Please reflect...

Reflection and  evidence  form an important part of your CAS portfolio.  It is these that will be used to measure if you have met the 7 learning outcomes.  It is important that you think about the learning outcomes that you chose for your experience when reflecting.  If you chose 'engaging with issues of global significance,' make sure that your reflection and evidence show how you met this outcome.

Reflections should not just be about how fantastic you are and what you achieved.  They should also be about what you could differently, what you did wrong, what impact your experience had on you and others etc.  The following is an excerpt from the CAS guide.

Elements of a Reflection

•       Describe what happened.  Memorable moments, obstacles, difficulties, successes.
•       Expressing feelings.  Show how you felt about your experiences.
•       Generating ideas. Rethinking or re-examining choices.
•       Asking questions. Questions about people, processes or issues

     Remember to relate to the learning outcome as much as possible.  These are the questions that appear on  Managebac the first time you reflect on an experience:

      To guide your reflection, you may consider the following at different stages of an activity (prior to starting, during, and after completion):

• What do you perceive and notice?
• How you feel being involved?
• What do you think and feel about the activity itself?
• What does the activity mean to you?
• What value does the activity have?
• What did you learn from this activity, and how might you extrapolate from this to apply any lesson to your life more generally?

   

    

    Your reflection could be a series of questions that you ask yourself about what you did and how it impacts (or doesn't) on the community.  You do not need to praise your experience but to be critical of it.

   Deadlines

   Please see the previous post for important deadlines regarding evidence and reflection.   

Progress Indicators Reset

This term, everyone begins without a progress indicator.  In order to get you green flag back, you will need to do the following:

• Start adding reflections and evidence - there are some people with NO reflections or evidence.  These people have until January 29th to get going on this.  If you still have nothing on that date, your parents will  be contacted.
• CAS questions must be completed for all experiences that were finished last term.  If this is not done by the sports break, you risk having the experience deleted!!!!!
• You must have at least one experience for each of the C.A.S - that is creativity, activity and service.
• You must have started a CAS project using the CAS stages of Investigation, Preparation, Action, Reflection and Demonstration.  All students are expected to have completed/participated in a CAS project during the first year of the IB  
• All experiences must be approved - they will not be unless the goals and descriptions are clear.

What's happening this term?

During advisory, I will work with you on doing reflections as well as planning CAS projects.  I will also start interviewing again around the middle of the term.  At this interview we will see if you are on track and what you need to do to make sure that you qualify for the IB Diploma.  If I have concerns, I will call you to an extra meeting with your parents.  It is important that you do not leave your CAS until the 2nd year of the IB.  You will have lots of other things that take you time in the 3rd and 4th terms.  You must still be doing CAS but you should have done most of it by then. It is possible to work in CAS experiences over the summer, but not advisable to leave it all to that time.  

What's next?

Congratulations grade 11 - everyone has a green flag this term.  A few people made some last minute additions to their CAS portfolios leading to green flags in these reports.

Next term it will be impossible to get a green flag at the last minute.

In order to make sure that your CAS portfolio is satisfactory you must start uploading evidence/reflections on an ongoing basis.

You must also show that you have been part of at least ONE CAS project and that means that you must show that you have followed the CAS stages:

Investigation; preparation, action, demonstration and reflection.  

We will talk more about this at the beginning of next term.
We will also go over how to do good, meaningful reflections.

Amnesty International Group

The Amnesty group has been campaigning for the rights of a Malaysian cartoonist through drawing their own cartoons and posting them under #zunar.  Here are some of the pictures they have posted on the wall in school.  You can read more about Zunar's situation at: zunar

Volunteering opportunities

Just now there are a lot of opportunities for people who speak Swedish to help refugees with improving their language skills.  See http://www.volontarbyran.org/ for details or ask me. 

If you are good at art, once again an organisation  called 'Untold Stories' that works with human rights in Africa is looking for people to illustrate. 

'We are looking for illustrators who are skilled at drawing in digital or traditional media. You should be able to draw a picture that illustrates what is being told in an article or an interview.'

For more details see http://www.volontarbyran.org/en/node/76741

Otherwise enjoy your break and don't forget to keep documenting your CAS experiences.  No one attempted last week's quiz so it is still open.  See the last blog post for the details.

First term of CAS

Most of you are off to a good start and have added lots of CAS experiences.  It is good to see a variety of Creativity, Activity and Service.  Today, I have set all the progress markers that will appear on the final reports.  It is pleasing to see so many gold cups for outstanding performance.  These were given to students who have:

• a variety of experiences across the 3 strands
• have goals and descriptions for all their experiences
• have evidence and reflections for most of their experiences.

Green flags have been given to those who have written goals and descriptions for most experiences and may even have started with evidence and reflection.

At the beginning of next term, all students without reflections and/or evidence for every experience will get a red flag.  You MUST start adding evidence and/or reflection.  Without it, even if you have participated in 500 CAS experiences, you will not get an IB Diploma. You MUST demonstrate that you have tried reach the learning outcomes (LOs) at least once.  

CAS Projects

Remember that CAS projects require that you show how you have followed the CAS stages - 

Investigation; preparation, action, demonstration and reflection.  

Don't mark every experience a project unless you can show how you went through the stages.

CAS Service

Students wearing the red AIDs day ribbons 

You should always consider the CAS stages when doing service.  You should think about how the service impacts on communities.  Remember thinking global, acting local is something that is encouraged.  Service can often be in response to something you have learnt or heard at school.  Last week we had a speaker about AIDS awareness.  A few weeks ago a speaker about Ebola.  What kind of responses could be appropriate for these events?  Stine and Angela made red ribbons for everyone to wear in response to AIDS awareness day.  Think creatively and I am sure you will find opportunities arise from what we do in school. 

Remember you must have evidence and reflection to qualify for the IB Diploma

This weeks quiz questions.

1. What must you have in order to show that you have met the LOs?

2. What do you need to do to get a green flag next term?

3. What happens if you do not complete CAS?

Be the first person to write the answers on a piece of paper and hand to me personally to claim your prize.

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?