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

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

Keep CASing

Today when I checked the CAS portfolios there was not much to see.  I get little red messages when people make changes and this week there were only 5!  Please keep 'CASing' as it is a requirement that you participate in CAS for 18 months continuously.  I know that a lot of you have been really busy with MUN - great work by the way - but don't forget to upload evidence and reflections about it.
When you have ended an experience, fill in the CAS questions and remember to show how you achieved the learning outcomes in the last question.  Three learning outcomes means you need to show how you reached 3 different outcomes.

Still looking for things to get involved in?

Freedom Day on March 17th is being followed by CNN and we are joining up.  Pyper in grade 11 is on board and looking for people to help with events.  The point of the day is to draw attention to modern day slavery and people trafficking.  There will be a meeting on Weds at break. Check out the face book page: https://www.facebook.com/CNNFreedom/

Freedom Day on March 17th is being followed by CNN and we are joining up.  Pyper in grade 11 is on board and looking for people to help with events.  The point of the day is to draw attention to modern day slavery and people trafficking.  There will be a meeting on Weds at break. Check out the face book page: https://www.facebook.com/CNNFreedom/

International Women's Day is March the 8th.  The Amnesty International group is looking at ways to highlight women's rights on this day.  They are meeting on Monday at break to discuss this.

Final Term - time to consolidate CAS

Finishing of experiences

Most of you have a few experiences that you have already completed.  Make sure you:

• have enough evidence to show that you actually did the experience.  
• have reflections covering the time you participated in the experience
• have at least one reflection specifically referring to each of the learning outcomes you chose for the experience
• fill in the CAS questions - pay particular attention to the last one that asks how you met the learning outcomes

When all that is done you can request a supervisor report

• If you have no supervisor it will go to me.  
• If you have another person supervising you, make sure you have the correct email address. 
• If the supervisor doesn't respond in week or so, speak to them and explain what it is about.
• You can resend the email if they can't find it.  
• If you can't get it done by email, print it out and take it to them to fill in.  
• You can then scan it and add it to your portfolio.

MUN - this week

Many of you have major roles in the MUN conference coming up this week.  Don't forget to collect evidence and reflect on your part in this experience.  Evidence can be photos, recordings, documents, articles, texts from social media etc.

If you have made MUN your project, don't forget that you need to have your CAS stages form filled in if it is to qualify as a CAS project.

Reasons to be a CAS coordinator

It's not always fun and games being a CAS coordinator.  A lot of the time is spent going through the portfolios on Managebac and writing notes.  Often the notes are things like - read the note I wrote last week or please see previous note...  Not the most satisfying part of the job.  I also spend a bit of time each week writing this blog.  Which is OK.  But sometimes I think that not many people read it.  Not all students have activated their subscriptions despite the fact that we are now nearing the end of the DP.  Sometimes, something happens that makes it all worth it.

Well done Axel

A couple of months ago I wrote on my blog about a group of volunteers that help young refugees by providing homework help twice a week.  This group is called, Fånga Framtiden Tillsammans. (Seize the Future in English or FFT for short).  Each year they have a party in December for the for the volunteers and the refugees.  I thought it might be nice if this year we could organise a presents for the students - movie tickets.  They are mostly young people who go to Swedish Gymnasium and are studying Swedish. Giving them movie tickets would give them the chance to do something enjoyable that they otherwise couldn't afford.  To pay for the tickets, I would need about 5000kr.  At first no one came with any suggestions but then one day Axel asked me about it.  He was interested in doing something and through Facebook found a donor who would buy the tickets.  This evening, Axel and some other grade 12 students are going along to the party to help set up.

Axel has inspired other students to ask about becoming volunteers.  To do this you need to be able to speak Swedish - a plus if you are good at maths as there is often a shortage of maths help!  You can sign up via www.volontarbyran.org/fanga-framtiden-tillsammans or you can contact them on Facebook.  You can come once, twice or however often you like - you sign up the day before depending of how much time you have and how many students are coming.  They meet between 6 and 8PM at 2 locations on Södermalm.

Thank you Axel - for both reading my blog and taking action as well as inspiring others.

More inspiration from Nepal

Kresimir gave an informative and inspiring presentation about the Nepal Project in advisory this week.  He even responded to some thought provoking questions from classmates about the project its feasibility and sustainability.  Whilst it can be hard to be questioned when one is doing a good thing, Kresimir handled it with finesse.  What pleased me the most was the way students were able to engage in reflective and critical dialogue about what we do in school.  Sometimes I think that students just join projects because they have to do CAS or it looks good in their university applications and they don't really think about what they are doing.  When we are asked to defend our ideas, we are given a chance to show why it matters and how we care. We will always have to face people who question what we do and it is good to have the answers ready as Kresimir did.  This is a good example of something to reflect about in your CAS portfolio.  (That's a hint).  Great work by the Nepal group to raise 5800kr through the sale of candy canes. ( Note: the 11th graders were very active in this!)

Rhino group gets it together!

Yesterday I couldn't make it to the rhino group meeting so I left a note on the board in my room.  To be honest I have been rather harsh.  They have had a goal to raise awareness and €300 for the KZN project which is part of the African Conservation Trust.  The deadline for the fundraising is the end of December.  Yesterday they had €73 Euros to go.  They have had a gala evening with some wonderful performances by classmates - unfortunately the attendance was quite poor.  They have sold friendship bands, post cards and rhino cookies.  They know that if they were to sell cupcakes they could make the money in a week.  People here love cupcakes.  I have insisted that everything they sell has to have a connection to the project and everyone who purchases something must be given a message about the project.  That doesn't make it easy. But doing something good, should not always be easy.  Yesterday they surprised me. They had raised over €30 more and are hoping to get the rest of the money today.  Look out for the rhino cookies and think about how you are helping save one of the world's most amazing creatures from extinction.   You can see their fund raising page at SIS Rhino Group

Update - on the afternoon of the 15 they were just €7 from their goal.  Not bad!

The Power of the Pen

The Amnesty Group that is now mostly grade 11 students are continuing the activism that grade 12s had begun with a new Right for Writes campaign.  This year the focus was on Zeynab Jalalian who is detained in Iran.  She has medical problems and is in danger of losing her eyesight if she does not receive health care soon.  The SIS group collected 52 signatures that will be sent with others from the Amnesty office to the Embassy of Iran.  You can still sign the petition electronically if you didn't get a chance.  Click here.  

A lot of people wonder if it really helps to write letters.  The fact is, it does.  Read here about some of the successful letter writing campaigns that Amnesty has led in the past.







I have spent so much time writing about the things that make it great to do my job that I haven't checked your CAS portfolios today.  Make sure you go through them over the break and look at previous blogs and notes to see what needs to be done.

Enjoy the break and keep up the good work.

Are All your Experiences Current?

You must participate in CAS until you start your exams but you should have a green tick for all completed experiences.

If you do not have this mark next to your experience, that means that you are actively participating in it still.  That in turn means that you must be active in uploading evidence and reflections to go with that experience.

Take the time now to get the green tick for as many experiences as you can.  Just make sure you keep one going.

How do I get a green tick?

• Submit evidence to show that your have done what you said you would - this can be photos, videos, emails, documents, recordings, etc
• Submit reflections about what you have learnt and how you felt.  This can be written or an oral/video recording. 
• Make sure you show how you met the chosen learning outcome.
• Complete the CAS questions
• Request a supervisor report (if you don't have a supervisor it goes to me).
• Once the supervisor report is filled in - the green tick magically appears.

Don't leave CAS to the last minute

Next term you will be even busier than this term.  Make sure you take the time now to update your CAS portfolio and finish completed experiences so that you do not have to worry about it so much in the midst of your last term.

Exams Approaching - Get your CAS under control

I am pleased to write that most people now have green flags and those who don't are mostly one document away from it!  I feel confident that all of you will qualify to have your CAS portfolio marked complete in June and be able to pick up the IB Diploma at the end!

However do not start to forget about CAS as it must continue into the end and you must keep up with reflections and evidence.  It would be crazy to fall behind now.

Don't jump off the bike yet - there's still 6 months to go!

Good luck with your exams next week and see me if you have any questions about your CAS portfolios.  Next Tuesday Advisory lesson will be a study period and time for me to meet up with anyone that I still have some questions or concerns about.  

Feeling stressed?  

The QQ is going to run an article about exam stress.  Why not tell them your story? Look out for a reporter near you.