Every two weeks or so, each IB senior will find themselves taking notes on a new set of RLS’s in a class that was meant to be fun but isn’t because you probably have zero idea what you’re doing. Which is why I hope to help you out a bit in this blog.
The bigger picture and main purpose of doing your notes is to practice making knowledge connections for your TOK essay and exhibition that you’ll be working on soon enough.
A knowledge connection is you taking a real-life situation and seeing how you can draw knowledge from it - or in other words, what can you tell about the premise of the knowledge that arose in said real-life situation.
Perhaps the easiest way of doing so is to go into your TOK guide and search for second-order knowledge questions related to the particular RLS being discussed. However, make sure to not christmas tree this task, because it is important. Make sure you choose a worthy KQ that is relevant to the RLS and you can actually answer with a substantive answer. Make sure to not speak in vague terms and be too subject specific - be specific with what you mean and firmly explain how the RLS can build our knowledge in such areas as scope, perspectives, methods and tools, and ethics.
Oftentimes, the biggest correction your TOK teacher will give you is that you’re too subject specific. If you didn’t understand what I meant here well enough, then I’d encourage you to specifically ask them to elaborate on that particular aspect of the notes for your benefit.