Category: Resources

Originally posted on August 21, 2019 @ 9:00 am

Just before the end of the last academic year I asked the following question on the facebook TOK teachers chat group:

The post sparked quite a few responses which I have typed up and linked to amazon. The list was:

• The Righteous Mind
• How to think about Weird Things
• Malcolm Gladwell Blink
• Thinking, Fast and Slow
• The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten
• Moral Tribes
• Sophie’s World
• Ishmael
• The Power of Myth
• Einstein’s Dreams
• Myth of Sisyphus
• Man is the measure
• Understanding Comics the invisible art
• Grendel
• Bad Science
• Sapiens
• Homo Deus
• 21 lessons for the 21^st century
• Logicomix
• Tao of Pooh
• Knowledge: A very short introduction
• How mumbo jumbo conquered the world
• The Knowledge Illusion
• Unbearable lightness of being
• Little Prince
• The World Beyond your head
• The Skeptics Guide to the Universe
• Life of Pi

You can download the list from my TES Shop:

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/tok-reading-list-for-teachers-and-students-12306897

Originally posted on August 19, 2019 @ 9:03 pm

Today was the first day of the new academic year with students after a week of inset training.

Last week we had a whole secondary training on TOK for subject teachers which was the final part of training in our work towards curriculum coherence using TOK.

To begin to bring about a coherent curriculum we have decided to look at ways that TOK (Theory of Knowledge) can act as a joint between different subjects. This could be pursued in a variety of ways:

1. Developing horizontal links between TOK and subjects within particular year levels.
2. Developing vertical links by embedding TOK lower down the school:
   1. through form time activities
   2. through links to curriculum content in MYP and GCSE
3. Inculcating conceptual ways of thinking within members of the teaching team over time.
4. Inculcating thinking routines, moves and steps as techniques that learners of all ages can use to think through problems

Last year we began this process by learning about Philosophy for Communities (P4C) where we learned a suite of techniques that can be used to open up a classroom to dialogic teaching.

We now unpacked what TOK is with the aim of helping all teachers in the secondary understand a little more about what this strange subject is all about and help them get over their “Feary of knowledge”. We hope that this will encourage all our team to be a little more daring in trying to link to TOK in their lessons or plan to present their content in a way that is more exposed to uncertainty and therefore debate. This isn’t something that has to happen all the time but occasionally it will provide opportunity for students to reflect, discuss and debate.

To that end I updated the P4C concept lightbulbs (used in the P4C full inquiry method) to include terms more suited to a TOK classroom and I also weighted it a little more to the science classroom as that is one that I work. These lightbulbs will allow DP teachers to use the P4C inquiry model to open up discussion about the nature of knowledge with their students. What do you think? Can you add any more concepts?

Download (PDF, 600KB)

Originally posted on August 24, 2019 @ 9:00 am

At the start of this year, a colleague and I joked about starting a Films for TOK Cocurricular/ExtraCurricular activity, and that got me thinking – what films would TOK teachers recommend we watch. So I went back to the facebook group and asked the questions.

The list below summarises their answers.

• 12 Angry Men
• The Matrix
• Shawshank Redemption
• The man who knew infinity
• The Challenger
• Contact
• Equilibrium
• How Long Is a piece of String: Horizon
• Goodbye Lenin
• 2001 a space odessy
• Sophie’s World
• I love Huckabee
• Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
• Memento
• Being John Malkovich
• Slaughterhouse 5
• Mr Death
• Hiroshima Mon Amour
• Moon
• Blade Runner (They would both work, but Rutger Hauer`s final speech has excellent TOK context.)
• The Truman Show
• Cloud Atlas
• Soleil
• Capturing the Friedmans
• Slumdog Millionaire
• Inception
• Arrival (I LOVE Arrival for showing how Language and Science can work together, and also that perception and perspective can inform reality and what making an informed decision can look like and and and (I’m a really huge fan of that movie, even though I cry every time)).
• Behind the Curve
• Groundhog day
• Inside out
• F for Fake and Rashomon (nature of truth)
• Waking life
• Finding Altamaria
• The Great Hack
• The Doubt
• The Ship of Theseus
• Inception
• Gattaca
• Baraka (how to communicate without words/language. Is music a language?)
• The philosophers
• Big Fish
• Sully
• Who the F@ck is Jackson Pollack
• Crimson Tide
• Dinner with Andre
• Innsaei
• The Giver
• The Pervert’s Guide to cinema
• The Lives of Others

You can download the list at my TES shop:

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/tok-film-list-for-teachers-and-students-12306917