Students are sometimes so close in achieving an overall seven on an individual assessment.  That is the case with this Standard Level Individual Oral Commentary. 

The context for this is as such.  The student came in for extra practice after school.  She chose her own passage, printed it out, and prepared her work outside of class.  In those twenty minutes of exam preparation, she annotated the passage and created an outline.  It is a passage from chapter seven of The Great Gatsby where Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby enter an intense argument about whom Daisy loves. 

Please remember that the student chose the passage herself – which explains the lack of guiding questions and not adhering to the forty line rule.  Because this is extra practice, those errors do not matter.  In the real IOC, make sure to provide two guiding questions and passages that do not exceed forty lines.

You will also find three other documents.  There is the clean passage, the annotated passaged, and her outline.  While I do not necessarily teach a color-coding annotation system, this student found it useful.  She highlights certain parts of the passage in blue, pink, and then green to correspond with point one, two, and three respectively.  It allows her to visually see what quotations to discuss and unpack while also keeping her focused on her arguments.  That is also what her outline provides.  It is not detailed; she did that in the annotation of the passage.  Instead, the outline spells out – clearly and succinctly – her main argument and three points supporting that thesis.

Must students have a thesis and three body points?  Absolutely not.  They do need, however, a clear and coherent structure that is easy – and I would argue extremely easy – for the listener to follow.  Listening to someone speak for ten uninterrupted minutes is difficult.  Students need to make sure to signpost so that the listener can focus on what matters: the claims.     

Use the resources to get to the sweet spot in teaching and learning – that moment when we as teachers can demonstrate to our class how a student went from scratch to a polished, but not perfect IOC.  These notes can be quite useful for students in helping them prepare for the actual assessment as it shows how she arrived at the final product.

Sample Extract/Passage

Sample Annotation and Outline

Sample Individual Oral Commentary

IOC SL Sample The Great Gatsby (3) IOC

Assessment Criteria and Assessment Sheet

Students can be given the assessment criteria along with the assessment table (see below) to record their marks and comments.  Only then should they be given the opportunity to compare their own assessment with the teacher/examiner's assessment.

Assessment Sheet

Assessment Criteria

Teacher’s Comments

Compare and Contrast