The IB Core Requirements

CAS: Creativity, Activity, Service

The CAS core enables students to enhance their personal and interpersonal development through experiential learning. At the same time, it provides an important counterbalance to the academic pressures of the rest of the IBDP.

CAS is organised around the three strands of creativity, activity and service defined as follows:

● Creativity: exploring and extending ideas leading to an original or interpretive product or performance

● Activity: physical exertion contributing to a healthy lifestyle

● Service: collaborative and reciprocal engagement with the community in response to an authentic need

A good CAS programme complements a challenging academic programme in a holistic way, providing opportunities for self-determination, collaboration, accomplishment, and enjoyment. It is a personal journey of discovery of self and others. For many students, CAS experiences include ones that are profound and can be life-changing. For student development to occur, CAS should involve real and purposeful experiences, personal challenge, thoughtful consideration, and critical reflection.

This is supported by your advisor who will check in with you at three key points over the 18 months. You will build your portfolio with reflections, photos and documents of the experiences. This is shared with your parents and UAC advisor so they can see the whole of you as you grow. From August onwards you will plan a series of experiences in clubs, sports, performances and local service that will challenge and develop you individually and collaboratively. You will be able to meet all of the IB guidelines through the different opportunities available in the activities and service programmes at UWCSEA East combined with Project Week.

Project Week, a compulsory and exciting part of our learning programme, is arranged around the CAS elements of creativity, activity and service. Many students visit existing Global Concerns NGO partners that we have in school combined with an optional form of physically challenging activity.

Consider over the break the following questions to ask yourself:

● What are my top 3 qualities? What are my top 3 skills? Which one skill and quality do I want to develop further?

● What do I care about? (specific human needs, environment, nurturing others)

● What does the community need? (Grade level, school, local, global – this may be needed when you consider an activity as well as a Service or GC)

● How can I make a difference? (to a team, NGO, environment)

● How can I make a change in myself? (organisation, self-awareness, communicator)

● How can I foster well-being through CAS?

● How can I make ethical and sustainable choices and decisions in all of my experiences? (critical thinker, problem solving, creative, concerned and principled)

Watch this short video to hear from students themselves what CAS is, what you can look forward to, and how to get the most out of this Core component of the IBDP.

ToK: Theory of Knowledge

ToK encourages critical thinking about knowledge itself, to try to help young people make sense of what they encounter. Its core content is questions such as: What counts as knowledge? Who owns knowledge? What is the value of knowledge? What are the implications of having, or not having, knowledge?

ToK links to ‘Service’ by asking what judgements might we make that we may not be aware of. What language do we use to describe the groups we work with? “Underprivileged”, “Differently Abled”. Language is never neutral and neither are the assumptions we make. Knowledge is transformative and therefore we should feel responsible for the knowledge we create and share. What you need to be able to do is to have an interest in things you have previously taken for granted and think about things in a new way.

There are plenty of resources online (e.g. YouTube). You could start by watching Richard Feynman (Science), Hannah Fry (Mathematics), The Art Assignment or Nerdwriter1 (Arts). Websites such as iai.tv/player, aeon.co or just watch the excellent documentary “The Last Artifact”. For books, it would be a good idea to get the preview on Kindle of any of the following: The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf, The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans De Waal or The Science of Storytelling by Will Storr. All are demanding reads but dipping into the first dozen pages of each will introduce you to some ‘big’ ideas.

EE: the Extended Essay

The Extended Essay is an in-depth study of a focused topic chosen by you. It is intended to promote high-level research and writing skills, as well as intellectual discovery and creativity. It provides students with an opportunity to engage in personal research in a topic of their own choice, under the guidance of a supervisor (a teacher in the school).

This research leads to a major piece of formally presented, structured writing in which ideas and findings are communicated in a reasoned and coherent manner. After the completion of the written essay, a short concluding interview, or viva voce, is conducted with the supervisor.

There is no work that needs to be done with regard to the Extended Essay during the school holiday; just think about areas you are passionate about.

Visit this site for more information on Extended Essay.