Island School Post-16 CAS

Yr 12 Helpsheet -
Prompt Questions to help you create a reflection

To help guide your reflection, you may use the following

general questions:
(You may find it helpful to use some of these questions in the
early/mid stages of a Project/Major, and others later in your
experience.)

a. What do you perceive and notice?

b. How you feel being involved?
c. What do you think and feel about the activity itself?
d. What does the activity means to you?
e. What value does the activity have?
f. What did you learn from this activity, and how might you extrapolate from this to
apply any lesson to your life more generally?
g. What skills did the activity teach you?
h. What life lessons did the activity teach you?
i. How did the activity help other people?
j. How has the activity changed you?

Or, consider these:

What did you hope to achieve in your activity?

What were your goals and how did you prepare to reach them?
What would you have changed in your planning?
Did you find yourself out of your comfort zone? How did you feel during/afterwards?
What are the benefits of being challenged in this way?
Did you discover any personal strengths or areas that need improvement from your
participation in the activity?
What difficulties did you face and how did you overcome them?
What did you learn about yourself? What did you learn about others?
How did your efforts benefit others? (Be specific)
How did your efforts benefit yourself? (Be specific)
Did you enjoy your involvement in the CAS related activity? Why/why not?
How well did you work/interact with others?
How well did others respond to working with you?
What abilities and attitudes were put into action in you and in others?
What did you learn in the activity that could be applied in other situations?
Were your perspectives or values challenged or altered?
Did you achieve success or failure? How did this make you feel?
What was the importance of teamwork or leadership in your activity?
What motivated your involvement in the activity?
What skills / abilities did you develop?
What criticisms did you receive and how did you respond to them?
Or, if you are reflecting on Service consider these:
• How does this activity serve the needs of different communities?
• What impact does my community have on the content of this activity?
• Which communities does this activity affect?
• What issues does this community face?
• How can my learning in this activity help my communities?
• How can my communities help me learn?
• How can participation in this activity influence my thoughts about what I should do in
my community?
• How can my knowledge about communities drive my participation in this activity?
• What aspects of a community can be reflected in this activity?
• What will be the ethical implications of my involvement in this activity?

Reflecting also provides you with the opportunity to express your views about the
issues that communities face, and on the action, or in-action, that is being taken to
address them. Additionally, reflection is very important in enabling you to consider the
thoughts and needs of those they wish to help:

• What is the role of those you wish to serve in the activity?

• How can they play a part in their own development?
• Am I simply telling others how to live their life? If so, is this right or wrong?
• Is my work truly benefitting those I wish to assist?

OR, more simply, you can use these general questions:

a. Did you meet the goals you set out?

b. Why or why not?

c. What learner objectives did you meet?

d. Why or why not?

e. If you could do this activity again, what would you do differently?

Prompt questions to help you reflect on whether you have
achieved the 8 learning outcomes.

a. Increased awareness of strengths/weaknesses

i. Did this activity humble you?

ii. Boost your self confidence?

iii. Why weren’t you aware of this strength/weakness before?

iv. How do you feel now that you’re aware of it?

v. Why is it important for us to know our strengths? Our weaknesses?

b. Undertaken new challenges:

i. What was so challenging?

ii. Why was it challenging?

iii. Have you done anything similar before?

iv. How did you overcome this challenge?

v. If you didn’t overcome it, why not and what will you do differently next time?

vi. How do you feel about having undertaken this challenge?

vii. Why is it important for you to undertake new challenges?

c. Planned and initiated activities:

i. How did you organize yourself?

ii. Are you usually an organized person?

How did any current skills you already have help you in the planning of this
activity?

i. Did you discover any skills you hadn’t known or learned yet that you had to use
for the planning and initiating of this activity?

ii. What was harder? The planning or the initiating? Why?

iii. Do you think planning or initiating anything in the future will be easier now?

iv. Why is it important to know how to plan and initiate activities?

d. Worked collaboratively:

i. Is working with others generally easy or hard for you? Why?

ii. So, based on your answer to the above question, was this particular activity easy or
hard for you to work with others?

iii. Did you have to work with anyone difficult? How did you handle it?

iv. Why is it important to be able to work collaboratively with others?

e. Showed perseverance and commitment:

i. What made this activity difficult where perseverance or commitment was

necessary? How did that make you feel?

ii. Is it easy for you to commit to things? To be persistent? Why or why not?

iii. Why is showing perseverance and commitment important?

f. Engaged with issues of global importance:

i. What were the issues?

ii. Why are they important globally? How? Where? How did you know?

iii. How does knowing about global issues contribute to your personal growth?

iv. How does it make you feel now that you are aware of this global issue?

v. How does your work in this CAS activity make you feel about that global issue?

g. Consider ethical implications (also see separate sheet for guidance):

i. Do you understand what ethics are?

ii. How do you know if something is ethical? How did you learn that?

iii. What ethical issues were involved in this activity? Explain.

iv. Did the ethical issues affect you directly or indirectly?

v. How did the issue make you feel? What was your opinion on this issue before

this activity? Has it changed or stayed the same after this activity?

vi. What could you do to increase the awareness of others about this issue?

vii. Why is an ethical education important?

h. Develop new skills:

i. What new skills did I develop?

ii. Why did you not have them before?

iii. How could this skill be useful to you in the future?

iv. How does having this new skill make you feel about yourself?

v. Why is it important to learn new skills?

Again, remember….
Although it’s not about length, writing a few sentences is not likely to be enough. It’s
more about quality than quantity, BUT you must have enough quantity.
The reflection is as important as actually doing the activity and maybe even more so if
your CAS is to be meaningful to you and about personal growth. The evidence of this
growth is the reflection.

Reflections should be more like journal entries; more about emotions and thoughts
than a description of the activity.

You MUST show reflection on ALL of the 8 Learning Outcomes in order to be awarded
your CAS certificate.