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How to write CAS reflection?


cancan

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I'm a first year IB student. I realized that we have do this CAS thing for a total of 150 hours, so I signed up for some activities both in school and out of school. Our CAS coordinator told us to submit all the reflections on the CAS activities on a website called ManageBac and asked us to write a reflection on every 10 hours of activities completed. However, I'm not sure what I should include in my reflections. For example, if I practice guitar at home for 10 hours per week, does that mean I have to do a reflection on what I practiced during those 10 hours per week to qualify for my Creativity hours? Also, is there a certain format we can follow to write our reflections for different activities?

Someone, please help me!

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for the format and everything, it usually varies from school to school (that's why I don't follow the suggestions made in this forum. my school has got our own format so I don't dare to "make" my own.) so you should ask your CAS coordinator to be sure that you're doing the right thing. some recommendations are however available in this forum on the Sticky threads.

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for the format and everything, it usually varies from school to school (that's why I don't follow the suggestions made in this forum. my school has got our own format so I don't dare to "make" my own.) so you should ask your CAS coordinator to be sure that you're doing the right thing. some recommendations are however available in this forum on the Sticky threads.

Thanks for your advice.

But my school never give us any formats, it just told us to be as creative as we want. Does anyone has any suggestions? :blink:

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There are certain key points you need to hit on in terms of a particular style of answer, so your school is a bit silly to give you no guidance at all. Stuff like...

- what skills did the activity teach you?

- what life lessons did the activity teach you?

- how did the activity help other people? (this one is quite important, make up some BS about this even if your activity didn't actually help anyone)

- how has the activity changed you?

That kind of thing. Then general comments, but those were the questions we were given in our CAS sheets - we got printed ones with little spaces to answer the questions. Also, my advice is that if at all possible you try and fill in CAS reflections as you go along and don't leave them right until the end. I did this previously and it's actually very difficult to deal with because you have to make up so much crap for every single reflection and after a while you start running out of new ideas/phrases/words!

On the plus side remember that CAS is literally a yes/no component of the course so if you've done it and your reflections aren't too shabby then that's fine. Having extra hours (and therefore more reflections to do...) or amazing reflections isn't considered useful. I ended up not recording most of the hours I did because writing reflections for each 10 hours really does drive you crazy. Just avoid being sarcastic and do your best to answer the sorts of questions I put above in each reflection and basically anything you do for CAS is going to be fine :yes:

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Just adding to Sandwich's list of criteria...

According to ManageBac, this is what I might have to keep in mind...

To guide your reflection, you may consider the following at different stages of an activity (prior to starting, during, and after completion):

What do you perceive and notice?

How you feel being involved?

What do you think and feel about the activity itself?

What does the activity means to you?

What value does the activity have?

What did you learn from this activity, and how might you extrapolate from this to apply any lesson to your life more generally?

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Oh if we're helpful, just click the thumbs up button on the bottom right hand side of a post. It saves you the trouble and helps reduce the traffic of the forum.

Paragraphs are fine. You're not really making an argument. It's like doing a journal and reflecting on it. Emphasize more on the reflection than the retelling.

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  • 2 months later...

Over the past two years, I have had four CAS coordinators. AHH! Right now, my current supervisor says we should make a scrapbook about the activities we have done. Has anyone else had to do this?? Also, I don't have pictures from all my activities so I don't know if this will be looked poorly upon. Any ideas? Final question, do we actually send in our CAS project to the IB gods or does our school coordinator just sign off on it?

Thanks for any help! :blowkiss:

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  • 2 years later...

Over the past two years, I have had four CAS coordinators. AHH! Right now, my current supervisor says we should make a scrapbook about the activities we have done. Has anyone else had to do this?? Also, I don't have pictures from all my activities so I don't know if this will be looked poorly upon. Any ideas? Final question, do we actually send in our CAS project to the IB gods or does our school coordinator just sign off on it?

Thanks for any help! :blowkiss:

 

I know this post is 3 years old, but how is this done today?

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  • 3 weeks later...

 

Over the past two years, I have had four CAS coordinators. AHH! Right now, my current supervisor says we should make a scrapbook about the activities we have done. Has anyone else had to do this?? Also, I don't have pictures from all my activities so I don't know if this will be looked poorly upon. Any ideas? Final question, do we actually send in our CAS project to the IB gods or does our school coordinator just sign off on it?

Thanks for any help! :blowkiss:

 

I know this post is 3 years old, but how is this done today?

 

We just have to get it approved by our CAS coordinator (I don't know about other schools), only the "final" CAS reflections are sent in to the IB

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  • 5 months later...

Just write an overview of what you did really briefly, then write about difficulties encountered, how you coped and demonstrated _____. Then fill the objectives e.g. ethics. Our coordinator doesn't want ours to be too long (which is good for us) b/c they have to wade through heaps of words

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  • 3 years later...
On 10/3/2011 at 8:16 AM, Sandwich said:

There are certain key points you need to hit on in terms of a particular style of answer, so your school is a bit silly to give you no guidance at all. Stuff like...

- what skills did the activity teach you?

- what life lessons did the activity teach you?

- how did the activity help other people? (this one is quite important, make up some BS about this even if your activity didn't actually help anyone)

- how has the activity changed you?

That kind of thing. Then general comments, but those were the questions we were given in our CAS sheets - we got printed ones with little spaces to answer the questions. Also, my advice is that if at all possible you try and fill in CAS reflections as you go along and don't leave them right until the end. I did this previously and it's actually very difficult to deal with because you have to make up so much crap for every single reflection and after a while you start running out of new ideas/phrases/words!

On the plus side remember that CAS is literally a yes/no component of the course so if you've done it and your reflections aren't too shabby then that's fine. Having extra hours (and therefore more reflections to do...) or amazing reflections isn't considered useful. I ended up not recording most of the hours I did because writing reflections for each 10 hours really does drive you crazy. Just avoid being sarcastic and do your best to answer the sorts of questions I put above in each reflection and basically anything you do for CAS is going to be fine :yes:

Hey, I know this was posted a few years ago but I have a question regarding the CAS journals.

Do the journals require targeting IB Learner and ATLs? Also, I don't have evidences for some of my journals, would that be an issue?

 

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  • 1 year later...

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