Tips for Writing CAS Reflections The thinking that goes into reflection

What is a CAS reflection? A reflection for CAS is a thoughtful consideration of your CAS projects and hours that looks into the benefit of what you have been doing. It is not meant to be a braggadocios display: “Look at me and how cool I am for all that I’ve been doing to help the world! I’m awesome!” Instead it is meant to show how CAS is affecting you as an individual, how your view of yourself, your personal growth and your understanding of your role in community has changed or been influenced by what you have experienced in your CAS hours.

Requirements: You will complete a CAS reflection for (about) every 6 months of your involvement in the Diploma Program. Your first CAS reflection will cover your CAS hours from June 2014 – December 2014 Mr. Stephens suggests a page in your log book for a single reflection – but I think this may difficult for a truly reflective entry

Some Questions to Consider what skills did the activity teach you? what life lessons did the activity teach you? how did the activity help other people? how has the activity changed you?

Other questions to consider: What do you perceive and notice as a result of your CAS hours? How you feel being involved? What do you think and feel about the activity itself? What does the activity mean 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?

Don’t try to answer all these questions in a single reflection – it will lead to extremely superficial responses!

Approaches to your reflective response Start with an overview statement: During this period, you engaged in what type of activities ____, ____, _____ which had what kind of effects _____, _______, _______. You can highlight specific events and discuss their impact You can group several items together and discuss their collective impact (group things which led to a similar response) Avoid trite, generic, clichéd language – language that doesn’t take thought Speak to the specifics of activities; discuss actual details of what you saw, what you did, and how it affected you.

You have a reflection due for both Mr. Stephens and Me It’s the same reflection – complete it in your CAS log book Write it over Spring Break Turn these in to me on Monday, March 16 I want to see actual reflection – not quick, unthoughtful, disinterested pseudo-reflection About a page, but it better be reflective; you can extend past a page (but no more than two) This first CAS reflection will count as a grade in TOK