Standard level students must study two optional themes and higher level students must study three higher level themes. Each theme requires 30 hours of teaching, so 60 hours of teaching for standard level students and 90 hours of teaching for higher level students. The optional themes are examined in paper 2, which is a two hour paper for higher level students worth 35% of their overall grade and a one hour and 20 minute paper for standard level students, also worth 35% of their final grade. There are seven optional themes to choose between. Each optional theme has two questions in the paper. Students must select one of the two questions. They can not do two questions from the same theme. The seven optional themes are:
Freshwater - issues and conflict
Oceans and their coastal margins
Extreme environments
Hazards and disasters - risk assessment and response
Leisure, sport and tourism
The geography of food and health
Urban environments
The three optional themes that I chose to teach are; freshwater - issues and conflict, hazards and disaster - risk assessment and response and leisure, sport and tourism. I teach the freshwater topic because I believe that the resource of freshwater is going to become increasingly scarce as the world develops and population grows. Therefore, I think students shoud know how to conserve and manage water sustainably. I selected the hazards topic because I teach in El Salvador which would be considered a hazard hotspot. It suffers from hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, flooding and landslides so therefore students have an understanding of hazards and understand the importance of managing them and responding to them. I teach leisure, sport and tourism for two reasons, one because tourism is a growth industry in Central America and as the region develops so does peoples leisure time, but also because we take students on a fieldtrip to Antigua, Guatemala each year where they carry out data collection for their internal assessment.
IB Optional Themes
Standard level students must study two optional themes and higher level students must study three higher level themes. Each theme requires 30 hours of teaching, so 60 hours of teaching for standard level students and 90 hours of teaching for higher level students. The optional themes are examined in paper 2, which is a two hour paper for higher level students worth 35% of their overall grade and a one hour and 20 minute paper for standard level students, also worth 35% of their final grade. There are seven optional themes to choose between. Each optional theme has two questions in the paper. Students must select one of the two questions. They can not do two questions from the same theme. The seven optional themes are:
The three optional themes that I chose to teach are; freshwater - issues and conflict, hazards and disaster - risk assessment and response and leisure, sport and tourism. I teach the freshwater topic because I believe that the resource of freshwater is going to become increasingly scarce as the world develops and population grows. Therefore, I think students shoud know how to conserve and manage water sustainably. I selected the hazards topic because I teach in El Salvador which would be considered a hazard hotspot. It suffers from hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes, flooding and landslides so therefore students have an understanding of hazards and understand the importance of managing them and responding to them. I teach leisure, sport and tourism for two reasons, one because tourism is a growth industry in Central America and as the region develops so does peoples leisure time, but also because we take students on a fieldtrip to Antigua, Guatemala each year where they carry out data collection for their internal assessment.
Freshwater - issues and conflict
Hazards and disasters - risk assessment and response
Leisure, sport and tourism