What are your CAS activities

[Guest cl0ckw0rk0range]

How's everyone doing on their CAS?

What activiities does your school offer (especially for Service)

For Service:

my school has a Cambodia trip with this ngo called hope international. obviously you have to pay but i went last year

and its defenitely a trip that changed my life. we stayed in a little town called pursat, between pnom penh and the famous ankor wat (cant spell)

and we help build wells and schools. my whole sense perseption (tok word there) changed, and i see the world in a completely different view - however cliche that sounds. im glad that i did ib,a nd that cas exists.

but i know a lot of people out there abo****ely despises cas.

tell me your opinions

what was hard/ what was easy?

for instance (im from japan), i realise that a lot of my friends who dont speak japanese (at a native level) have an even harder time finishing their out of school service - coz thers always communication/language boundaries.

whats it like with you?

[Abu]

Well for service, we do a number of activities, such as the Riding for the Disabled association of Singapore as well as helping at the Deaf Association. There are prefect duties, yearbook, any services towards the school really, for example I made library cards so that counted.

Action: I finished mine all in the span of 2 months, we had this Cycling expedition for the National youth achievement award or the Duke of Edinburgh award, and got 32 hours + 17 more for training, so that really helped.

Creativity: Again Library cards, I'm also in charge of all the school newsletter stuff and making it so that's really great (gives me about 8 hours per issue). Others help for newsletter articles, cooking, graphic design...

We also had this thing called Under no Roof, where you had to stay homeless for a night with out any food or water and sleep on cardboard, for about 17 hours. I didn't go, and it was organized by Habitat for Humanity.

[Ruan Chun Xian]

To be honest CAS was easy to complete for me.

i realise that a lot of my friends who dont speak japanese (at a native level) have an even harder time finishing their out of school service - coz thers always communication/language boundaries.

Yes, the language barrier can be a hard thing but it's not something you can't get over and I don't see a reason you can't complete Service hours just because of language. Most of my friends were expats when I was doing IB and most of our Service hours were done at a local rehab centre for children suffering the effects of Agent Orange. There's a huge language barrier there for all of us, even for those of us who spoke Vietnamese fluently (me) because some of the children are disabled so that they can't talk or they do but it's extremely hard to understand them. But what we did was we came there once a week just to spend time with the kids, and you can even talk nonsense with them and they'd still love it. We all grumbled about haivng to give up 2 hours a week to go all the way out of town to this place, but once we got there, no one was really complaining anymore because you don't know how gratifying it is to know that you can bring a smile to these kids' faces just by being here and holding their hands.

This is just one example, and Service can take a large range of activities, but charity is usually the first one that comes to mind. I don't think the language barrier could (or should) hinder you from being able to do charity work.

I actually had 3 main Service activities - that, and Student Council and Operation Smile. But that may just be my school's efficiency in getting us Service hours by getting us involved in the rehab centre and Operation Smile.

OS to be brief is a non profit org that raise money for free operations for children with cleft lips and pallettes and try to spread awareness of this around the world. What my IB class did with OS was we did presentations within our school to spread awareness, we had fund raising activities. We also attended a youth conference where we discussed the ways to spread awareness and raise money.

Student Council is fun, though for me it meant a lot of running around chasing up the members to do their jobs - even the president! Why did I run for and end up with the responsible secretary position, I don't know. But CAS is a really good bribe at my school when it comes to recruiting IB1 students for SC positions - all you have to tell them is they get loads of CAS hours for it (and they do) and they'll all run for position. At my school, SC officers (Pres, VP, Secretary, Treasurer) comes from IB1 as IB2 and Year 10 are often too busy with their IGCSE and IB exams. IB1 is sort of the in between year.

My main Action hours came from being on the school basketball team. And for someone who's ridiculously short like me, being on a basketball team is not what you'd expect me to do. But well, places on the sports teams aren't exactly competitive at my school since we're so small. It's mostly fun anyway. Every year we go away on an inter school tournament and that must had gave me about 20 Action hours. We weren't playing that whole 20 hrs obviously but we were at the court and attending the tournament which apparently was good enough for our CAS coordinator. That added to the hours of practice we had before the tournament and after...well, it all adds up to 50.

For me Creativity was a lot more diverse. But still my main ones were school choir and yearbook club.

[Afterglow]

Omg wow.

Our school doesn't offer anything. All your activities - you have to find them on your own. I mean yes there are a bunch of clubs in the school but they are all made by students and not all counts as CAS either. So for service, creativity and action - it is all your responsibility. I contacted the red cross and join in an activity there and then i had to join another group in order to visit elder people. For creativity, well there was the yearly school musical which I was glad to join as it gave me about 70 hours. Action - I tried jujutsu but then the schedule didn't fit so once I got the yellow belt, I quit and simply went to the gym.

I wish things were organised here as well It is really hard for me to complete the cas hours because the school has so strict guidelines on what is cas, ESPECIALLY service.

Edited September 27, 2007 by Afterglow

[cixelsyD]

For service, I mainly teach piano, but there are also a ton of small community service activities that I attend =P

For athletic hours..... I played on 6 teams at school last year LoL

For creative I draw and paint at home =)

[luami]

For service, I organized AirBand at our school, which is a dancing and lip singing competition. It was really awesome and we had all the seats full or audiences....hehe

Action: Badminton team, Badminton drop ins, Skiing, Swimming

Creativity: composing music and practicing the piano

[spaceisland]

For creativity I do theatre and vocal performance, I get some service for Student Council and a community service group, and for action I am planning on helping a local elementary school's sports teams.

[Guest Shayan]

this is my first post to bare with me

For service i created an organization in school against child pornography, prostitution and trafficking.

We are basically a group aiding ecpat and they have tons of activities that offer a lot of service points.

e.g. with the first two weeks of IB i had 20 service points

then i also teach guitar to a few classmates and coach cricket (which combines creativity, action and service).

also i play badminton, table tennis, basket ball and swimming.

creativity is really easy because almost anything you do (non-physical) is creativity points. I play guitar,

act (as in a play) and create presentations for ecpat.

the language barrier is insignificant and can be overcome easily. I know this cause I'm Iranian and

I've only been in Sweden for a short time.

NOTE: one thing thats important for people to remember is that its the CAS spirit that counts, not the points.

DO it because you want to and that way you'll enjoy it.

[Guest AmeHoshi]

For us... a lot of the things have to be done by the students themselves. xP There are some clubs that help you get to volunteer jobs, such as NHS (National Honor Society Club) who have a Service Fair Day each year. I got my hospital volunteer job from there, and got about 100 hours from that alone.

For creavity, I'm doing Model United Nations and going to conferences and such. I was thinking of also putting in the time I spent writing for the school newspaper. I also work in the Theatre Dept. but that doesn't count since it is part of my IB Grade. :/

Action is harder for me, at least, since most of my time afterschool is spent either on my internship (totally unrelated) and theatre. So I don't have time to do any sports of any kind. I'm currently planning to go to the AIDS walk and do some trash cleanups with Envirosci (yet another club, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it...)

It's pretty hard to get our hours here, and though my IB class is in its senior year, only one out of 34 students has finished all of them.

[cixelsyD]

Anyone know if I use TA blocks for service hours?

(TA = Teacher's Assistant)

[Guest House]

In the IB CAS handout booklet thingamabob whatzit package, one of the Example CAS journal entries was a student who wrote poetry and submitted it to a magazine. Using the same idea, i talked with my CAS Counselor and am now getting CAS hours for writing a segmented e-novel on FanFicion.Net

FanFiction.Net <<< link

I have it worked out so that I can count the hours as Creativity, and Service for when I publish any extracts at my school.

For you writers out there, you may want to consider this as a possibility. It is definitely creative, fun, and there is a good likelihood that your work will be read, if not online then you can publish it in school. I'm not sure if all IB students receive the same CAS habbittyhoobywhatty, so if you need the evidence of this as a CAS project to show to your counselor, PM me and i'll scan and send the actual, authentic, genuine page from the frizzershcnitzel it to you.

Seeing as the student submitted their work solely to the magazine, you can argue this point if your CAS Counselor feels that you need to incorporate the work within the school, however.

Hope this is helpful

Peace v__(o.o)

Edited October 9, 2007 by House

[Shorty]

My school has many clubs for these CAS hours I joined up Earthworks (service+creativity) , Student Ventures (action+creativity) and maybe The Book Club (not sure what this falls under).

Hopefully I will get a good chunk of these hours done in my grade 11 year.

[cixelsyD]

I'm done all my hours! WOOT!

haha

Creativity: 50 hours

Activity: 243 hours

Service: 74 hours

lol so unbalanced ><

[Guest majofc]

Well, in my school we have several clubs that are there to give us CAS hours. I'm in the Sports Club and the Recycling Proyect. Both of them give me lots of hours for service, Sports gives me action and Recycling creaticvity. In the Sports Club we teach children that live near our campus how to practice different sports like volleyball and basketball, we also work on giving them a better fisical condition. In the Recycling Proyect we find newspapers, used paper,cans, etc and sell them to a recyling plant. e also do some ads on how to recycle.

Other proyects we have are the Movies Club (they watch and analize movies), the Acting Group, the Culture Group (they show kids how to draw and do things like that), and a band (they play for old people).

We also have special activities where all the different "campus" from our school send thei IB students to leadership and service activities. This are really fun and give you lots of hours because they are several days long.

Another CAS activities we have is something called Inner Tournement. For this activity we jin in teams and train for different sports, (this year we had tochito and football). Then you train and play against other IB teams.

The problem in my school is that the teacher who handles our diaries and CAS hours does not like to consider actic¡vities that are not handled byher. For example, she does nt cosider goin to the gym an action activity, or participating in United Nations Models creativity, actually she refuses to give us a single hour for them!

Is this situation like this in your schools? I would like to know so that I can go talk with her (again).

[spaceisland]

Your "inner tournament" sounds like a really good idea. A lot of my friends are having trouble getting "activity" points. We don't have that program with our teacher... She actually encourages those kinds of activities. She doesn't handle very many of my CAS hours at all- I get almost all of them from private singing lessons, theatre I act in, choir, debate club and things like Model UN, and other stuff.

[Guest asdqwe]

I walk with my dog around the soccer field of my school every Friday and pretend its someone else's. You can get action hours by taking someone's dog around.

[Guest charlesvoncharles]

My school has a program that lets you get your volunteer hours; I should be done that part some four months into IB. If you also do stuff outside of the school, then the rest aren't hard at all to get. CAS is not nearly the most exacting part of IB.

[Guest godlvian]

I started this production for cas hours and im about to quit the production because the director keeps wasting my time and i frankly dont have time to just mess around and stuff like that.I have done some thing like 70 hours of creativity in rehearsing for the production but i most probably will drop out because i am wasting too much time and the date of the show is being postponed repeatedly(the production was supposed to be showed in december2007 and now its been postponed to july 2008) will i lose all my hours if i quit now?

[Lil]

oh we are having different types of CAS activities..basketball,football, table tennis, volleyball, volunteer club, work with young researchers of Serbia...also we have art, diffrent exhibitions etc. + Student council we have fun

[spaceisland]

I'm a little bit sketchy on what can be classified as action hours. Does just it have to be physical activity? I do aerobics and I might be coaching a synchronized swim team, so that would probably count, but is there anything else that would work? Right now I have choir, vocal, drama, student council, yearbook, book club, debate, and improv... Would something like pep rally planning count for SRC?