Frequently Asked Questions FAQs

CAS is one of the important part of the Core of the Diploma Programme. CAS is an abbreviation of Creativity, Activity and Service. Students should strive to grow creatively, improve their physical performance and serve the community they are living in. Students should reach 7 learning outcomes on their way.

We get asked this a lot. Surprisingly. Why, first you need it to complete Diploma Programme. Second, even though 18 months sound long, and however compelling is not doing CAS, in the end you will be surprised about how many skills you have acquired, know more about your physical abilities, grow a lot more independent. Do you know why? Because, you will have to plan, work and sweat to accomplish what you always wanted to do, but never made time for them.

In general, IB gives you a year for completing CAS and get your Diploma a year after May exams. However, you are responsible for finding resources, fixing logistics, collecting evidence to complete CAS. This gets harder to do in a state funded school, because our resources are limited only to those who are still students. So, we expect you to finish the programme in given 18 months.

Yes, you can combine C, A and S in your projects. In fact, it gives you a lot of advantage to do so.

Yes, some of them, but not all. The IB wants you to make meaningful reflections, and not just fulfill a requirement. This is more natural for some people to do it in their native language. However, the IB operates in English, French or Spanish. So, the posts and reflections that you choose to use as evidence to be presented during the interviews MUST be in English. So you either translate tehm when you choose them, or you start refelcting in English from the start.

You should also consider the language(s) that your CAS advisor can read. If your advisor does not speak Kazakh, you cannot post in Kazakh.

However, a lot of CAS students in our school have chosen to reflec in English, as they feel that they can sometimes better express their thoughts and emotions in English.

Consistency is the key. Before jumping into doing things, we strongly recommend you to research the area you are interested in and not only think about it, but also set up concrete, measurable aims; count how much time you will need to reach your goal and plan taking into account your resources (as time, location and energy). Then keep consistency in following your plan and filling in your records. Regularly check on your aims and see if changes are needed to be taken.

If your previous plan turned out to be too challenging or external factors hinder, CAS gives you a chance to go back to your initial plan, think it over and change the course of your action. However, there must be a decent reason why you paused your work.

At the end of the course, you will take final – 3rd interview. Afterwards, CAS coordinator with the help of your CAS advisor will evaluate to what extent you reached learning outcomes. Once CAS coordinator enters your results in IBIS, the machine will generate three random names for external moderation. CAS records of those 3 students is sent to external evaluators. For the official IB results, CAS gives you a pass or a fail. Not a grade.

Meanwhile, much of the evidence come from your performance during all 18 months, advisor’s reports and your consistency in turning in all the assignments as well as feedback from your PhE teacher, project leaders and your counterparts. The advisors will report to you by using a checklist of the tasks you are completing. The checklist will appear in Out of 7.

As the programme does not count hours, but expects you to complete 18 months, it is impossible to finish the course in one year.

CAS states that Activity helps students to improve their well being. This does not mean that you should improve your physical performance, but improve your health. You can investigate and plan how you can get healthier taking into account what is bothering you. For example, if you twisted your leg and can’t run, you can include therapeutic massage sessions to your Activity and focus on your upper body strength for a while. Can’t lift weights? Do cardio.

As a national state funded school there are national requirements. One of them is to provide students with 1 hour of PhE in DP year 1 and 2 hours of PhE in DP year 2. This means that PhE classes are obligatory, We try to use classes to maximum to benefit your CAS and blend elements of research, planning and participation. This means you are provided with basic fulfillment of your Activity requirements. However, for a full achievement of the learning outcomes, you have to set your personal goals concerning your Activity, and thsi is done outside of PhE.

The personal blog is your main CAS portfolio. Within it you have access to the planning page and to the weekly CAS record. The planning page is designed so that you have a space to keep all of your plans. The plans can contain from small month-long plans to big a year or 2 years long projects. As part of your CAS evidence, we submit your complete CAS record. In this record, you have Google sheets that shortly describe what you have done every week in your projects, and in your CAS experience. The blogging are of your personal blog is a place where you keep the rest: your reflections, pictures, videos and other evidence.

Term identifications: CAS has two terms: experience and projects. CAS experiences do not have to be long, and usually you are not an organizer. For example, volunteering in an annual city forum or going to skating.

Projects are a lot more complex.

School based projects are designed to help you reach learning outcomes to some extent, and help you understand CAS at the beginning. Once you learn to organize, collaborate and understand CAS requirements, you should move on to do your own individual projects.

Student led projects. They allow you to achieve the full planning cycle of CAS: you identify a need, you research about it, develop actions to follow, do the actions, and reflect on their effectiveness. They can boost your learning and help you reach the learning outcomes you are struggling with. When involved in projects, students are committed to performing regularly, make decisions, take actions. They are ussually mid-term projects.