Extended Essays in Biology

Rewarding, fun and challenging describes extended essays in Biology.

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Introduction to EEs at DCS

How about this for a starter - if 12 year olds can publish scientific papers you can too.

Take time to review the introductory presentation before developing your EE research question and approach.

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Advice

Good advice and documentation

• Great advice and a template from i-Biology. The template even includes a self-assessment at the back you can use to check your progress.
• IBO guide to Extended Essays

Before you start in earnest you need an outline. The key components include

• Background to your extended essay
• Formulating a hypothesis is not needed, but you might find it helpful
• A rough method, the key being a good idea of how you will measure your dependent variable
• Preliminary experiments will help you refine your method

Reading scientific papers
How to Read a Scientific Paper from the American Society of Plant Biologists is a good starting point. You will be producing in effect a scientific paper for your EE plus you will need to read and understand scientific papers if you are going to use them to support your research,

EE Marking Rubric
This rubric containing 'elements', guiding statements and questions based on the Biology specific EE advice and examiners reports from IBO.


It can be used both for student self-assessment and as a basis for marking EE and giving feedback. The rubric provides a useful framework, but feedback should not be limited by it.


The marking rubric is not an absolute tool, but a useful guide that can be used to judge completeness and how to improve a draft. Extended essays are graded externally and any idea of success gained from the rubric should take that into consideration.