CAS Categories

AIS provides many opportunities to get involved in all three types of activities. In general, students are also encouraged to follow their own interests and get involved in other activities not sponsored by the school. Students should make every attempt to participate in at least three diverse, different activities per academic year.

Creativity

Creative activities engage the artistic and aesthetic development of the student.

Creative activities must be actively participated in by the student, and not merely involve the student as a spectator. Creative hours may be satisfied (for example) by active involvement in dance, theater, music, and art activities outside the normal AIS curriculum.

This aspect of CAS is interpreted as imaginatively as possible to cover a wide range of arts and other activities beyond the normal curriculum which include creative thinking in the design and carrying out of service projects. This could involve doing dance, theatre, music and art, for example.

Students should be engaged in group activities, and especially in new roles, wherever possible. Nevertheless, individual commitment to learning an art form is allowed, where it respects the requirements for all CAS activities: that goals are set and the student reflects on progress.

Action

Action-based activities take place after school hours and are not included in the curriculum. Action hours may include physical activities such as playing on sport teams, participating in after school clubs, participating in civic organizations, etc.

This aspect of CAS can include participation in expeditions, individual and team sports, and physical activities outside the normal curriculum; it also includes physical activity involved in carrying out creative and service projects. Action may involve participation in sport or other activities requiring physical exertion—such as expeditions and camping trips, or digging trenches to lay water pipes to bring fresh water to a village.

Students should be encouraged toward group and team activities, and undertaking new roles, but an individual commitment is acceptable where the general requirements of CAS are met: goals are set and the student reflects on progress.

Both creativity and action can be enhanced by incorporating the service element. Students involved in the arts and in physical activities might consider coaching or teaching young children, seniors in residential homes, street children and so on.

Service

Service encourages students to experience the rewards of helping others in their community and world.

Service hours encompass meaningful interactions between students and those that they help, including such activities as volunteering for peer-tutoring, visiting residents of a retirement home, working at community food or furniture banks, fundraising for emergency disaster relief, etc. Service activities should lead students to "show respect for the dignity and self-respect of others."

Service projects and activities are often the most transforming element for the individual student; they have the potential to nurture and mold the global citizen. Service involves interaction, such as the building of links with individuals or groups in the community. The community may be the school, the local district, or it may exist on national and international levels (such as undertaking projects of assistance in a developing country).

Service activities should not only involve doing things for others but also doing things with others and developing a real commitment with them. The relationship should therefore show respect for the dignity and self-respect of others.