Experiences, Strands,  & Hours

When does CAS begin?

CAS begins in the 1st year of your 2-year diploma programme. So, that means the 1st day of your junior year. 

Ongoing experiences with dates and hours

Please make sure to enter the dates of your experiences instead of skipping that box in ManageBac. IB requires you to have ongoing experiences that last for more than 10 hours total, so if you started working out at the gym on 1 November and plan to continue until 5 May, enter that time frame. Then, enter the hours. While I know that you may spend 240 or 243 hours in Marching Band if you are like Sam and tallied the hours, please enter only 50. We want you to have other experiences than 1 sport, band, and Robotics Club even if you spend more than 50 hours in each. See below.

What if I finished an experience already?

All good. IB coordinators enroll juniors in ManageBac and begin meeting with them toward the end of the 1st quarter. Your CAS coordinator, Mr. Booz, will visit your Language B classes early in the 2nd quarter for a more complete overview. So, if you already logged 10+ hours for an experience, set goals and write reflections retroactively. Not the best way to approach CAS but better than nothing.

What counts as an experience and what does not?

Almost anything outside of paid work, partisan politics, and proselytizing can become a CAS experience if students engage in the 5 stages: investigation, planning, action, reflection, and demonstration. Students rarely have to seek out further experiences that they are not already engaged in. IB expects this part of the core to act as a counterbalance to students' busy academic lives. The only major differences for IB candidates is that they have to log and reflect on these experiences in the context of CAS and IB. If you have trouble thinking of potential CAS experiences, conduct a simple websearch: "Examples of experiences for CAS in the IB DP." I found "[a]bout 823,000 results (0.31 seconds)" (Google). Spend a little time thinking about you use your mind, your body, your soul. CAS is about you.

Resources:

• Daystar Academy CAS Handbook. Daystar Academy, 14 December, 2020,       https://www.daystaracademy.org. Accessed 19 September 2024.

What are the three strands?

The three strands of CAS are creativity, or using the mind; activity, or helping out the body; and service, or helping out the soul or the community. We all use our minds and bodies everyday, but you may not know what kinds of experiences you can log for CAS. In reality, almost anything can be a CAS experience for IB save for a few types of experiences (see more about what can't be counted as CAS at the bottom of the page). I call these no-go experiences the 4 Ps: paid work, proselytizing, and partisan politics. One additional requirement from IB is that candidates don't list classes that are required for their IB diploma, i.e. IB Art, IB Theater, TOK. If students are taking an IB class that does not count toward the diploma, then they may be able to use those experiences. See your coordinators for more info. Before we delve into the no-go areas, let's review a few examples of experience in each of the three strands.

Creativity

In short, how are you using your brain? You are all homo sapiens, so you are always using your brain. Read, study, learn, research, think. Broaden. Other than your work on the EE, what can you study to help broaden that world?

• "That All May Read" from the Library of Congress: volunteers record books for the blind (also Service).

• Read a specific artist's work and write a few reflections about the stylistic concepts you discover. This feat will certainly help your grade in your language classes.

• Research the works of a specific scientist. Think of this one as a higher level form of those 8th grade projects you had in Earth Science class.

• Start a blog about one of your passions (could even be a CAS project if you work with someone else).

• Learn a language using a free program or an app. My 2020 project was to learn some Danish and Norwegian. I ended up just watching Scandinavian drama on Netflix.

• My 2021 project: I graded my backyard and installed artificial turf, umbrella holders, and lights so the kids could play outside during their daily breaks from online lessons and after school. They are outside all of the time now, and I love that fact.

• Paint or rekindle your love of drawing, perhaps choosing a thematic approach. Mrs. Kelly, one of our former IB coordinators, is making small paintings of her neighbors' houses and gifting them these watercolors.

• Email me (whbooz@fcps.edu) with ideas, and I will help guide you. After all, that is my work toward creativity and service.

Activity

Again, many of these ideas merely require you to sweat, so they are not much different if you were not involved in organized athletic experiences like field hockey or dance. 

• Run, swim, bike, sweat. Log your hours and think of ways to work on plyometrics, strength training, endurance, acceleration, flexibility, balance. Just do something to get your heart rate up and your brow sweaty.

• I spent much of the lockdown walking our neighborhood with my kids and picking up trash (also Service). Do you own a SUP? Check out what this man did.

Service

Here, you need to be a bit more ingenious. You can certainly help any of your immediate neighbors who may be vulnerable and need to skip the grocery store or grab prescriptions, but you can also help a bit farther afield if you choose to. You choose how you want to help. 

• "Conducting service projects is possible, rewarding during pandemic" from Rotary Voices

• "How Youth Can Help Communities Respond To & Recover From the Coronavirus Pandemic" from Youth Service America

• "Service During COVID-19" from Catholic University

Counting and tracking hours

Ongoing?

Try to combine all of your activities under umbrellas, e.g. "Choir – junior & senior years", "KAST – junior year", or "Soccer: coaching & playing." You should not have to create full descriptions each time you log an hour or five here and there. Each experience should last at least 10 hours or be grouped accordingly. IB is not looking for singular experiences. Ideally, everything that you do should be ongoing. That goal may not be achievable for all students. However, the more that you can tie your individual experiences to the greater concepts of creativity, activity, or service, the better off you will toward achieving the significance of CAS: "enhances personal and interpersonal development" through experiences, "provides opportunities for self-determination...fostering a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment from their work", and offers an "important counterbalance to the academic pressures of the DP."

The 5 steps

Additionally, part of the entire CAS portfolio requires you to engage in the five (5) steps for all CAS experiences: 

1. Investigation

2. Preparation

3. Action

4. Reflection

5. Demonstration

Therefore, plan. Instead of waiting to determine hours or logging a few hours at a time or explaining how you will meet your goals, plan for how many hours you will take part in the experience and tie what you want to get out of the experience to the Learning Outcomes. Do some simple math: how often do we take part in this activity each week, and when will that experience end? Multiply the first number and the second number, and you have your answer. If the experience ends at the end of the year, so be it.

Projecting hours (if you care to)

Project the number of hours you will dedicate to this experience now so that you do not have to add hours as you go. Are you working one day a week? More? Do a little math, a little algebra. If you are taking part in this experience for 3 hours every two weeks between December and May, then you take 6 weeks / 2 = 3 x 3 = 9 hours.  

Finding experiences

Below, you will find examples of different experiences that candidates use toward CAS. 

What can't I count as cas?

I call them the 4 Ps: paid work, proselytizing, and partisan politics. 

Paid work: Seems obvious enough. If you earn money for any experience, IB does not allow you to count that experience as part of your required hours.

Proselytizing: IB will not allow you to use any sort of religiously-affiliated experience if you are overtly encouraging membership or witnessing in a specific faith.

Partisan politics: You cannot campaign on the part of a specific political group, e.g. the Green Party, the Tories. However, you can work to Rock the Vote, or toward some non-partisan political group.

Here, again, if you have questions, seek out the advice of your coordinators.

Resources

• "Examples of CAS Experiences - West Sound Academy"

• "THREE STRANDS OF CAS – Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS)"

• "Creativity, activity, service" from the International Baccalaureate Organization

• "Volunteer Match": a website that has "connected millions of people with a great place to volunteer and helped tens of thousands of organizations better leverage volunteers to create real impact." There are over 90,000 volunteer opportunities on this website. Plug in 22043, our zip code: you will see over 1400 different opportunities just in that area alone.