the lanterna blog
Below you will find in-depth reports, thought pieces on modern education, as well as hundreds of tips on how to excel at the IB.
Timetable your way to IB success
It’s that time of year again when the IB students of the world knuckle under for the final stretch. The prospect of getting two years’ worth of work into your brain can be daunting to say the least, but fear not – here at Lanterna we’ve been through it and we are here to give…
The Extended Essay Step-By-Step Guide 3: The Research
The Easter Break is nearly upon us. Ten years ago this might have been a cue to eat more chocolate than you can handle. But if you’re in DP1 of the IB that small thing called the Extended Essay will be hovering on the horizon. You know that you should think about it over the…
IB Therapy: Your Questions Answered Part 2
Everyone at Lanterna remembers what it was like doing the IB. We also know what it takes to succeed, and that is why we’ve made it our mission to support all of you still ‘in the trenches’. In this blog series we’re asking you to send in all the questions you’ve been meaning to ask about getting…
Having an IB meltdown? Use mindfulness to cut your stress levels and boost your productivity!
As an IB student, chances are you know how it feels to have a million things buzzing around your mind – IA deadlines, CAS projects, ToK, how not to fail maths, EE… but you can’t seem to concentrate on any of them for long enough to get the job done! Instead, you sit there feeling…
The Extended Essay Step-by-Step Guide 2: Your Topic
There is a secret that could help all you first year IB students out there. It is the key to making next year a whole lot easier. It will reduce stress, make the workload easier to handle, and give you time. What is the secret? It’s that you’re better off starting the Extended Essay as soon…
IB Perspectives: Student Stories from around the World – part 6
Since Autumn last year we’ve been taking a look at different IB experiences from around the world, seen through the eyes of current students studying in countries from Sweden to Singapore. We all know it’s tough to find the balance between the workload and all the other things we might want to do alongside the…
Using the Syllabus as a Science Revision Tool
Not all IB students realise this, but the syllabus is a precious gift bestowed upon all students by the IB Powers-That-Be. If used wisely, syllabuses can be extremely powerful revision tools. Particularly for ‘fact-heavy’ subjects like the sciences, syllabuses contain pretty much everything you’ll need to know on exam day to achieve top marks, sometimes…
Master the IB in 3 Simple Steps
We’ve all had that problem. We’re sitting in a lesson. We’re following what the teacher is saying. But there’s something that we just can’t get our head around. The binomial distribution maybe, or Plato’s Theory of Forms. We try to reread what we’ve just written in our notes. We think it through and… blank. It’s…
IB Perspectives: Student Stories from around the World – part 5
Whatever the myths and stereotypes that surround the IB Diploma Program, the truth is that it’s what you make of it. In this blog series we’re taking a look at the experiences of different IB students around the world. For our fifth student perspective we hear from Anna Sophie in Vienna. You can read part 4…
Sleep Smart – 4 Tech Tips to Hack Your Sleep and get those 8 Hours
Sleep is important. We all know this. Thanks to PhD students at MIT, we now understand that it is whilst we are asleep that our brain’s prefrontal cortex shifts all of the information we learn in a school day to the file marked ‘long-term memory’, ready to be accessed when those final exams eventually roll…
