The Creativity, Activity, Service Program is one of the core components of the IB Diploma Program.

All IB students have to be involved in creative, physical and service experiences, and projects in a local, national or international context for at least 18 months. The CAS Program is about the education of the IB students beyond the classroom and the emphasis is on learning by doing.

It encourages students to share their energies and talents while developing awareness, concern, and the ability to work cooperatively with others.

We are planning to feature various experiences and projects in upcoming issues of the Gutenberg Post to provide insight to our school community what CAS Experiences and CAS Projects our IB students are involved with.

Creativity Activity Service Program

Ulrike Miehle, CAS Coordinator and Year 11 CAS students

Dungeons and Dragons AG 

Our CAS project is a Dungeons and Dragons AG, for students from classes five to seven. Every Thursday, we run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, where we run the game, while the students get to participate, enjoy and delve into their creativity. This covers strands C, creativity, as it’s set in a fantasy world, where people can do whatever they want. At the same time, it also involves strand S, service, as we serve the school and the people in our AG, by providing an AG for them to enjoy. And, as every CAS project has to involve one or more strands, this checks all the boxes.

In the game we basically construct a story around our players. Each of the players has characters that they play in combat and roleplay throughout the game. They each embody certain archetypes; the magical wizard, the pious divine empowered cleric, the skilled swordsman, but they can customise these how they see fit through their choices and their personalities. As the dungeon master, we are basically the leader of the games, telling the players what is happening and then allowing them to respond however they see fit. They do this mostly by rolling dice and roleplaying their characters with other characters that we as the DMs (Dungeon Masters) play. It allows them to spread their creative wings and make new friends along the way.

After every session we have discussions on how the session went, and about things we can improve, or ways to address issues. Kerem is an emergency DM, so he runs the game when someone is unavailable, and otherwise roleplays any non-player characters present in the story and helps out with other miscellaneous tasks. The sessions are prepared by discussing what we want players to accomplish and how they’re working with each other. It’s enjoyable, as the students engage with the storyline a lot and that makes it highly entertaining. At the same time, preparing for all the possible things that the students can do in a session is challenging, which means that in some cases, we simply have to improvise a bit. Overall, however, it’s going very well, both for the students and for us.

Axel Salonen, Kerem Ensari and Martin Camphausen
D&D AG Coordinators, CAS Students