IB Environmental Systems & Societies SL

IB Environmental Systems and Societies (ESS) is an interdisciplinary group 3 and group 4 IB standard level course. Students can take ESS and have it count as either a group 3 or a group 4 course, or as both. The program is grounded in both a scientific explanation of environmental systems and their functions and also explores the cultural, economic, political, and social interactions of societies within the environment. The structure of the course includes outside class reading and note taking, laboratory investigations, and many student-centered learning activities. The course will be paired with the AP Environmental Science course. (See the AP Environmental Science description for more detail). Students taking IB ESS are expected to take the IB exam at their own expense in addition to completing the internal assessment, a student-designed and implemented investigation of an ESS research question.