Tuesday 21 February 2017

The Final Phase

You will all receive appointments for your final CAS interview.  It is important that you are prepared when you come to the interview.

  • You must have all your reflections and evidence up-to-date
  • You must have evidence and reflections for each of the 7 outcomes.
  • You must have a variety of experiences across the 3 strands
  • You must have a final reflection where you show how you have met the 7 outcomes as well as how you have developed according to the IB learner attributes.
  • You must have a completed CAS stages document for one project - your project must be at least one month long and done collaboratively with others.
You need to show all these at your final interview.  Interviews start on March 24th. Anyone who does not have all the above will have to come to an extra CAS session from 13.40 - 15.30 on March 30th.  This is an obligatory session.

If you do not have all the above your CAS portfolio will not be marked complete and you will no be eligible for the IB Diploma


See me if you are missing something - it is not too late to fix most things but you are going to be busy so see me as soon as possible.  DO NOT wait until you come to the interview

At the interview you will be asked the following questions:

CAS programme:


  • What did you most enjoy about CAS?
  • Did you manage to reach your goals?
  • What was your greatest challenge in CAS? How did you overcome this?
  • What have you achieved through CAS?
  • What have you learned about balancing your time with your choices and commitments?
  • How did knowing the CAS stages assist you? Where else can you apply these CAS stages in future learning or in life in general?
  • How do you already apply what you have learned from CAS in your daily life? How can this continue as you make future choices?
  • Looking ahead, have any new goals emanated from your CAS programme?
  • How did you integrate the three CAS strands in your overall programme?
  • Describe your CAS project: how you planned, who collaborated, your roles and responsibilities and the results of your collaboration. How were your expectations met or exceeded?
CAS Evidence:

  • What has the role of reflection been in your whole CAS programme? Describe any way your experience with reflection has been helpful and memorable.
  • How could you use something similar to a CAS portfolio in future endeavours?
  • In what ways has the process of reflection and collecting evidence of your CAS experiences helped you develop the attributes of the IB learner profile? What would you do differently?
CAS learning outcomes:

  • How did you improve and develop your planning skills?
  • What did you learn about yourself and others?
  • What have you learned through working in collaboration with others?
  • What abilities and skills did you develop most significantly in CAS?
  • Did CAS help you to consider issues of global importance? How?
  • Which learning outcome did you find most easy to achieve? Most difficult to achieve?
  • What qualities did you discover and develop? What areas for growth were evident?
  • What challenges did you face, and how did you overcome them?

Closing:


  • What could be improved about the way CAS is organised in school?
  • What advice do you have for upcoming CAS students regarding making CAS enjoyable, sustained over time and meaningful?
  • Five years from now, what will you remember most about your CAS programme?
  • Watch the video


    Tuesday 7 February 2017

    Demonstrating that you reached the ouctomes

    It was interesting to hear from Cornelia about AISEC.  It sounds like there are lots of exciting opportunities out there for you soon to be graduates.  If your curiosity was peaked, take a look at the webpage: http://aiesec.org.  You can apply for exchanges at https://opportunities.aiesec.org  - just put SSE (Stockholm School of Economics/Handels) as your sending entity.  If you wish to email Cornelia for more information you can contact her on: cornelia.koziczynska@aiesec.se I think she is a good contact to have!

    Thank you for helping out with the #MyFreedomDay project.  This is part of a global event and Salvador's Instagram video managed to get on the CNN site straight away.  It is still there but they change the view all the time.  Plans for this day (14th March) include a guest speaker who will talk about human trafficking in Nepal.  This is a very worrying issue and I hope that by drawing attention to it on this international day we can make a difference.



    Reaching the outcomes


    The time is nearing for many of you to think about your overall CAS reflection that summarises all your CAS experiences.  This reflection will:

    • show how you have met the leaning outcomes
    • show how you have  developed according to the  IB learner profile.
    • show how you had experiences across the 3 strands
    Students in the past have been quite creative about how they have completed this task.  In some schools you are required to write an essay.  I do not require that.  You must, however, come up with some way of showing all the above.

    Below are a couple of examples by previous students (please note there were 8 learning outcomes when they did CAS and Activity was Action).

    Neither of these is perfect, but they give you an idea.  You do not need to do it digitally - some students used big paper and coloured pens, glued pictures on etc.  You just then need to scan in the final piece of work and upload in under CAS documents.
    I will print out a few and give you time to work on these in Advisory.  You will need to have it ready for your last CAS interview with me.  Interviews will take place in March after the mock exams.




    Keep up the CASing