INTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE

CAStravaganza and the beginning of our IBDP journey

A student reflection by Mia Bowcher, Year 11.

On the 7th of February, the cohort of IB students for 2020-2021 took part in the Inaugural TRAC CAStravaganza - an entire day of orientation to the Diploma Programme involving teamwork, challenges and personal skills related activities, which allowed us to bond as a group.

The activities planned for the day was a surprise for the students. We started off the day dressed in our active wear and participated in a brisk jog up to the Estella Explorer Park. Here we assessed our goals and activities for the creativity, activity and service (CAS) aspects at the core of the IBDP. We jogged back to school and changed into our casual clothes and then completed a Gallup Clifton Strengths survey to determine and assess our individual strengths and how we could then use these to assist ourselves and others in the IBDP. After our testing, we wrote about our highs, lows and favourite parts of the IBDP so far and reflected on how we can use our newly discovered attributes to improve and assist us with these reflections.

After completing this part of our day, we walked up to CSU to explore their library and services and apply for access to their resources which we can now use to assist our IB studies over the next year and a bit. We enjoyed our lunch at the cafe in the library before getting a brief tour. Following this, we were shown how to use the library resources and how best to approach researching for our assessments. After this very informative session, we walked back to school.

We were then thrown the curveball of the day when Mrs Lister and Mrs Humble announced that the dinner we would be eating that night, would actually be entirely planned and made by us as a team! We rushed into sorting out what we would cook and who would handle what before writing our menus, budgeting and compiling our shopping lists. We piled into cars driven by Mr Kennedy, Mrs Lister and Mrs Humble and headed to Woolworths where we then grabbed our groceries and drove back to school. We only had a few hours to prepare and cook before plating up and serving our three-course meal! A special mention to Will Meiklejohn and Hugo Currie for the amazing decorations they managed to pull together in the dining room! Whilst we dined, we hear from guest speaker Dr Lachlan Brown, a published, prize-winning poet and writer as well as Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Creative Writing from Charles Sturt University, who shared his ideas with us about finding our creative space when completing the creativity elements of our CAS and other IB subjects.

The overall day was incredible and we had such an amazing time! Thank you to Mrs Lister and Mrs Humble for organising the day and making it so enjoyable for us all!