IB Long Holiday Study Plan | What to Do Over Summer & Winter Break and How to Schedule It
Not sure what to study—or how much—during IB holidays? Here's a practical, phase-based guide covering priority tasks and weekly schedule templates for every major break.
Long holidays—summer break in particular—are the single best opportunity an IB student has for deep, uninterrupted work. No lessons, no assemblies, no last-minute homework piling up from five directions at once. Use them deliberately and your Year 2 self will thank you.
The core principle is simple: use long holidays for the work that requires sustained concentration (Internal Assessments, the Extended Essay, foundational concept-building), and use term time for the incremental practice that benefits from teacher feedback. This article walks through what that looks like in practice, break by break, with a sample weekly structure you can adapt.
Why Are Long Holidays the Most Valuable Study Time in the IB?
During the school term, even the most disciplined students rarely find blocks of more than an hour or two for focused independent work. IA research, EE writing, and genuine conceptual review all require longer stretches—the kind where you can actually follow a train of thought through to a conclusion.
Long holidays remove that constraint. A six- or eight-week summer break can realistically give you:
- Several complete draft cycles on an IA or EE
- Systematic revision of two or three subjects from first principles
- Time to sit with past papers without the anxiety of an exam next week
The risk, of course, is the opposite extreme—unstructured time that drifts away entirely. A light but consistent plan captures the opportunity without turning summer into a second school year.
What Should You Focus on in Year 1 Summer?
Year 1 summer is probably the most underused break in the IB cycle. Students finish Year 1 exhausted, feel like they've "earned" a rest, and return to school in September with nothing banked.
A more useful framing: Year 1 summer is not revision time—it is foundation-and-exploration time.
Consolidate the concepts that felt shaky in Year 1
Go back through your Year 1 notes and identify topics where you followed along in class but couldn't reproduce the reasoning independently. These gaps compound in Year 2 when those concepts become prerequisites. A few hours of focused re-engagement now is far cheaper than the panic of realizing in October of Year 2 that you still don't understand a core topic.
Begin exploring IA research question ideas
The IA is due in Year 2, but the thinking that makes a strong IA starts much earlier. Use summer to:
- Read two or three example IAs in each subject (your school's library or IB-related resources often have them)
- Note what made a strong Research Question—specific, measurable, personally motivated
- Draft three to five candidate RQ ideas for each IA subject, without committing to any
You don't need to start writing. You need to arrive in September with genuine options to discuss with your teachers—that positions you ahead of almost everyone in your year.
For a more detailed look at what makes an IA high-scoring from the outset, see our IB Internal Assessment guide.
CAS: get ahead of the documentation, not just the activities
CAS hours (the specific requirements are set by your school and the current subject guide—confirm with your coordinator) accumulate across the two years, but many students realize in Year 2 that their Reflections are sparse. Use summer to do activities you'd genuinely enjoy and write reflections while the experience is still fresh.
The IB CAS guide has a practical framework for writing reflections that actually demonstrate the learning outcomes.
What Year 1 summer does NOT need to be
- Full past-paper practice (you haven't finished the syllabus)
- Memorization of content you haven't yet been taught
- A 10-hour-a-day revision marathon
| Priority Level | Task |
|---|---|
| High | Consolidating shaky Year 1 concepts |
| High | IA RQ exploration |
| High | EE subject/topic brainstorming |
| Medium | CAS documentation and reflections |
| Low | Light reading around your subjects |
| Not recommended | Full exam-style past-paper sessions |
What Should You Focus on in Year 2 Summer—Your Last Long Break Before Exams?
Year 2 summer is a different beast. By this point you likely have:
- At least one IA in a nearly final state, and others in mid-draft
- An EE draft your supervisor has commented on
- A complete or near-complete syllabus across most subjects
- Exam dates that are now less than a year away
This is when past-paper practice becomes your primary tool. The IB exam revision guide covers the mechanics of past-paper work in detail—how to use mark schemes productively rather than just checking answers.
Structure Year 2 summer around three parallel tracks
Track 1 — IA and EE finalization
Check the submission deadlines your school has communicated. Work backward from those dates and identify which draft you need to complete or revise during summer. Do not let both the IA and EE slip into the school term simultaneously.
For EE-specific guidance on moving from a rough draft to a polished submission, the Extended Essay guide walks through each stage.
Track 2 — Systematic past-paper practice by subject
Don't practice randomly. Assign each week of summer a primary subject for past-paper work, complete timed papers, and then spend equal time analyzing your errors against the mark scheme. The goal is not to rack up hours—it's to understand exactly which question types and which concepts are costing you marks.
Track 3 — Targeted weakness remediation
Past-paper analysis will surface recurring weak spots. Dedicate specific sessions each week to re-learning those topics conceptually, not just practicing more questions of the same type.
How Should You Use Shorter Breaks—Winter and Spring Holidays?
Winter and spring breaks are typically two weeks or less. The trap is treating them like a scaled-down version of summer: planning to revise three subjects, write a chapter of the EE, and reorganize your notes. You'll accomplish a fraction of it and feel demoralized.
A better approach: one focused deliverable per short break.
Pick one thing that will meaningfully move you forward and structure the break around completing it. Examples:
- A complete, polished first draft of one IA
- Timed past papers for one subject, analyzed thoroughly
- A revised EE section based on supervisor feedback
- Catching up on one subject where you've fallen behind during term
The specificity matters. "Revise chemistry" produces anxiety and procrastination. "Complete Topic 4 review and sit two past papers, checking every answer against the mark scheme" produces a clear finish line.
| Break Type | Recommended Focus |
|---|---|
| Year 1 Winter | Consolidate one or two weak subjects; begin EE background reading |
| Year 1 Spring | First IA draft(s) for subjects with earlier school deadlines |
| Year 2 Winter | Polish any remaining IA drafts; intensive past-paper week for one subject |
| Year 2 Spring | Final exam revision, TOK essay/Exhibition if not yet submitted |
For TOK-specific strategy in the final stretch, the TOK guide covers both the essay and Exhibition from a high-score perspective.
What Does a Realistic Weekly Schedule Look Like During Long Holidays?
The goal is consistency, not intensity. A schedule that asks for five focused hours a day, six days a week, is more sustainable than one that demands twelve hours every day and collapses by week two.
Here is a sample weekly structure for Year 2 summer. Adjust the specific hours to fit your sleep schedule and personal obligations.
Sample Week Structure (Year 2 Summer)
| Time Slot | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Morning (2–3 hrs) | IA/EE drafting | Exam subject A | IA/EE drafting | Exam subject A | IA/EE review | Weak topic deep-dive |
| Afternoon (2 hrs) | Past papers: Subject B | Concept review | Past papers: Subject B | Concept review | Buffer / catch-up | Light reading |
| Evening | Rest / CAS | Rest | Rest / CAS | Rest | Weekly review | Rest |
Notes on this structure:
- Subject rotation keeps you from spending an entire week on one subject while others atrophy
- Buffer days (Friday afternoon here) exist to absorb whatever slipped during the week—don't fill them in advance
- Weekly review (Friday evening, 20–30 minutes) means sitting down, checking what you planned versus what you completed, and adjusting next week accordingly. This single habit prevents the "I don't know where the time went" feeling at the end of summer
- Rest is scheduled, not earned. Treating rest as a reward you haven't yet merited is a reliable route to burnout
Adjusting the template for Year 1 summer
For Year 1, swap the "Past papers: Subject B" slots for "IA RQ exploration / reading" and reduce the overall daily hours slightly. You don't need the same intensity—you need consistency over a longer horizon.
For a broader framework on managing the competing demands of the IB across the full two years, the IB time management guide is worth reading alongside this one.
How Do You Maintain Motivation When There Is No External Structure?
This is the real challenge. Term-time motivation, for better or worse, is partly enforced by proximity to teachers, deadlines, and classmates. Holidays remove all of that.
A few approaches that tend to work:
Anchor to outcomes, not effort. "I will work for four hours today" is easy to game (slow pace, frequent distractions). "I will complete this IA section and leave detailed notes on what the next session needs to address" is harder to fake.
Use a daily startup ritual. A short, consistent routine—reviewing your plan for the day, reviewing what you completed yesterday—signals to your brain that work is beginning. It doesn't need to be elaborate.
Protect social time explicitly. Students who don't plan social or leisure time often feel vaguely guilty about every hour not studying, and then burn out and take three unplanned days off. Scheduling those activities removes the guilt and makes the study time cleaner.
Track completion, not time. At the end of each week, note what you actually completed—drafts written, papers sat, topics reviewed. Progress that is visible is progress that sustains motivation.
Long holidays are genuinely rare in the IB—two years goes faster than it looks from the start. The students who use them well don't work harder than everyone else; they work more deliberately, on the tasks that can't easily be done during term time.
If you'd find it helpful to build a holiday plan tailored to your specific subject combination and IA deadlines, Quick IB's IB-experienced tutors work through exactly that kind of planning with students one-on-one.