student standpoint, I'm sure they come in with some nerves. Um, how are they prepared to be ready for that? And then it's interesting because teachers, many teachers don't have the same experience either. So, I mean, you just talked about the fact that it's your job to uh draw out from the students some things. So, how do you prepare and how are you trained to know how to do that?

Georgia Larson 7:31

Oh, well, I'll tell you what, uh, I've done a lot of orals in my time. And and certainly we've covered, you know, um, we also pick texts that we've sat with for a while and had conversations with many students over the years and conversations with each other as colleagues. So um, and so we do the part of it too is to try to pick um robust and creative and interesting texts that we know well and can work with um so we can help guide the students. But I as much as the students are nervous about the experience, so are the teachers. You know, I always tell students, man, if you come in with a really good oral and you see me start to sweat bullets a little bit, you know you've done a good job.

Jon Peterson 8:16

Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah, for sure. We're more equal than kids think we are, you know, sometimes.

Georgia Larson 8:20

Oh, for sure, for sure. But to prepare, you know, I'm um uh I would say that certainly uh some of the text we've taught many for many years now, right? And so some it just happens that sometimes some of the same topics come up and again. Um so you tend to build up uh a teacher tends to build up their repertoire of questions and things to think about. But it does, it requires a teacher to be on the ball, you know, really listening carefully. And and in the same way then we tell the students, you know, I I'm a human and I'm actually I'm getting a little older, and sometimes I can't hear as well. And so if you talk too fast or if you um, you know, don't engage me it in any way, I'm gonna get bored. And so that you need to you need to interact with me a little bit visually and uh you know and um and auditorily. You gotta keep me keep me engaged with what you're saying. That's good that's something that's really important piece of it.

Jon Peterson 9:20

Well, thanks for describing that oral. I think that, like I said before, that's kind of a unique part of it. I wanted to make sure we spent a little extra time on that because it's so unique. But how is the rest of the course uh broken down in terms of exams and things like that?

Georgia Larson 9:32

The Langlet course, at least at the HL level, has four components, the oral being one of them at 20%. Um, the second uh element that is an externally assessed component is the HL essay. This is an essay they write that is includes or should be in the range of uh 1,200 to 1,500 words. And it is an essay on one of the literary works they study or a non-literary uh body of work that they study. So they can go either direction on that. And then as they write that essay, they have to come up with a thing called a line of inquiry, and that is the question that they have to ask as they look for evidence in their text. They ultimately develop a thesis from that line of inquiry. Then there are two additional uh uh external assessments. One is paper one and the other is paper two. Paper one is um a guided textual analysis of a text they have uh not yet seen, an unseen text, non-literary passage this time. Okay. Uh and um they actually have at the HL level, they have two passages that they write about. And so we've always taught our students with that one is to simply ask the question, what are you noticing? And and um what what are those, how is that, again, how is that text written and why is that text written that way? For paper two, um, this is a comparative essay. So they need to take the two additional literary works that they studied in the course, and then um they are to write a comparative essay about those two texts according to a prompt. And so um that prompt, uh the what the IB provides for that exam is a series of five, I think five or six prompts that get at broad thematic concepts, elements, motifs within those literary works. The students are then asked to draw upon their knowledge of the texts as they read them. And here's the challenge they can't, they don't have the text with them, so they really have to do some work to you can't do the tests unless you read the texts.

Jon Peterson 11:43

You know, this language and literature course, often known as Lang and Lit, has been used in our area as kind of the IB for all centerpiece. In other words, uh this is sometimes described as accessible, which is different from saying it's easy. It's just to say that this is a course that um many schools are are using this as a way to get IB to every single student in their school, no matter where they think they're going. And so can you talk just a little bit about how that's worked out as a IB for all?

Georgia Larson 12:10

We're a pretty large suburban high school in the in the Twin Cities area. We have um about uh 3,000 students here. We get every single one of our juniors to do the oral. Uh I'll just riff off the oral. This is a good experience for students to go through. Is every student gonna come out with a you know seven and have it be this you know amazing final product? Well, no. I'm I it's to be realistic, no, it's not doesn't turn out that way. But we know it's a great experience. It's really kind of amazing to see the kids obviously they're nervous and scared and and wondering what this is gonna be about, but there's rarely a time where a student walks out the door um, you know, in tears a couple times. But they tend to feel really proud of what they've done. And and that's that's kind of exciting.

Jon Peterson 13:01

So any final thoughts holistically about the course or that you'd like to share before we finish things?

Georgia Larson 13:06

Like I said, I love the relevancy and the flexibility of the course. Um there's there's so much opportunity to pick and choose. Let me say this. One of the other roles that I play is that of the IB career coordinator. We have the career program in our school. But one of the things I think is exciting is to find ways in which the IB career program connects with the language and literature course. I think that can happen in really dynamic ways. For example, we have uh one of our pathways here is that of cybersecurity. So we're really interested in bolstering our students' experiences with IT and all that's part of that. And um with the advent of AI and um the ways in which students need to become savvy readers of online texts in the world around them. Oh, there's some really neat pairings between uh IT pathways in the career program and doing um texts and topics related to technology in the language and literature course.

Jon Peterson 14:06

Well, thanks for connecting that. Thanks, Georgia. I really appreciate you taking the time, and I'm sure our listeners will be happy to learn to have learned more about uh language and literature.

Georgia Larson 14:15

Thanks, John. Nice talking with you today.