Evidence, Evidence, Evidence

It's great to see so many of you have green flags and have started getting involved in CAS experiences.  The next step it to start adding evidence.  Even if you have an approved experience with a good description and goals, it will not help you to get a completed CAS portfolio unless there is evidence of your participation.

Evidence can be:

• photos
• schedules
• files with planning/minutes of meetings and other documents
• oral recordings
• film recordings
• emails
• gym attendance records
• supervisor comments
• links to websites/blogs/Instagram accounts 
• reflections - written/oral/pictorial

The above list is not exhaustive - use your imagination but make sure that you have evidence.  Without it your portfolio will not receive a 'complete' at the end of IB and you will not get a diploma.

Adding evidence as you go along is much easier than trying to find it a year later.  

Some of you will have red flags on your reports at the end of the term.  Make sure to take the time to remedy this situation.  You will find my comments on your portfolio.  If you have been asked to make an appointment, do so as soon as possible if you wish to get a green flag.  

Volunteer opportunties

A group called Action 10 is looking for people to help them in evaluation of their programs -

Volunteer to join the Evaluation team

Action10 is a nonprofit organisation operating in low-income countries (www.action10.org). We have programs in seven countries: Kenya, Uganda, Togo, Cameroon, Liberia, Nigeria and Colombia. Our vision is a world without extreme poverty.

Organisation: 

• Action10

See http://www.volontarbyran.org/en/english for more details.

The prize for the last quiz has not been claimed.  You can find the questions on the post 'Keeping up-to-date.' First person to write the correct answers to the questions on paper  and give it to me, gets the prize!

Reports coming up

I know that everyone is very busy with exams and other assessments at the moment so I will keep this post short.

Your CAS status will appear in your report at the end of this term.  Please check the notes that I have left on your portfolio to see what you need to do to get a green flag.  I expect the following:

• all experiences are approved
• you have started adding evidence and reflections
• you have uploaded you personal profile and CAS proposal form

CAS events you might see around in before the end of term:

Amnesty - currently working on the Write for Rights campaign.  The focus is on Zunar, a Malaysian cartoonist who is at risk of being jailed for his views.  You can see his website at http://www.zunar.my/

Shoe Box Appeal - some of the boys will be encouraging you to give gifts to less fortunate people at Christmas.

Creativity Club is organising drawings for a peace quilt to be presented at the Olympics in Rio.

Rhino group are embarking on a social media campaign to raise awareness of the plight of the rhinos. They might ask you to have your photo taken with a rhino horn for their Instagram account.

Quiz - no one successfully answered last week's quiz. I still have the prize, so if you are interested it is still open! See the last post for details.

Keeping up-to-date

It is great looking through the CAS portfolio's and seeing that so many of you are involved in many wonderful experiences.  The issue now for many people is to maintain the commitment and make sure that everything counts.  To be sure that an experience counts it most meet the following guidelines.

Making sure it counts

• You have a description that explains what the experience actually involves
• You have written goals that show how you will achieve the learning outcomes
• You have selected learning outcomes (no more than 3) that you can achieve through that particular experience
• You add evidence of your participation - can be photos, files, links, meeting minutes, audios, films etc,
• You show how you have achieved the learning outcomes as part of the experience (though reflections/evidence or other ways).
• You fill in the CAS questions - which every are appropriate - when the experience is complete
• You request a supervisor report (if you have a supervisor) or let me know that an experience is complete.  

The sooner the better

Don't leave the adding of evidence etc too long.  It is much easier to do as soon as you have completed an experience.  All of you who helped out with the film festival over the last week should make sure to complete that experience in your portfolio as soon as possible as film festival emails close down once the festival is over.

Red Flag?

If you still have a red flag you should see me to book at time to work out how you can avoid that flag being on your December report-

Happening at the moment

The Creativity club is looking at organising participation in a peace quilt to be put together from drawing of school children around the world.  Look out for information about that.

Amnesty is working on the right for writes campaign and will asking people if they would like to draw cartoons in support of a Malaysian cartoonist who is threatened with many years in jail.

Annexe council is working on an anti-cyberbullying project.

Shoe box appeal - bring in any empty shoe boxes you have at home.  More details about this later.

Are you in a group and would like me to report on what you are doing?  Let me know.

Have you read this far?  Congratulations!  Be the first to write the answers to these 3 questions on a piece of paper and give it to me to get a prize.
1. How may learning outcomes should you have per experience?
2. When should you  fill in the CAS questions?
3. What should you do if you have a red flag?

Change of Status on ManageBac

Over the last week I have reset all the progress indicators on ManageBac.  Here is an explanation of what the indicators mean:

Gold Cup - Everything is up-to-date. All Learning Outcomes are covered. You are well on your way with CAS.
Green Flag - Files uploaded, most experiences approved. Good start.
Red Flag - Files not uploaded, few or no approved experiences.  I am concerned about how you will complete CAS
Arrows - Files uploaded. Mostly Ok but a few details missing, possibly from experience descriptions and goals.


Please check your portfolio.  Don't put it off as it gets harder to make up.  As far as I can see, everyone of you has an experience that qualifies for CAS - mostly it is just a matter of writing it up correctly.  Note that your status will appear on your report at the end of the term.

Reflections and Evidence

Now is the time to start collecting evidence of your participation in experiences.  Photos, links, schedules, screenshots, recordings, film, audio, references, certificates, files.  All these and more are acceptable forms of evidence.  Upload them as soon as you get them - they can be hard to find later on.  

Coming Up

Shoe box Appeal - start bringing in shoeboxes.  I will set up an box to leave items to be packed or you can pack your own and bring them in.  Please click here to see the kind of items that are requested.  It is in Swedish but can be easily read with googletranslate.  

Build a Ginger Bread House

The annual 'pepparkakshus' competition organised by the Architecture and Design Museum has opened.  This is a great way to show your design skills.  It is often entered by architects and bakers along with school classes.  You can read the details here.  The theme this year according to the translation is: "New lair - Stay in new ways".  I would translate it more like - 'New Home - live in new ways.'  Why not get a group together and make a home!  All houses must be delivered to the museum on the weekend of the 27th - 29th November so get baking.

Annexe Council

Just before the autumn break, Annexe council was selling Halloween Candy.  The candygrams were delivered after the break and many people were happy to receive candy with messages from friends or secret admirers.  All the money collected with go the Nepal Project.  

Helping in the preschool

Some students in grade 11 have begun helping out in the pre-school at SIS.  Some who had planned to work there no longer can and the PreK teachers are happy to take some other students.  This is a great opportunity.  Please see me if you are interested in this.  You need to have a 'gap' during the school day to be able to do this experience.

Rhino Group blog

Check out the rhino group's blog here.  They are having an extra meeting after school on Wednesday to plan how they can spread their message to the rest of the world! Regular meetings are returning to Thursday break after Friday didn't work out.  You will find links to facebook and instagram accounts as well.  

Helping at Christmas

There are still a lot of jobs on volontärbyrån to help out around Christmas.  See me if you need help finding them.

  

Too much to do?

It is great that so many of you are very active in participating in CAS experiences.  I would like to issue a word of caution to those of you who have not really got started.  Don't think that you will have time later!  This is probably the calmest period in the IB that you will have.  If you  don't believe me, just take a look at the grade 12s just now.  At this time next year, you will have so many deadlines with Extended Essays, Internal and External Assessments, that CAS will probably start to take a back seat.  Any learning outcomes that you have not worked towards will become difficult to achieve. Keep in mind that you must have evidence of each learning outcome.

CAS Learning Outcomes

A requirement of CAS is that you achieve the 7 learning outcomes through your CAS experiences. Your portfolio must contain evidence that you have met these outcomes. You can achieve an outcome more than once but each outcome must be attained at least once and your CAS experiences must cover a period of 18 months.

Quality not quantity

You have all heard that expression before and it really does apply to CAS.  It is not how much CAS you do, but how well you do it that counts.  If you find that you are unable to make meetings for one of your experiences because it clashes with another experience, then perhaps you need to take stock of what you are doing.  It is better to be 100% committed to one experience than to be 20% committed to 5 different experiences.  If you are a member of a group like Amnesty, MUN, Annexe or the Rhino Preservation Group,  it is necessary that you attend all the meetings. You are also expected to work on the project outside meeting time.  Just turning up it not enough.  You will not achieve the learning outcomes just by being present.  You have to actually believe and commit to the project. If the group meets every week and goes over the same points as the week before without going forward, it serves no purpose.  

Don't be afraid to drop experiences if you feel that you have over committed.  Decide what you want to focus on and do that.  Maybe you can be part of one group this term and another next rather than both at the same time.  

Shoe Box Appeal

Some of you were involved with the shoe box appeal last year.  This was a project that involves packaging Christmas Presents for needy people into shoe boxes and wrapping them.  They are then given out through different aid organisations in Sweden to people who might otherwise not get any presents.  The homepage for this organisation is here: skokartongsappellen.  If there is anyone who is interested in being part of this, please let me know and we can start collecting shoe boxes and items to go in them.  A list of desired items can be found on the web page.  If we start a little earlier this year, it could be possible to involve more of the school.  The webpage is in Swedish, but can be easily translated.

Make sure you portfolio is up-to-date

People who do not have the correct documentation and have not started actively participating in CAS experiences will be called to interviews next week.  Please make sure that your documents are uploaded in the correct place.  See the picture below. 

Have you read this far?

If read this blog, you have the chance to win a prize. The first student who can write the answers to 3 questions about this blog post on a piece of paper and give them to me will receive a reward. The questions are:

1. What word do you click in to reach the homepage of the group organising the shoe box appeal?

2. What is going to happen to people who have not uploaded the CAS personal Profile and Proposal form?

3. What are the names of the 4 groups that are mentioned in the section - Quality not Quantity?

Be the first person to bring the correct answers to me on a piece of paper and you will get the prize.