UPLANDS IBDP CAS GUIDEBOOK 2017

Contents IB Mission Statement/Diploma Programme Model

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The IB Learner Profile

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CAS Overview

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So, what is CAS?

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The Seven Learning Outcomes

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Assessment

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Evidence (experience descriptions, learning outcomes, goals, supervisors)

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The Five CAS Stages

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Reflection

11-12

What is not CAS?

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Advice

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CAS and the CORE

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“We do not learn from experience…we learn from reflecting on experience” (attributed to John Dewey)

CAS Coordinator: Ms Libby Matheson [email protected] Uplands CAS Facebook Page: Click here 1

IB Mission Statement The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end, the organisation works with schools, governments and international organisations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

The Diploma Programme model The Diploma Programme (DP) is presented as six academic areas enclosing a central core. All DP students participate in the three elements of the core:   

Theory of Knowledge (TOK) Extended Essay (EE) Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS).

CAS enables students to demonstrate attributes of the IB learner profile in meaningful ways through their experiences.

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The IB learner profile

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CAS Overview Creativity, Activity and Service (CAS) is at the heart of the IB Diploma Programme. It is the IB Learner Profile in action. The emphasis in CAS is on learning through reflecting on experiences. CAS aims to develop the whole person. It complements academic accomplishments with practical and real life experiences that are a medium for personal and social development. The purpose of this core element is for you to be involved in experiences that will make a significant difference to your life and to the lives of others, as well as challenge you to extend existing skills or learn new ones. CAS aims to build self-esteem, self-confidence, autonomy and self-reliance. For many students, their CAS experiences are profound and life changing and, most of all, fun. While CAS is both inspired and informed by components of your Diploma Programme, CAS must not replicate other official IB Diploma requirements. Successful completion of CAS is a core requirement of the IB Diploma. CAS aims to encourage you to:

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enjoy a range of meaningful CAS experiences. purposefully and regularly reflect on your experiences. identify goals, develop strategies and determine further actions for personal growth. explore new possibilities, embrace new challenges and adapt to new roles. actively participate in planned, sustained, and collaborative CAS projects. understand that you are members of local and global communities with responsibilities towards each other and the environment.

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So what is CAS? CAS is organised around the three strands of Creativity, Activity and Service. CREATIVITY exploring and extending ideas leading to an original or interpretive product or performance

ACTIVITY physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle

SERVICE collaborative and reciprocal engagement with the community in response to an authentic need

You will begin your CAS programme at the start of Year 12 and continue with regular, weekly participation in CAS experiences for at least 18 months with a reasonable balance between creativity, activity and service. In order to achieve the CAS learning outcomes, it is suggested that, in Year 12, you spend three to four hours a week participating in CAS experiences. Whilst in Year 13 you should spend one to two hours per week. Over the 18 month programme you will be expected to undertake, as a minimum, the following: ● One long term experience for each of the three strands, Creativity, Activity and Service. Long term is defined as a half academic year, so Term 1, or Term 2 and 3. Most students tend to do the long term commitment for a year. ● One short term experience for each of the three strands. Short term being anything less than a half academic year. ● A CAS Project, initiated, planned and undertaken with three or more other people, for a period of a term or more. The collaborators do not need to be other IB students, but cannot be family members. ● Eight-weeks of Community Service, meeting a need you have identified in the community, a need that cannot be met because of financial disadvantage, race, gender, disability, language, etc. ● Regular reflection, provision of evidence and documentation of planning and collaborative work addressing the seven learning outcomes. ● Obtain a Supervisor review for each completed CAS experience. The CAS Project and the Eight Week Community Service can be combined.

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The Seven Learning Outcomes To successfully complete CAS, you must provide evidence that the seven learning outcomes (LO) have been met. When choosing experiences you should think carefully about which LO you aim to achieve. Some LO may be achieved many times, while others may be achieved less frequently. Each LO must be achieved at least once. LO 1

Identify your own strengths and develop areas for growth You are able to see yourself as an individual with various skills and abilities, some more developed than others.

LO 2

Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process A new challenge may be an unfamiliar experience, or an extension to an existing one. The newly acquired or developed skills may be shown through experiences that you have not previously undertaken or through increased expertise in an established area.

LO 3

Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience You can articulate the stages from conceiving an idea to executing a plan for a CAS experience or series of CAS experiences. This may be accomplished in collaboration with other participants. You may show your knowledge and awareness by building on a previous experience, or by launching a new idea or process.

LO 4

Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences You demonstrate regular weekly involvement and active engagement in CAS experiences.

LO 5

Demonstrate the skills and recognise the benefits of working collaboratively You are able to identify, demonstrate and critically discuss the benefits and challenges of working collaboratively in CAS experiences.

LO 6

Engagement with issues of global significance You are able to identify and demonstrate your understanding of global issues, make responsible decisions, and take appropriate action in response to an issue either locally, nationally or internationally.

LO 7

Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions You show awareness of the consequences of choices and actions in planning and carrying out CAS experiences and are aware of the social influences on your own ethical identity.

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Assessment Successful completion of CAS is a requirement for the award of the IB Diploma. In order to successfully meet the CAS requirements, you must: 1. Complete the minimum number of CAS experiences across the three strands. 2. Undertake at least one CAS project of at least one term’s duration. CAS projects must challenge you to show initiative, demonstrate perseverance, and develop skills such as collaboration, problem-solving and decision-making. The CAS project can address any single strand of CAS, or combine two or all three strands, and must be undertaken with three or more other collaborators. 3. Show evidence of using the five CAS stages (Investigation, Preparation, Action, Reflection, Demonstration) as a framework for the CAS experiences and CAS project. 4. Participate in eight weeks’ worth of community service outside of school. The eight weeks do not need to be consecutive. 5. Carry out CAS experiences both in school and in the local community, at least some of which have been initiated by you. 6. Regularly reflect on each CAS experience demonstrating how you have achieved each of the seven learning outcomes. You do this through your CAS portfolio on ManageBac. Reflection informs learning and growth by allowing you to explore ideas, skills, strengths, limitations and areas for further development and consider how they could use what you’ve learned in new contexts. It is expected that you will complete two reflections for each ongoing CAS experience in Term 1 Year 12, and one reflection for each per term thereafter. 7. Received a supervisor review for each completed CAS experience. 8. Attended three formal documented interviews with the CAS Coordinator. The first interview is at the beginning of the CAS programme, the second at the end of the first year, and the third at the end of the CAS programme.

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Evidence As noted in the assessment criteria section, you are required to provide evidence of, planning for, participation in, and learning from, your CAS experiences. Evidence can include some or all of the following: ● A detailed experience description with well thought out goals, carefully selected learning outcomes and the details of the supervisor. ● Photographs and video taken during the experience. ● Anything you produced as part of the experience, for example, fliers, art work, audio and video files, emails, presentations, lesson plans, letters etc. ● Copies of certificates, awards or medals, awarded during the experience. ● Documentation of the Five CAS stages. ● Reflections; written, video and audio are acceptable. ● Supervisor reviews. Falsifying evidence is a breach of academic honesty. Breaches are taken very seriously at Uplands. Experience descriptions Ensure your experience description includes the following: ● What you intend to do, in detail. Write as if the audience you are writing for knows nothing about the experience you are describing. ● What day you intend to do it, and for how long. ● When the experience will commence and finish. ● Where the experience will take place; school or an organisation's address. ● Who will be involved in the activity with you. ● Your motivation for undertaking this CAS experience. ● Who the experience supervisor will be. Goals Your goals for the experience are not the same as the learning outcomes. You should meet your learning outcomes by striving for your goals. Whether or not you achieve your goals is not important. Being able to demonstrate what you learn along the path to aiming for those goals is what matters. Making your goals SMART, helps. S

M A R T

Specific. Be exact about what you want to achieve, not vague. “I want to swim faster” is vague. I want to improve my 50m freestyle from 40 seconds to 35 seconds is specific. Measurable. You should be able to tell whether or not you are getting closer to your goal. Set your goals as small steps towards the desired end. Attainable. Pick something challenging but not impossible. Relevant. It should be a goal that is helpful and interesting to you. Timed. You must have a cut-off point when you will assess whether you have achieved your goal. This may be a series of smaller short-term goals that build on each other or a long-term goal. 8

Selection of learning outcomes Think carefully about which of the seven learning outcomes you think you will be able to achieve through each experience. Each learning outcome must be met once, so spreading the learning outcomes across your different experiences gives you the opportunity to reflect more meaningfully. Try not to choose more than three learning outcomes per experience. The learning outcomes are discussed in more detail during timetabled CAS sessions in Year 12.

Activity Supervisors You are required to have a supervisor for each of your CAS activities. The supervisor will assist you to work towards your goals and at the end of the experience complete a formal written review of your effort and progress. The supervisor must be an adult but cannot be a family or extended family member. The supervisor may be a teacher or an Uplands’ community mentor. For the eight-week community service experience, and for any service within a community setting, the supervisor must be an employee or volunteer within the organisation you are volunteering with. If your supervisor is not familiar with CAS then you must give them a letter explaining the nature of the CAS programme and outlining what your responsibilities are, and theirs. The supervisor completes a form acknowledging that they understand their role and you return it to the CAS Coordinator.

Activity supervisors must be identified, consent received and the details given to the CAS Coordinator before your activity starts. A written review from your supervisor explaining what you did and the effort and commitment you showed is an extremely important piece of evidence. Supervisor reviews can be submitted in English, Bahasa Melayu or Mandarin. You must request the supervisor review immediately upon finishing an experience and you have eight weeks to follow up the review. If the supervisor does not want, or is not able, to complete the review online via ManageBac, there is the CAS completion form PDF which can be printed and completed by hand.

IMPORTANT The CAS Coordinator will only approve your chosen CAS experience once a satisfactory description, learning outcomes, goals and supervisor details have been uploaded to ManageBac. It is essential that you get this approval BEFORE you begin your experience.

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The Five CAS Stages The CAS stages are a framework to help you as you consider what you would like to do in CAS, make plans, and carry out your ideas. It can be applied to all three CAS strands, especially your eight-week community service experience and your CAS project. It is cyclical in approach rather than linear. Stage One: Investigation This is where you and/or your group investigates what you want to do and determines the purpose for your CAS experience. For service, you identify a need you wish to address. Stage Two: Preparation When you have decided on a CAS experience, you will need to prepare. This can be clarifying roles and responsibilities, developing a plan of action/s to be taken, identifying resources, working out timelines, and acquiring any skills you may need before you engage in the experience. Stage Three: Action You put your idea into action! Stage Four: Reflection This is where you describe what happened, how you felt about it, discuss ideas and raise questions. Reflection can happen at any time during your experience and helps to revise plans, learn from the experience and may lead to new or altered action. Stage Five: Demonstration Now you show what you have accomplished! You do this by sharing your experience through your CAS portfolio and/or with others in a formal or informal way such as presentations to your peers/teachers/parents/community organisations etc. Through demonstration and communication you will solidify your understanding and evoke a response from others. It also leads to the development of further ideas and pushes you back to the investigation phase again.

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Reflection Reflection is an essential element of CAS and one that is crucial to being able to demonstrate your progress towards the seven learning outcomes, how you are working towards your goals and developing the IB learner profile attributes. As essential as reflection is to CAS, it does not come easily for most students and the journey towards becoming an effective reflective thinker is one of trial and error. Through practice, feedback and guidance, students develop their reflective capacities and move from simply describing what has happened in an experiences towards being able to identify what they felt, what was a success, what was a challenge, what they learned and how they may apply that learning in the future in a different setting. During Year 12 significant time is spent in CAS sessions looking at the art of reflection, with advice such as ‘reflect on just one or two learning outcomes at a time, but reflect meaningfully.’

Reflection should be ongoing throughout the duration of a CAS experience; before, during and after. Reflections can be a mixture of written, audio and video files. Reflections (along with photos, certificates, timelines, plans and other documentation) are uploaded to your ManageBac account and form your digital CAS portfolio, serving as evidence of how you have achieved the learning outcomes. In Year 12 Term 1 you are expected to reflect on your CAS experiences two to three times, including when you are preparing for the experience but have yet to start it. Reflect during the experience when something significant or meaningful happens, and at the end where you gaze upon the entire experience. This is important because: ● The sooner you start reflecting, the sooner the CAS Coordinator can read it and give you feedback. Reflective writing skills develop over time, practice helps. ● It is much easier to reflect during and immediately after the experience when it is fresh in your mind. If you leave too much time between the experience and the reflection, you risk forgetting, and ending up with 30 outstanding reflections to write, plus homework, plus extended essays, etc. etc. You can follow this easy ‘Four F’s’ guide on how to structure your reflection:

Facts: briefly explain what actually happened. This should be a descriptive narrative of events as they happened. What? Where? When? How? Who?

Feelings: explain how the experience made you feel before, during, afterwards. Emotions are a key to learning so try to articulate them honestly.

Findings: explain your thoughts about what happened and why. Think critically and analyse the events and emotions to see if you can figure out any important realisations, discoveries or learning.

Future: Explain what you are going to do with any new learning you have gained. Can it be applied in other aspects of your life? 11

Some other questions that may help you to reflect are: ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

How successful was I in achieving my goals? What difficulties did I encounter and how did I overcome them? What did I learn about myself and others through this experience? What abilities, attitudes and values have I developed? How did this experience benefit others? Did I maintain full attendance? Was I punctual? How would I summarise my effort and commitment? What might I do differently next time to improve? How can I apply what I have learned during this experience to other life situations? What have I learned about global issues that are evident in our local community? How do I feel about them? What are my views on these issues? What have I done to address these issues?

If you haven’t genuinely learned anything, don’t force it or feel obliged to write something down. CAS is not about jumping through hoops in order get a pass, it is about learning how to learn from your experiences. This life skill is much more important than making your life a little easier for yourself right now. False reflection is very obvious and comes across badly. Try to be as honest and authentic as you can.

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What is not CAS? CAS should be an interesting variety of experiences that you find intrinsically worthwhile and rewarding, and which is mutually beneficial to you and your community. CAS requires you to be active rather than passive. There should be interaction. If you are passive, nothing of real value, either for you or for other people, results from what you are doing, and no real reflection is possible. Remember, each CAS experience you wish to undertake must be approved by the CAS Coordinator before you commence. The CAS Coordinator will guide you through the process of choosing CAS experiences. Below is a short list of things that are not CAS, but the list can be v-e-r-y long! ● Any class, activity or project that is already part of your IB course ● Experiences that take place during timetabled IB classes and for which you have not received approval for the absence ● Work experience that only benefits you ● Part of family or religious duty ● Any activity for which you receive a material reward ● A passive pursuit, e.g. museum, theatre, exhibition, concert visits ● Fundraising with no clearly defined end in sight ● Simple, tedious and repetitive work, for example, in an old people’s or children’s home when you have no idea of how the home operates or are just making sandwiches or serving food.

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Advice It is the quality and depth of the experiences you have that you will gain the most from. Don’t be tempted to add too many experiences as you risk: a) lacking sufficient involvement to achieve the learning outcomes, and b) your academic work suffering. Although your experiences must run for a minimum of 18 months, be smart. Aim to finish the majority of your CAS programme by September of Year 13. You need to maintain two strands of CAS experiences in Year 13. Choose experiences that interest and inspire you. You are much more likely to enjoy and learn from them than you are doing something you chose just ‘for CAS’. The eight-week community service experience should involve direct, hands-on engagement with the community you are trying to serve. The reason for this is that it provides a much more powerful learning experience than, for example, fundraising. When contemplating an experience for the ‘engagement with issues of global significance’ outcome, keep in mind that you need to choose an issue that you can do something about practically and that offers real engagement. Simply doing a fun run for a charity that helps disabled people does not mean that you are actually engaged in addressing the issue of equal rights for disabled people at a local level. If you were involved in working with the disabled people the charity is trying to serve, organising the run to raise awareness and funds, AND taking part in the run itself, then you are actually trying to address the global issue. Make use of the CAS Coordinator and timetabled CAS sessions, a double period once a week. Ask the CAS Coordinator about your ideas and experiences, discuss them with your peers, seek assistance from other staff about developing your ideas and receiving feedback. Talk about it!

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CAS and the CORE CAS and Theory of Knowledge (TOK) TOK guides you in making sense of your experiences as a learner, and this includes your experiences in CAS. In TOK the knower draws knowledge from two personal sources: personal knowledge and shared knowledge. CAS experiences are an important source of your personal knowledge, offering opportunities to gain awareness of the world in a range of interesting and challenging situations. TOK’s ways of knowing can be useful in analysing your CAS experiences in order to draw out learning. Language: Sense perception: Emotion: Reason: Imagination: Faith: Intuition: Memory:

Which types of language used were relevant to this experience? What did you see, hear, smell and feel during the experience? How did the experience make you feel before, during and afterwards? What logical conclusions can be drawn from your experience? What did you anticipate your experience would be like before it happened? Does your faith give you a perspective on this experience? If so, what is it? Does your logical analysis of the experience differ from your ‘gut feeling’? Which previous experiences of yours were relevant to this one and why?

CAS and the extended essay Your involvement in one or more global issues at a local level through CAS may lead to you wanting to know more about it through academic research. Both the extended essay and the world studies extended essay allow you to do this. In the extended essay, you may research and explore personal interests that link with a subject of the Diploma Programme. The world studies extended essay gives you the opportunity to undertake an in-depth, interdisciplinary study of an issue of contemporary global significance at a local level. You can choose to explore a topic from one of the following global themes: ● ● ● ● ● ●

Language, culture and identity Science, technology and society Equality and inequality Conflict, peace and security Economic and/or environmental sustainability Health and development

For more information please contact Ms Libby Matheson, CAS Coordinator. [email protected] Uplands CAS Facebook Page: Click here 15