FAQs

Almost anything that you undertake could be considered a CASL experience. But, you need to be able to justify how it is linked to one or more of the three strands. Watch the videos at the bottom of the page for some inspiration.

Talk to your tutor about what you would like to change as they can edit activities on your behalf. Unfortunately, you can not make these changes yourself once an experience has been approved.

Note: you should not add a new experience.

This is definitely possible. But you need to be able to explain and justify how you will use this new skill in a creative way. For example, making a series of posters in English and another language. Or composing a short story in another language.

Remember, this can not be a language you are studying at school.

Almost anything can be included in the creativity strand. But you need to justify what you are creating. For example:

• Yoga- students create space to practice, in their minds and in their bodies.

• Language clubs- students can create resources to support their language acquisition and/or compose a short story with their new skills. 

• Daytrading- students learn about creative and considered ways to invest.

Yes- this can fall under the Creativity strand as you are creating space. Remember to articulate what you are creating and set a clear goal for the experience.

Please look at the CCA website to learn more about their alignment (www.ccasjii.com). 

Absolutely. Many of your CASL experiences may be things that you already do. Perhaps you play for a team, act in school plays, help out somewhere or are in the scouting movement. All these experiences could meet the criteria above for CASL. However, CASL also gives you the opportunity to undertake something new that you’ve always dreamed of doing. It doesn’t have to be extreme, like rock climbing, but it could be. It could be learning to sew, helping someone or promoting a cause you care about.  

Remember, you must develop yourself during your CASL experiences: you can’t just do the same thing again and again. So for example just going to the gym is not great CASL but going to the gym and working towards goals is - and isn’t that the point of the gym! 

CASL experiences should be ongoing and consistent. The CCA program is a perfect example where you are engaged for one hour each week across the twelve-week term.

It is important that you set goals and make some commitment to your activities so that you can upload evidence and ongoing reflections throughout the process.

Yes- every CASL activity requires a supervisor.

If you do not have a particular person in mind to supervise your activity you should consult the 'supervisor list' to see if there is a teacher on staff who shares similar interests and has experience in the area you would like to explore. 

If you are unable to find a teacher from the list then you could add your tutor as your supervisor. However, you need to consult with them, outline your goals and inform them how you plan to upload your evidence and reflections before adding their contact details to ManageBac.

An experience supervisor does not need to be a teacher. It can a sporting coach, member of a service organisation or just someone with experience or expertise in a particular area. 

Ideally your supervisor will have an email from a company or organisation to legitimise their connection to your activity. If this is not the case, your CASL Coordinator or tutor might ask you some follow up questions to find out more about the background of the supervisor- so just be prepared.

The role of a supervisor is outlined in this handbook. Please share it with your potential supervisor to educate them about the role and their responsibilities.

No. Parents and family members can not serve as CASL supervisors. 

If you have a CASL experience and clear goal you would like to achieve but don't have a supervisor the best thing to do is ask your tutor or a teacher to act as your supervisor.

It is important that you ask this teacher first if they are willing and able to support you before inputting their details on your experience application. 

Then you need to ensure that you consistently upload your evidence and reflections to ManageBac. When you have finished the commitment, you will request a supervisor review where they can look at your evidence and make a supervisor comment on your engagement. They may also ask to have a meeting with you to discuss what you have done.

1. Be careful when selecting a supervisor. You should be in communication with them throughout the CASL experience and know if they will move countries, be on holidays etc. You should also request the review as soon as your commitment is over. This should avoid any issues.

2. BUT, if you have reached out and requested the review and have still not received a response then you can talk to your tutor and ask if they can act as your supervisor for this experience. Your tutor is able to update an experience and nominate themselves as your supervisor.

3. NOTE: As they are taking over the role it is vital that they see your engagement via ongoing reflections and lots of evidence in order to complete the supervisor review. You can also expect that they will need to have a long conversation with you about the experience, your goals and achievements.

All students of SJII are expected to take part in at least ONE school organised CCA each term. To learn more about the policy please see: www.ccasjii.com/key-info/cca-policy 

There is no real answer to this. It is more important that reflection is meaningful than voluminous. If you undertook a one-off experience then one, perhaps short, reflection is enough. If you played in a netball team 5 hours a week for 2 years, you should use the opportunity to reflect on the experience more often and deeply. However, this doesn’t mean reflect after every training session.

Ongoing experiences necessitate ongoing reflections. This does not mean you reflect after every session but perhaps every 2-3 weeks as determined by the experience, how often you engage and where you feel you have demonstrated one or more of the identified learning outcomes. 

Don’t panic! Remember it is quality, not quantity, that counts when it comes to reflections. Set a target to undertake one detailed reflection about each experience and repeat this when something significant has occurred.

You should be undertaking CASL continuously for the entirety of the CASL program.

See Aunty Glenis in the secondary school office.