The guide to slaying CAS in the IB Program

CAS can be an annoying subject in your IB experience, but only if you let it. CAS, simply explained, just requires you to do stuff that might even help other people. It splits into three parts (known as strands): Creativity, Activity and Service. You don’t get a grade for CAS, but you must pass it in order to get your IB Diploma. Passing CAS is very easy, but also takes a while. In total, you need to do a minimum of 150 hours, with at least 50 of those being in each of the three strands. So you can do 55 each for a total of 165, but you can’t do 100 in Creativity, 30 in Activity and 35 in Service. Generally, however, since it’s hard to track hours, it’s recommended to do at least one CAS Experience per semester (or per year) for each strand. You can’t combine different strands into one experience (or else it would’ve been too easy).

CAS Experiences

CAS is split into two parts: CAS Experience and CAS Projects. CAS Experiences are the things you do during your four semesters of the IB, while a CAS Project is a one-time project. You need to put the experiences and projects on your school’s learning management system (likely Managebac) with a description of the activity you plan to do. Let’s unpack this.

The three strands

The application of the three strands as part of your CAS Experiences is pretty self-explanatory:

• Creativity is generally the easiest part of CAS, since any activity that involves the use of the brain counts. You can learn to cook, write a short story every week, learn programming, and much more. Creativity-related experiences are generally ones you do alone, though collaborative activities with others (like art courses) count.
• Activity is anything related to physical activity. If you’re already doing something, just add it as an ongoing CAS Experience. If not, I really recommend you start doing something, because not only will you need it for school, but you will also get actual physical benefits from it. 
• Service is doing anything that benefits other people. This can be leading a school club, volunteering, fundraising and all of those other beautiful NGO-tier activities. This can be the hardest part of CAS to get right because you have to do something with other people, whose outcome often depends on the other people themselves.

Ideas for experiences

To do a CAS Experience you first need to find what to do. For this, you should either think of something you like doing already as a hobby or just look up ideas online. I let Bing generate a few here:

Creativity:

1. Create handmade greeting cards for a local nursing home.
2. Start a book club focusing on different genres of literature.
3. Organize a virtual art contest with a specific theme.
4. Learn a new song on an instrument and perform it for your family.
5. Write a short story or poem and share it with your classmates.
6. Cook a meal from a different culture and share the recipe.
7. Create a DIY craft tutorial video.
8. Design a poster for a school event.
9. Learn a magic trick and perform it for your friends.
10. Create a simple game using a coding platform like Scratch.

Activity:

1. Participate in a local parkrun or similar community fitness event.
2. Start a weekly yoga or meditation session with friends.
3. Organize a fun sports event, like a frisbee or dodgeball game.
4. Take a daily walk or bike ride and track your progress.
5. Learn a new dance routine and teach it to your friends.
6. Start a gardening project at home or school.
7. Join a local swimming or tennis club.
8. Organize a virtual fitness challenge with friends.
9. Learn to cook a healthy meal and share the recipe.
10. Participate in a tree-planting event in your community.

Service:

1. Volunteer at a local food bank or soup kitchen.
2. Organize a clothing drive for a local charity.
3. Tutor a younger student in a subject you’re good at.
4. Help clean up a local park or beach.
5. Volunteer at a local library or community center.
6. Start a recycling initiative at school.
7. Organize a fundraising bake sale for a cause you care about.
8. Volunteer to walk dogs at a local animal shelter.
9. Help organize a community event, like a fair or festival.
10. Start a peer mentoring program at school.

For your experiences you can have Bing generate more ideas! Just make sure that you can actually do the experiences and that they won’t take away too much from your time at school and time for studying. Personally, since I had time, I decided to explore as many new things as possible, but I was able to. You might not, so don’t worry. The CAS Experiences only need to pass, they don’t get graded and you shouldn’t focus on making them very complicated. If you don’t have much time, try making them as simple as possible and make them as related to the things you’re already doing as possible. 

Writeup and reflections

There are two main parts of CAS Experiences: the initial writeup and the reflections. These have no specific format, but there are a few things that you should include. For your writeups you need to include the following components:

The initial writeup for an IB CAS Experience should generally include the following components:

1. A plan: Describe the activities you plan to undertake. Avoid using fancy words unless you want to make your description longer.
2. Personal challenge: Discuss the challenges you anticipate facing during this experience. Don’t exaggerate, don’t underestimate. Generally, people don’t have a feel for how easy or difficult learning something will be.
3. Thoughtful consideration: You should outline your plan for the experience, including your goals, the steps you will take to achieve them, and how you will track your progress. Progress tracking is important because it will set the tone and format for your future reflections
4. Reflection on outcomes and personal learning: Although you’ll complete this after the experience, you should consider in advance how you’ll reflect on the outcomes of your experience and what you hope to learn or accomplish.

Try to use action verbs and state what you’ll exactly be doing at least once. For example, if you’re going swimming, talk about the schedule you’ll have, the benefits you think swimming will have on you, what motivated you, etc. 

The reflections are the other essential part of doing CAS Experiences. In reflections, you need to talk about what you already did for your experience. Generally, you should have as many reflections as possible. They should be one or two paragraphs long and contain a picture (as proof that you did the activity that you said you would be doing). You should generally do reflections when there is progress, however you need to redefine progress. Getting stuck in a project is progress. Failing is progress. Anything that you can learn a lesson from is progress. This is a good philosophy for life in general, so you should practice this. 

For example, for an experience Volunteering at a food bank, this is an example of a decent reflection:

This experience was both challenging and rewarding for me. I had never done anything like this before, so I was nervous at first. However, the staff at the food bank were very welcoming and supportive, which helped me feel more comfortable.

One of the main challenges I faced was dealing with the sheer volume of food that needed to be sorted and distributed. It was physically demanding work, and there were times when I felt overwhelmed. However, I learned to take things one step at a time and ask for help when I needed it. This experience helped me realize that I am capable of doing hard work and that I can handle challenging situations.

I also developed new skills through this experience. For example, I learned how to organize and categorize different types of food, and I also learned how to interact with the people who came to the food bank for assistance. This improved my communication and interpersonal skills.

Overall, volunteering at the food bank was a very meaningful experience for me. It made me more aware of the issue of food insecurity in my community, and it made me realize how much I take for granted. I plan to continue volunteering at the food bank in the future, and I would recommend this experience to other students as well.

If you reach these conclusions separately or over a longer period, each of these can be a separate reflection. I must restate that reflections should not only be about positive progress. They should just be reflections. Science also supports the use of reflections as a great way to achieve personal growth at a faster rate.

For CAS Experiences you should also take photos or just have some evidence (that’s not text) about what you’ve done so far.

Finally, at the end of your CAS program, you’ll probably be asked to write final reflections. These are just like normal reflections, just that you need to write about everything you’ve done and what you’ve gotten out of your CAS Experiences. 

When starting a CAS Experience, you will probably be asked to say how many hours per week you’ll dedicate to this activity and your reviewer. For the hours per week, just guess and don’t exaggerate. You don’t gain or lose anything by answering this question honestly. For your reviewer, for most Experiences you’ll want to either add your CAS coordinator or a teacher that you’re collaborating with for the Experience (if it’s school or academics related). It’s also possible to add someone from outside of school, but that’s a bit more complicated.

The CAS Project

You only need to do one of these, and they’re somewhat similar to the CAS Experiences. You need to write the same kinds of reflections and focus on the three strands, except that you don’t have to cover two or three – you can do only one. The idea with the CAS Project is that you take up a project where you have a leading role and show initiative. The CAS Project should generally be shorter than the CAS Experiences and should have a final event. I got Bing to write a few examples:

1. Creativity: Start a school band or orchestra. This could involve regular practice sessions and culminate in a performance for the school community.

2. Activity: Organize a sports tournament at your school. This could involve multiple sports and teams, and could raise money for a local charity.

3. Service: Volunteer at a local food bank or homeless shelter. This could involve regular shifts and the opportunity to learn more about issues of poverty and homelessness in your community.

4. Creativity & Activity: Choreograph a dance routine and teach it to younger students at your school. This could culminate in a performance at a school assembly or event.

5. Activity & Service: Organize a charity run or walk. This could involve training for the event, as well as organizing logistics and fundraising.

6. Creativity & Service: Start a tutoring program for younger students in a subject you excel at. This could involve regular tutoring sessions and the creation of educational materials.

7. Creativity, Activity & Service: Plan and execute a community clean-up day. This could involve physical activity (cleaning up), creativity (organizing and promoting the event), and service (benefiting the community).

8. Creativity: Write and direct a short play or film. This could involve scriptwriting, casting, directing, and editing the final product.

9. Activity: Start a fitness club at your school. This could involve regular workout sessions and the promotion of health and wellness in your school community.

10. Service: Volunteer at a local animal shelter. This could involve regular shifts and the opportunity to learn more about animal care and welfare.
The greatest tip is to just use Bing/ChatGPT to generate ideas, and then actually do the most fun ones. Please make sure to have fun with CAS because school and the IB never gets more fun. It’s harder to fake it than to just do it, and you’ll be much better off by the end.