reflection & the 5 stages

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From the IB CAS guide (2017 and beyond)

The five CAS stages are as follows.

1. Investigation: Students identify their interests, skills and talents to be used in considering opportunities for CAS experiences, as well as areas for personal growth and development. Students investigate what they want to do and determine the purpose for their CAS experience. In the case of service, students identify a need they want to address.

2. Preparation: Students clarify roles and responsibilities, develop a plan of actions to be taken, identify specified resources and timelines, and acquire any skills as needed to engage in the CAS experience. 

3. Action: Students implement their idea or plan. This step often requires decision-making and problem solving. Students may work individually, with partners, or in groups.

4. Reflection: Students describe what happened, express feelings, generate ideas, and raise questions. Reflection can occur at any time during CAS to further understanding, to assist with revising plans, to learn from the experience, and to make explicit connections between their growth, accomplishments, and the learning outcomes for personal awareness. Reflection may lead to new action.

5. Demonstration: Students make explicit what and how they learned and what they have accomplished, for example, by sharing their CAS experience through their CAS portfolio or with others in an informal or formal manner. Through demonstration and communication, students solidify their understanding and evoke response from others.

The CAS stages provide a framework that enables students to:

• increase self-awareness

• learn about learning

• explore new and unfamiliar challenges

• employ different learning styles

• develop their ability to communicate and collaborate with others

• experience and recognize personal development

• develop attributes of the IB learner profile.

For singular CAS experiences, students may begin with investigation, preparation, or action. For ongoing CAS experiences, beginning with investigation is advised. In these ongoing experiences, the action stage may lead students back to investigation or preparation as they further develop, expand and implement new or related ideas.

Process and the Core

Process

IB intends for CAS to be primarily a student-run and student-planned aspect of the core but does not assign a grade to this part of the core. Again, IB has 3 goals for CAS:

• CAS enables students to enhance their personal and interpersonal development by learning through experience;

• CAS provides opportunities for self-determination and collaboration with others, fostering a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment from their work;

• CAS is an important counterbalance to the academic pressures of the DP.

We promote CAS with both these goals in mind by offering students who really push themselves to add media, write or record an oral or video reflection every month, and complete an appropriate CAS project the Golden Trophy in ManageBac and an A worth 10% of their TOK grade for both semesters of that class. So, how does process come in? Well, candidates begin CAS in September of their junior year and may complete it by January of their senior year. Alternately, some candidates may have to spend a bit more time completing their worksheet in February, March, and April of their senior year if they put off reflection and the 50-50-50 hours toward their experiences that IB requires. 

Regardless of how candidates choose to complete CAS, we want them to work on their experiences, project(s), and reflection as a process. We ask for something every quarter to simply be on track, but for those candidates who seek the Golden Trophy, we seek a reflection every month beginning in the fall semester of the junior year. Often, we see candidates finish several reflections in 1 sitting in an attempt to meet a deadline. That approach often detracts from the goal of strong reflection and a meaningful experience. Don't think of logging reflections to meet a specific number. Rather, think of spending time before, during, and after your experiences to think about your struggles and successes, setbacks and growth. Trying to tackle the requirements of CAS in a few sittings rather than gradually over the entirety of your 18-month journey doesn't fulfill our requirements but, more importantly, that approach may not fulfill you.

How can you seek to both work on your experiences and log hours as you act and reflect, which is the key to a strong worksheet and CAS experience?

The Core

IB equally values all 3 aspects of the core: TOK, the Extended Essay (EE), and CAS. Candidates may value TOK more because it is a class they take for a grade over 4 quarters, 2 during the 2nd semester of the junior year and 2 during the 1st semester of the senior year. Candidates begin the EE in January and February of their junior year and work on that 4000-word essay mainly over the summer. They do earn a grade on the TOK essay (senior year) and exhibition (junior year) and the EE (fall of the senior year) that help them to earn additional points toward their IB diploma based on the matrix below. IB awards the diploma to candidates who achieve a minimum score of 24 (out of 45) and fulfil the other minimum requirements. 

Reflections

The descriptions you offer in GCM's ManageBac site explain the who, the what, the where, the when, and perhaps the why. The goals tie your own focuses to the Learning Outcomes. The reflections then allow you to explore how you are achieving or not achieving your goals. They expand on what sort of growth or change you see in your approach to the seven (7) Learning Outcomes and allow you to demonstrate that growth, that change within the stages (see above).

The basic premise is that you start reflecting (stage 4) about your investigation, planning, and action (stages 1-3) in order to demonstrate (stage 5) a chosen Learning Outcome. You can always reflect, whether you are just starting to think about an experience or in the planning stages. The strongest series of reflections arise from engaging in the process before, during, and after you act, i.e. before you even begin the doing portion of an experience, you write a plan or offer a proposal via ManageBac; during the action itself, or the actual doing portion of your experience; and finally after you have completed the experience where you really offer a logical connection to the Learning Outcome chosen. The idea is that through reflection, you will hone in on the skills and ideas that you hope to learn, gain, and sharpen by being involved. Reflect means to turn the light back on something, so shine that light on your investigation and planning or the act of doing what you are doing. Just reflect: whether through writing, recording your voice, or recording a video. 

Some students use the prompts in ManageBac to begin their reflections. Ideally, reflections should focus more on how your mindset may have changed rather than what you did. We break up the strongest reflections into three (3) areas: action, or what you did; reflection, or how you think about your experience; and outcomes, or how you may use your experience to help yourself in other experiences or situations, both as a student and a person. Some students use the template below, offering three short but distinct paragraphs: one for description, one for analysis of the goal, and one for outcomes. Reflection brings light to what we do. Shine that light on yourself. Head over the exemplars page to review some of the different types of reflections we have seen over the years.