CAS for maths lovers
CAS evidence and reflection: prompts, not answers
Your portfolio shows what you did and what you learned from it. The evidence shows the doing; your reflections show the learning. Here is how to collect the first and think about the second. We do not provide sample reflections, on purpose.
Provisional Our short summary of the IB's CAS requirements, being checked against the IB's current CAS guide. Your CAS coordinator's guidance comes first.
What counts as evidence
- Plans, emails and agreements that show you started and organised something.
- Dated logs: attendance, sessions, training, meetings.
- Things you made: designs, code with its version history, puzzles, videos, reports.
- Photos and recordings, taken with permission.
- Feedback from the people you worked with or for: a note from an organiser, comments, survey results.
- Records of what changed because of your work.
Students keep a CAS portfolio with evidence of their experiences and their reflections, and use it to show the school that they have met each learning outcome at least once.
A simple way to organise it
Keep one row per experience and update it as you go, in the system your school uses:
| Keep a note of | Why |
|---|---|
| Experience and dates | Shows regular involvement over time. |
| Strand(s) | Shows the balance between creativity, activity and service. |
| Evidence links | Lets your coordinator see what happened. |
| Learning outcome(s) | Shows where you think you met each outcome, which your reflection then explains. |
The seven learning outcomes, and questions for each
| Learning outcome (our summary) | Questions to think about |
|---|---|
| 1. Strengths and growth Know what you are good at and pick areas to develop. | Which part of this did you find easiest, and why do you think that is? What would someone who watched you say you need to work on? |
| 2. Challenge and new skills Take on something new or harder, and learn skills by doing it. | What could you not do at the start that you can do now? Which moment felt most uncomfortable, and what did you do next? |
| 3. Initiative and planning Start and plan an experience yourself. | What did you plan, and what did you have to change once you started? Who did you need to ask for permission or help, and how did you go about it? |
| 4. Commitment and perseverance Keep going over time, including when it gets difficult. | When did you feel like stopping, and what kept you going? What does your record of sessions or meetings show about how regularly you took part? |
| 5. Collaboration Work well with others and see what that adds. | What did someone else bring that you could not have done alone? Describe a disagreement or a mix-up in the team. How was it resolved? |
| 6. Global significance Engage with an issue that matters beyond your own circle. | How does the local need you worked on connect to a wider issue? What did you learn about that issue that you did not know before? |
| 7. Ethics Think through the ethics of your choices and actions. | What choice in this experience had a right and a wrong way to do it? Whose interests did you have to protect (privacy, safety, fairness), and how? |
Labels and summaries are ours, not the IB's wording, and are being checked against the IB's current CAS guide. See the IB's CAS page.
Questions for before, during and after
Before you start
- What do you expect to be hard?
- What do you hope the people involved will get out of it?
While it is happening
- What surprised you this week?
- What would you change next session, and why?
After it ends
- What difference did it make, and how do you know?
- What would you tell a student about to start the same thing?
A structure to think with
- What happened? The facts: what you did, with whom, when.
- So what? What it meant: what surprised you, what was hard, what you felt.
- Now what? What you will do differently, and what you want to try next.
Reflections can be written, spoken, drawn, filmed or photographed with notes, if your school allows. Short and honest beats long and polished.
What not to do
- Copy or adapt someone else's reflection, including examples online.
- Ask an AI tool or another person to write a reflection for you.
- Write all your reflections at the end: they lose the detail.
- Describe only what happened without saying what you learned.
Frequently asked questions
How long should a CAS reflection be?
There is no set length on our pages: ask your school. A short, specific reflection soon after an experience is usually more useful than a long one written weeks later.
Can I use AI to write my CAS reflections?
No. A reflection is your own thinking about your own experience, so it has to come from you. Follow your school's academic integrity policy for any other use of AI tools.
Do I need to show every learning outcome in every experience?
No. Across all of CAS you need evidence of each outcome; any single experience will usually give a chance to show only one or a few.
More for CAS: Planning a CAS project · Safety and ethics · all 67 ideas
IB Math Revision is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by the IB. Requirement summaries are our own words; for the official requirements see the IB's CAS page and ask your school's CAS coordinator.