Community Service

The BIS Community Service

CAS AT THE BRITISH SCHOOL

The IB Programme focuses on producing well-balanced critical thinkers. For IB and KS4 students at The BIS this means CAS; Creativity, Activity and Service. The aim of CAS is to allow students to grow and explore in areas outside of their academic pursuits. As students participate in CAS, they are challenged to become more active, develop their creative responses and encourage them to become more involved in their wider community whilst reflecting on further developing their existing skills and undertaking new challenges.

The Creativity component of CAS promotes experiences involving art, language, music as well as initiating and planning Service experiences, such as organising and leading fund-raising experiences.

Activity focuses on physical exertion for a healthier lifestyle such as individual or team sports. Expeditions or physical work on local projects can also be classified as Activity. 

The Service component focuses on being active in the local and wider community whilst making a positive impact. This includes a wide range of experiences which are voluntary and may involve charitable work.

At the start of KS4, students are introduced to CAS to enable, foster and adopt new creative learning strategies. The students are expected to pursue a range of experiences, both inside and outside the school, and to interact with the local Turkish environment as much as possible by undertaking numerous sporting, artistic, charitable and environmental experiences. We also hope to broaden their skills and interaction with others as well as giving them opportunities to develop their interests outside of their academic studies. We encourage the students to make more considered choices of their scheduled activities and to maintain a balance in all three areas of C, A and S through the completion of a minimum of 50 hours throughout the year.

On Friday afternoons, students are involved in a range of experiences such as Photography, Judo, MUN, Drama, Personal Training, School Production and leading activities in English with a local school for the visually impaired.

By the time our students enter the IB Diploma Programme, their knowledge and involvement of CAS is comprehensive. The expectations at IB level are elevated with additional learning outcomes and an independent programme is planned.

This year, our Year 12 cohort undertook an Archeological dig at Debelt, a Late Roman city located close to Burgas, Bulgaria. The research excavation experience of surveying, digging, cleaning, classifying and illustrating their finds was a completely new experience for our group who undertook the challenge with relish and vigour. A wonderful bonding experience for the students with many memorable moments.

Throughout the two years, our IB students undertake a wide range of experiences that see them developing new skills and a greater awareness of their own strengths and that of others. Many students get involved in the school-based activities that are on offer but also initiate new experiences themselves, such as Turkish teaching sessions offered to other students and staff.

For Creativity, many students have joined debate clubs, learnt additional foreign languages, produced artwork, studied music or participated in school theatre productions.

For Activity, football, basketball and volleyball inter-school tournaments are a popular choice. Other sports experiences have included Archery, Tennis, Swimming and Belly Dancing.

Service has seen a group of students who undertook a range of smaller projects in order to raise money to send them to Cambodia to help a rural family rebuild their home and small holding. Closer to home, a few year 12’s worked very hard in creating artwork in order to host their first art exhibition and auction which raised funds for charity. Some have volunteered in hospitals or taught Physics to younger learners. Others have volunteered to advocate various organisations concerned with economic and social issues such illiteracy, poverty, environment and human welfare. One of our current year 13 students was solely responsible for educating our school community on a neonatal care unit for premature babies, which was adopted as one of our school charities last year.