IB Highlights: - COVID's Impact on Housing

Extended Essay Highlight: Senior Finley Wolff is doing an Economics EE.  His research question will be analyzing data on rents to find to what extent government intervention in the Covid pandemic in Dallas, Texas and Seattle, Washington affected the market for apartments?  For this analysis, he will define the onset of Covid-19 in Seattle and Dallas as the start of March 2020, because the governments in Seattle and Dallas imposed their first restriction for protection from Covid 19 that month in the form of a stay-at-home order.  The onset of the pandemic caused uncertainty for many people about about their health, education, finances, and housing.  With Covid-19 becoming politicalized in the United States, Finley found it fascinating how different locations were impacted in such different ways. The impact on the housing sector in many areas was profound.  He looked at how people's rents changed and the renters’ responses.

CAS Experience Highlights: CAS experiences for all of our Upper School Students this week included cleaning the robotics room, playing soccer, zip lining, sorting food for the 2nd Harvest Food Bank, helping set up a shed at school, going to a pumpkin patch, participating in cross country, baking oatmeal raisin cookies, writing an extra assignment for school, participating in JOYA Trunk or Treat event, making door decorations for the Ronald McDonald House, decorating cakes, performing in the "Coffee House", playing volleyball, Halloween decorating, cleaning the Spokane River, hiking and taking photos in Riverside State Park, performing at the Tuesday morning meeting with the men’s SGS quartet, attending a 200-hour EMT course, rock climbing, and editing a video for the Washington State Speech Language Hearing Association (WSLHA).  

IB Question of the Week:  In each IB class, what are the Internal Assessments and the External Assessments? 
The IB uses both external and internal assessments in the Diploma Program (DP) to assess student learning. 

The external assessments (EA) include the exams in May of a student’s senior year.  These EAs count for 70 - 80% of the score in an IB course.  The EAs are sent in to the IB for grading by IB examiners. If a student takes IB Visual Arts, their EA is an exhibition.  In addition, if a student takes a Language A HL course (Chinese A Literature HL or English A Literature HL), they also produce a written assignment.  These assessments are called “external” because teachers outside of SGS assess and decide what grade they earn. IB examiners and assessors are all over the globe but trained by the IB to ensure uniformity.

The internal assessments (IA) include the many investigations and projects that students undertake here at SGS during the two-year program.  From 20 - 30% of the student’s score is derived from the IA.  SGS students complete an IA in each course.  The grade for the IA is assessed by the SGS teacher but it is externally moderated by the IBO (International Baccalaureate Organization), meaning they are reviewed for grading accuracy. 

External Assessment
Examinations form the basis of the assessment for most courses. This is because of their high levels of objectivity and reliability.  They include: essays, structured problems, short-response questions, data-response questions, text-response questions, case-study questions, and multiple-choice questions.

Internal Assessment
Teacher assessment is also used for all courses. This includes: written work in languages, oral work in languages, laboratory work in the sciences, investigations in mathematics, and artistic performances.

For more information about the DP grading and assessment please follow this link: http://www.ibo.org/en/programmes/diploma-programme/assessment-and-exams/understanding-ib-assessment/