Why do I have a red flag?

If you still have a red flag it is because there is something that you need to fix.  I have done a very thorough check of the portfolios over the last week and I am pleased to say that most people have now managed to tidy up their lose ends and get a green flag.

10 minutes a week, keeps the red flag away!

If you now, please, try to dedicate 10 minutes a week to making sure that you have added some evidence and reflection to your portfolio you should find that finishing off CAS in March/April will not be a big chore.  If you do not take the time each week, you will be faced with a huge task in the time between the mock exams and the May exams.  If you really fall behind, you will find that you will need to come in to school during the study week.  No one wants to do that, so please do not put yourself in that position.

Why do I have to do all this?

Because if you don't, you will not be eligible for the IB Diploma.  

Of course there are lots of other reasons for doing CAS.  It can be fun!  it can help you with college/university/job applications. It is great experience.  You learn a lot.  You get to work with something you enjoy.  

What do I need to do to have a satisfactory CAS portfolio?

1. Have enough evidence to show that have participated in your CAS experiences for the time that you have claimed.
2. Have a balance of Creativity, Activity and Service experiences
3. Have reflection for each of your experiences - more for longer ones - at least 2 times each term.
4. Show that you have met the 7 learning outcomes
5. Have enough evidence and reflection to show that you have participated in CAS experiences for 18 months.
6. Complete 3 interviews with the CAS coordinator.

Coming up next week!

In my next blog post I will write about the final interview and how you need to prepare.  If you have a good CAS portfolio, you will find it easy to prepare.

What happens if I don't work on my CAS?

The consequences of forgetting to up-date your CAS portfolio are numerous.  In this holiday edition of the CAS blog, I will list some of the things that could afflict YOU if the little red - new changes - image doesn't appear next to your name over the next month.

1. You will not be able to show that you have participated in CAS for a continuous period of 18 months
2. You will not be able to show that you have met all the learning outcomes
3. You will find it hard to get evidence of having met the learning outcomes
4. Your supervisor will forget who you are and not be able to review your experience
5. You will get really stressed just before your mock exams because you know that you don't have enough on your CAS portfolio to qualify for the Diploma and you might as well throw in the towel
6. You will have to work like crazy just before, during and after the mocks trying to get things up-to-date, leaving you with no time to study...
7. Some of your experiences will get deleted due to lack of action and you will have to do more to make up for the loss..
8. You will find it hard to reflect on something you did 6 months ago and almost impossible to show how you met the learning outcome for that particular experience - an outcome that you do not have for any other so you will end up with one missing outcome.

All of the above are stressful and eventually lead to you not qualifying for the IB Diploma.  Do not put yourself in that position.  You have all worked so hard to get this far.  Most of you need to spend 10 - 15 minutes a week on your portfolio to keep it in shape.   A stitch in time saves nine. 

There is one more consequence that might not impact on the IB Diploma but is pretty scary.  If you do not up-date your CAS portfolio, the CAS coordinator will haunt your dreams for the next 50 years....

Enjoy the break but don't forget to CAS......

There is not much happening here. In general you need more evidence and reflection for all ongoing experiences

Comments on CAS portfolios

This week I have checked every single CAS portfolio.  All except a couple of people have received comments with suggestions about what they should do to keep up with their CAS and be eligible for the IB Diploma.  The most common comment is the title of today's blog.

"There is not much happening here. In general you need more evidence and reflection for all ongoing experiences"

I know that you have all been very busy with your exams and Internal Assessments but it is essential that you spend a little time on your CAS portfolio NOW.  It is hard to find evidence and do reflections at the end of the IB, especially when you are preparing for the real IB exams.  If you are not done in time, you will need to come in during the exam time to work on your portfolio and do your CAS interview.  NO ONE WANTS TO DO THAT!

A few people have not finished off their CAS projects - correction - they have finished the projects but not the 'paper work'.  This must be priority number one.

Another common comment is:

"If a supervisor doesn't respond to a review request, it is your responsibility to contact him/her. In person if necessary"

I have emailed some school supervisors and asked them to check managebac but really this is your responsibility. If they do not respond to emails - go speak to them.  It might be that they don't really know what to say, as they have not had so much contact with you.  Go and talk to them and explain what you have done so that they know what they can write.

A 3rd comment that reoccurs is: 

"I think that some of these experiences might have ended. Please add all the reflection and evidence and then do the CAS questions to finish them off."

This is to let you know that you need to finish it ASAP.  I have said that you have 3 months to get it completed.  Some of you have let experiences that finished last term stay open. If that is the case you might have received the following comment:

"You have an experience that is in danger of deletion if it is not up-dated or completed within the next 2 weeks."

This means you really have to take action to get up-to-date.

You should have a lot of green ticks by now but you must be actively participating in at least one experience.  That means adding evidence, and reflection on a fairly frequent basis.  If you haven't added anything since June, then maybe the experience is no longer valid.

Take the time over the break to up-date.  

OOOPS - I forgot about CAS!!!

I know that you have all been very busy over the past few weeks.  It is easy to let CAS sit on a back burner when you have a lot of other deadlines to meets.  Now that it is starting to settle down again (before starting up again!) take the time to update your CAS portfolio.  Remember that you must show continuous participation in CAS over 18 months.  If you take a long break, you will find yourself having to do CAS right up to the 1st of May - with your final interview in the middle of exams.  If you keep on track - you can finish CAS in March or April.

What you should do now

• Go through each of your current open experiences and add a reflection and some evidence (yes for every single one!)
• If you have experiences that are ended - finish them off - update reflections, evidence and do the CAS questions, before asking for a supervisor request
• Check that your project has a green tick - there should not be any open projects now - if yours is still open, you have probably heard from me.
• Check that you have all the 7 learning outcomes covered.  Even if you have all of them ticked doesn't mean that you have actually reached them - make sure that you can show evidence of how you met each and every one.
• Check that you have round about equal amounts of Creativity, Activity and Service.

What happens now?

Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, I will be absent from school until February.  I will come back just before the sport break and then you have your mock exams.  After the mock exams, I will have the 3rd and final interview with each of you.  At the interview you need to be able to show how you met each one of the 7 learning outcomes. In the past students have had posters, mind-maps,  written documents etc.  You will need to bring this to the interview and discuss it with me.  In order to get COMPLETE for CAS you must be able to demonstrate each of the learning outcomes.

Completing CAS Experiences

Interviews are over for now.  They went well with most people on track to completing their CAS in March or April next year.  The final interviews and reflections will take place in February and March of next year.  Don't let the ball drop now - make sure you take 10 - 15 minutes to update  your CAS portfolio each week.

Completing CAS experiences

Some people are finding it hard to remember how to complete a CAS experience.  Follow these steps:

1.  Make sure you have sufficient evidence to show that you have participated in the experience for the period of time you have selected
2. Check your dates.  Are they accurate? It is easy to make a mistake with the year!
3. Make sure you have adequate reflection.  If you have participated in something for over a year, 1 short reflection is not likely to be considered adequate.  
4. Do the CAS questions - see information below about filling in CAS questions
5. Request a supervisor review.  Make sure your supervisor's details are correct otherwise this will not go to them.  If you do not have a supervisor it comes to me - so make sure that if you are in a sporting team or something like that, you add a supervisor as I will not write reviews for experiences where there is another person who can do it.

Once the supervisor review is done, you will receive a green tick and the experience will lock - you will no longer be able to make changes to it.

Completing CAS questions

You can find them just below your name on the summary sheet.

The CAS questions are a way of checking that you have reached/addressed the learning outcome(s) that you chose for each experience.  The best way to answer the first question is to copy and paste the learning outcomes in and write a comment about each one in turn.  It is not enough to say that you addressed them without specifying how.  See below.

CAS questions: 

Copy and paste the learning outcomes.

You can then address each one by writing about how you achieved it.

Finish off by reflecting on how you could have done the experience differently - what have you learnt? 

What not to do!

This example just names the outcomes but does not say how they were achieved.

Second interviews and some new ideas.

I have now done a week of second interviews and it has good very smoothly.  I am so pleased with the progress that some of you have made and it is good to see that you have really kept up with you  CAS over the summer.  Don't forget that even if you only have one or 2 experiences left that you need to spend a little time every week to make sure your portfolio is in order.

Some people have been looking for something for service to do over the next term.  Here are a few suggestions:

Citizen Science

This is not just about science.  These are projects that involve volunteers from around the world and cover a variety of disciplines from History to Medicine.  Most of the projects can be done from home with a computer and you can choose when and how much time you want to spend on them.

Look here for some interesting topics.

Stockholm Film Festival

If you want to volunteer for this year's festival you can apply via the webpage: http://www.stockholmfilmfestival.se/en/node/2113  You do not need to speak Swedish.  Connor did it last year so you can speak to him if you need some more information.

Uppsala Film Festival 

If you don't mind going to Uppsala there is also a film festival there looking for volunteers. 

See details on here

Stockholm Fringe Festival

They are looking for volunteers for a festival next week.  Apply now if you are interested - here

Do you speak Swedish?

There are a lot of jobs on volontärbyrån - check them out!

CAS interviews and CAS completion

We are now in the last year of your IB programme.  You are going to start to have lots of deadlines to meet.  Make sure you are on top of your CAS so that it doesn't add to your stress levels.   A little attention to the CAS portfolio every week,  will prevent it from eating away at your time in the long term.  Keep up-to-date with reflections and evidence. Be selective about what you keep going and what you finish off.

Finishing off experiences

• Finish off all experiences that you are no longer involved in.
• Plan to finish MOST of your experiences before the end of the term

When you are finished you need to:

• Check that you have adequate evidence 
• Check that you have adequate reflections
• Make sure that you have reflected on the learning outcomes you chose for this experience
• Complete the CAS questions
• Get a supervisor review

18 Months of CAS

• You must have at least one CAS experience that continues until you have reached the end of 18 months.  
• You must have 18 months continuous participation in CAS.If your first experience started in September 1st 2017 and you did CAS in the summer your end date will be March 1st.
• If you did not do CAS in the summer - your end date will be April 1st. 

Interviews

You must do 3 CAS interviews.  We did one last term.

• Second Interview - September 2018
• Third Interview - February/March 2019

Learning Outcomes

There are 7 learning outcomes.

You must have evidence and reflections showing that you have met every one of the learning outcomes.

You will be asked to show this in an illustration or written text.  You will see examples of how to do this. You must bring this to your final interview.  If you do not have it, you will not complete CAS.

February 2019

You should have one or 2 experiences open and everything else should be completed.

If you plan ahead you can take it easy with CAS in 2019 and concentrate on all the other stuff!

CAS interview times