*This article is part of the TOK Roadmap — a visual, all-in-one guide I created to help you ace Theory of Knowledge. [View the full roadmap here.]

In this post, I explain

• What is TOK Exhibition?
• Step-by-Step guide to a 10/10 exhibition

What is TOK Exhibition?

“What counts as good evidence for a claim?”

“Are some things unknowable?”

“What is the relationship between knowledge and culture?”

These are from the list of 35 TOK exhibition prompts given by IB, which are all broad questions about knowledge.

TOK Exhibition is a 950-word essay where you answer one of these questions through three real-world objects, and justify why and how they each answer the question in some unique way. Some quick details:

• It’s graded by your school TOK teacher! (and moderated by IB later).
• 950 words excluding citations and text within objects (footnotes also excluded, but long footnotes not recommended.)
• 35 prompts don’t change every year
• It’s an individual task – not group work

Imagine you are a curator in a museum and you just created a new exhibition. When you receive visitors, you need to guide them through your collections one by one, and show why you included them in your particular exhibition. You’re doing this by writing it out.

Steps to ace the Exhibition (and links to each)

Step 0: if you’re new to TOK, make sure you read about helpful TOK concepts to know (Knowledge Questions, Core & Optional themes).

1. First, choose one of the the 35 provided prompts –> read this article exploring the prompts
2. Once you chose a prompt, understand how to structure the overall exhibition –> read this article
3. Find a real-world ‘object’ that answers the prompt in a unique way –> read this article about what a TOK ‘object’ is and how to choose a perfect one
4. Write a coherent paragraph (300-350 words) that introduces the object and its real-world context, and explain how it answers the prompt. –> read this article about how to write a good paragraph
5. Repeat Steps 3-4 three times. Simply repeat the process as if you are writing three separate essays on the same topic
6. To reinforce these ideas, I also break down the rubric itself in this article.

If you follow the above steps, you will have already hit each and every grading criteria!

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