IS IT CAS?
Almost anything that you undertake has the potential to be considered a CAS Experience! It is up to you to justify it and your Advisor or CAS Coordinator to approve if an experience is appropriate or not.
Some guidelines for what makes a CAS experience are:
• It must be one, or more, of Creativity, Activity or Service.
• You should be interested in it and expect to find enjoyment and/or fulfilment in it.
• It should provide an opportunity for growth and allow you to develop the IB Learner Profile.
• Normally you would be able to address a CAS Learning Outcome.
The flowchart below can help you to ask the right questions to determine:
Some of your CAS experiences may be things that you already do. Perhaps you play for a team, act in a drama group, volunteer somewhere or are in the scouting movement? All these experiences could meet the criteria above for CAS. However, CAS also gives you the opportunity to undertake something new that you’ve always wanted to try. It doesn’t have to be extreme, like rock climbing, but it could be. It could be learning to sew, helping someone or promoting a cause you care about. Some examples of this are:
• Initiating a project to visit or help elderly people in your neighbourhood to alleviate loneliness.
• Starting a reading club at a local primary school
• Teaching a language class to immigrants
• Promoting water saving methods in your local area.
Some CAS experiences are a series of events, like training with and being in a team, rehearsing for and performing a play, or being in a club. Some are one-off events like helping at an event or undertaking a hike.
If you are continuing an activity that you already undertake you are encouraged use the CAS Stages and Learning Outcomes to look for opportunities for growth and development, as CAS is about improving and extending, not just repeating.
If you have something that you want to count as an experience and your CAS coordinator does not agree that it is suitable, then consider extending it. For example, walking your dog every day is not a suitable CAS experience; you are not showing any growth nor reaching a learning objective. However, if you extend it to training your dog and entering agility competitions, or training from walking to running a 10km race it then could become CAS - for you and your dog! All it takes is your imagination and it will be far more fulfilling in the long run.
EXAMPLES OF C, A, S
The following table provides a brief list of possible CAS experiences. An experience listed here does not guarantee it would be an appropriate CAS for a particular student.
Click on the links below for more ideas as well as chatting to friends, your Advisor, CAS counsellor or CAS Coordinator and check the Opportunities tab (link to tab here)
WHAT IS NOT CAS?
• raising money with no particular goal and no raising of awareness
• paid employment like babysitting, tutoring, lifeguarding
• anything students do BEFORE the start of Year 12 (although it’s okay to start something before and continue with it in Year 12)
the event or organisation respects the differences of other individuals and groups and whether the organisation’s values align with the
values of the IB mission statement.
• it can not be part of your official IB Diploma Study. For example, if you are undertaking Dance as a Group 6 subject, a performance you are
using for the IA is not CAS. Likewise, if you are involved in Model United Nations (MUN) as part of your Global Politics IA then it does not
count.
Of course, if a dance performance or MUN is not part of your IB Diploma assessment, it can count as CAS. You may also come across something in class which gives you a great idea to develop a CAS experience/project. For example, you might learn about pollution and undertake water testing in Biology or Environmental Systems and Societies, and this may motivate you to start a cleanup project at your local beach, river or stream.