Your Guide to Language & Literature in the DP

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Your Guide to Language & Literature in the DP

Language and culture are the frameworks through which humans experience, communicate, and understand reality.

Lev Vygotsky

As DP language & literature educators, you help your students grow in three critical domains: as readers, critical thinkers, and writers. Your students read literature, classic and contemporary, but they also read non-literary texts: advertisements, photographs, blogs, and infographics. If you choose, you might even teach them to read music videos! Ultimately, you will teach your students to read the world. It’s an awesome responsibility, and the task can be quite daunting.

This guide provides you with downloadable tools and actionable strategies to create a lively and engaging syllabus. There is a tremendous amount of flexibility in course design and text selection. Use this guide in whatever manner suits you. The resources found within are designed to help you support student learning. They are created for you with the same spirit of curiosity and wonder you take into your teaching each day.

Who is this for and what’s inside?

  • New educators interested in learning what the course is all about will find:
  • Experienced teachers looking to enhance their practice will find different perspectives on all assessments, including superior performance examples. In addition, you’ll find:
    • A student-facing slide deck on formal academic writing focused on writing techniques appropriate for papers 1, 2, and the HL essay
    • Paper 2: a guide to conceptual understandings
    • A universal practice timer with a template packed with questions to prep your students for the IO
    • Lines of Inquiry & Thesis Statements, a student-facing slide deck to support students while they write their HL essay
  • DP coordinators and school leaders looking for strategies and resources to support their language and literature team
    • Big Picture: Course-wide learning targets based on the four criteria
Disclaimer: This guide has been produced independently of and not endorsed by the IB. Toddle’s resources seek to encourage sharing of perspectives and innovative ideas for classroom teaching & learning. They are not intended to be replacements for official IB guides and publications. Views and opinions expressed by the authors of these resources are personal and should not be construed as official guidance by the IB. Please seek assistance from your school’s IB coordinator and/or refer to official IB documents before implementing ideas and strategies shared within these resources in your classroom.