Prepare the practical side of IB exam week

Use the timetable supplied by your school

Keep the current school timetable in a place you can find quickly. Check the examination date, local start time, location and instructions about arrival. If you find a timetable online, confirm it with the school rather than assuming it applies to your session and time zone.

Write the actual day and time into your calendar. A subject may have several papers, and a familiar course name does not identify which paper is being taken. Ask the coordinator promptly if anything in the schedule or access arrangements is unclear.

Check equipment against the relevant paper

Prepare the materials permitted for each paper using the school’s current instructions. Calculator rules and requirements differ between subjects and papers; do not assume that equipment used in class will always be permitted in an examination. Ask about an unfamiliar calculator or setting before exam week.

Test the equipment you expect to use, including power and ordinary functions. Keep required stationery together. A practice session with the actual equipment can reveal a missing cable, a weak battery or a function you do not know how to use.

Make the route and arrival plan concrete

Check how you will reach the venue and what could change the journey. Decide when to leave, where to wait and who to contact if a problem occurs. Use the arrival instructions given by the school; do not replace them with a universal timing rule from a study article.

If papers are on different sites or if the schedule changes, update the plan explicitly. Share the timetable with a parent or another person who is helping with travel where that is useful. The purpose is to remove practical ambiguity.

Keep the final review selective

Choose a short list of high-value review tasks based on actual practice: a repeated error, a diagram that needs care or a response structure you have struggled to use. Avoid trying to relearn an entire course immediately before the paper. Keep the reference material limited enough to find the relevant point.

After reviewing a correction, attempt a small related task to check what you can do. Reading a model answer and writing one independently are different activities. Follow the practical routine that suits you rather than adding unfamiliar study methods at the last moment.

Plan what happens between papers

Record the next paper and the available time after each examination. Give yourself a clear transition task: organise equipment, check the next timetable entry and select the next review priority. A long debate about every answer you just wrote may use time without changing that paper.

If a practical incident or concern arose during the examination, follow the school’s reporting process. Keep a factual record and ask the coordinator what to do. Ordinary uncertainty about an answer is different from an issue requiring formal attention.

• Current timetable and location.
• Permitted equipment checked for the paper.
• An arrival and contact plan.
• A small review priority between papers.