HL Essay Student Resources and Sample Work
These resources are ready to hand to students. They offer a description of the assignment and take students through a step by step process to complete a draft of their HL Essay.
Literature Course
Language and Literature Course
A note about the resources
Step 5 of the resources asks students to write their inquiry question on a shared Google document that all students have editing rights to. The Google doc uses a “Red, Yellow, Green” tracking system so that students know when their inquiry question has been approved as “Green” or “good to go”. The transparent nature of the document not only holds students accountable for their submission, it also allows other students to learn from their peer’s approaches to developing and writing inquiry questions. The transparent nature of the document also ensures variety as the specific topics and inquiry questions are on a “first come, first approved” (traceable through the revision history of the document). While students may feel a bit self conscious about the transparent nature of the document, they ultimately appreciate the insights gained from the experience and appreciate the development of the line of inquiry as an iterative process. Once students are “Green-lit”, those inquiry questions can serve as models and examples for other students.
A sample tracking document, with sample HL Essay lines of inquiry, is provided below. Additionally, there is a Word template of the tracking document that can be uploaded to Google Docs; it should easily convert.
HL Essay Sample Lines of Inquiry and Tracking Document
Sample HL Essays
Below are a range of sample essays that are all “good” to “excellent” and would be marked in the 5-7 range. At the end of each essay are holistic comments by criterion that identify the strengths and limitations of the essay against each of the IB Language A HL Essay assessment criteria.
The HL Essays below have been externally marked by the IBO on the HL Essay Rubric; final marks are provided in leui of holistic comments.
Marks A:5 B:5 C:5 D:5
Marks A:5 B:5 C:5 D:5
Marks A:4 B:4 C:4 D:4
Marks A:4 B:4 C:4 D:4
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