IB Highlights: Nature Photography

A SGS junior has used the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme to take a month-long photography challenge. 

 

CAS Project Highlight: Junior Cassie Benson has started her Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) project, which is a month-long photography challenge.  Her goal for this project is to improve her photography skills by exploring nature.  She hopes to experiment with different lighting and places to take photos.  Look for an upcoming gallery of her images! 

 

CAS Experience Highlights: CAS experiences for all of our Upper School students (in the US and in China) include making posters for diversity club, yard cleaning, creating wall backgrounds for advisory, taking a beginner hand-gun safety class, skiing, creating a mantel from a log, taking golf lessons, participating in soccer practice, creating a poster to show the benefits of volunteering, and tutoring others in Spanish and Physics.

 

IB Question of the Week: If a student is a full diploma candidate, do they have to work on the CORE components (CAS, Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge) completely outside of school?   

Students have an opportunity to work on Core IB requirements during the B block Core period.  In PowerSchool, this is designated as TOK because that is the only aspect of Core that is graded with an SGS grade.  Core block is built into the Upper School schedule for full diploma candidates.  For an incoming class of full diploma juniors, their schedule would include this:

• The TOK class meets once per week, Semester 2 of Junior year and Semester 1 of Senior year;

• The EE group meets once per week, Semester 2 of Junior year and Semester 1 of Senior year; 

• The full diploma CAS group meets once per week, in Semester 1 of Junior year and then once or twice a month in Semester 2 of Junior year and Semester 1 and 2 of Senior year, until completion of a student’s portfolio.   

Students may have some work to do outside of class, especially in CAS.  However, the CORE class is structured so that most students can get their work done in that CORE block.  The bulk of the outside work for TOK or EE can involve the research for a student’s EE, depending on if an experiment is needed or not.  

 

IB Overview:  The Diploma Programme (DP) curriculum for grades 11-12 is made up of six subject groups and the DP core, comprising Theory of Knowledge (TOK), Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) and the Extended Essay (EE).  Please refer to our IB webpage and to the IB Resources page in PowerSchool Learning for detailed IB information.