Key Questions

You can find the form by going to the Google Classroom and finding the assignment "Personal Project Approval Form". If you click on edit, you can see your responses.

The idea behind this form is to make sure that you start your project on the right track. The questions correspond to certain sections of the grading criteria, so it is very important that you do the necessary research and answer them in detail.

Project title

Give your project a snappy title

Describe what makes your project personal: the experiences, interests and ideas that make it important to you.

A clear personal interest from the start not only makes the project more interesting for you, it also gives you an opportunity to show an extension of your knowledge of the topic by the time you have finished. This is part of the grading criterion D.

Define the Project Goal. Explain “what you want to achieve; when, where, how and why you want to achieve it.”

Have a look at the video about writing your goal on the resources page. It explains the difference between a basic and challenging goal. A highly challenging goal has multiple parts to it, which gives you greater learning opportunities.

Essentially, the more verbs you have in the goal, the more learning opportunities you will be able to show in your reflections.

Define the Global Context that best applies to your project and explain its connection to the topic and the goal.

Here the grading criterion says "Identify (state briefly) prior learning and subject-specific knowledge that is consistently highly relevant to the project". What the IB is looking for here is for you to improve your knowledge of a subject by doing the project.

Stating what you know now will help you write the reflection. Here the grading criterion says "Present a excellent reflections on how completing the project has extended his or her knowledge and understanding of the topic and the global context."

You should be able to back up your statements with evidence that you can add to the appendix.

Now refer to the definitions of the IB Global Contexts and explain which parts you will focus on and why.

For example: if you were doing a project to alert young people to the dangers of smoking by creating a video, you could choose the GC "identities and relationships". In the description you can find the following: "Students will explore personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health." This would mean that in defining your global context, you could add that your focus within Identities and Relationships is that of personal health of young people with an emphasis on damaging effects of smoking to physical, social and mental health.

You should then go on to explain how this global context guided your research. In the case above, you could explain how you needed to research the physical effects of smoking as a part of personal health. Also, you will have needed to research the psychological and social effects of peer pressure, which is clearly a part of identities and relationships, and how this is often the main reason for young people to start smoking in the first place. You would need to research how to create a video that has the potential to go viral on the internet and explain how this related to the communities part of the GC.

Identify (state briefly) highly relevant prior knowledge (subject specific) and/or learning.

This is not your personal interest but the knowledge that you already have on the subject. Go into some detail about what you know and where you have learnt it. Give evidence for this wherever possible, which you will eventually add to your appendix.

Look at the details of the IB learner profiles. Describe the ways in which your personal project will enable you to grow as an IB learner in specific learner profiles.

This will be graded in criterion D: "present an excellent reflection on his/her development as an IB learner through the project." Make sure that you define how your project will enable you to address several of the learner profiles so that you have plenty to write about here. Don't forget that the whole project is about extending your knowledge on a topic and improving your IB learner profiles.

Briefly explain what opportunities you have to show thinking, communication and collaboration (Approaches to Learning - ATL) skills.

To answer this, you should refer to the ATL skill page.