Basketball club (November)

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November 7, 2012

Basketball club

I joined the school basketball club. I was mainly playing at the right forward or the left forward when we are on offence but on defense, there wasn't a fixed position because we were constantly moving around and making space for passes – this is our strategic decision.

In the second week, I scored 2 points and made 1 foul. I think I made a slight improvement making good passes. However, in a game situation, I sometimes made the wrong decision, so my aim for next month is to develop the skill of making the right decision.

Learning outcome:

·      Increase awareness of your strengths and areas for growth – improved passes

·      Undertake new challenges – come up and implementing new strategies

·      Worked collaboratively with others – good communication (eye contact)

·      Developed new skills

Ice Hockey FeedBack (November)

Activities

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October 7, 2012

CAS

During the CAS lesson, we were trying to think of an activity for our CAS and we carried out challenges and competed with other groups.

First challenge: how many baskets can I make continuously.

The result of the basketball challenge wasn't very good. Unfortunately, I only got 3 shots and the winner of this challenge got more than 10 shots continuously. This result suggests that I should do more practice on shooting and also focus on this during the basketball club after school.

Second challenge: Double Dutch

The double dutch challenge was quite interesting because I haven't done it for a long time since year 5 in Japan. I was able to jump about ten times, but we were the only group who did this so we don’t have any values to compare. However, when we just started the activity we couldn't enter and jump because it was extremely hard to get the timing to enter so I think 10 jumps were a quite big progress comparing to the beginning.

Learning Outcome:

•   Increase awareness of your strengths and areas for growth

•   Undertake new challenges

•   Planned and initiated activities

•   Worked collaboratively with others

•   Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

•   Developed new skills

Tutor volunteer!

Monthly feedback

As mentioned last time, we were going through the textbook and solving questions.
Teaching someone was actually harder than I expected…especially teaching language to my students because some there are many words that cannot be directly translated to Japanese. Although I find a Japanese translation, it doesn’t necessarily mean exactly the same as the English words – normally there are some nuances. Next time, with the aid of internet, I will try to use some pictures or videoclips because I think these visual contents are easier to understand than just listening to what I am saying. It could also make the lesson more interesting.
Video Planing to show:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=English beginner&sm=3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Pkn117amFw

International Day

International Day

On 19 October, Chihiro, Haruka and I formed a group to take part in International day to present and introduce Japanese culture including foods, games and music.

The first group we met was the year 9s which was the biggest group with 15 students. We gave them a quiz about japan, but because it was our first performance, we ran out of time and things didn't go really smoothly.

However, since the second group came, we were begging to get used to the situation and the mood. Things are starting to go smoothly and fewer mistakes were made.

It was my first time to stand in front of year 9s and 8s to speak and give a presentation to them. The most difficult thing was to keep the speaking more interesting and joyful, in order to make the students listen and concentrate.

International Day Project

International Day Project

Preparation1
We started to think about what to do on the International day coming on 19th of October.
I formed a group of three, which includes Chiaki and Haruka. We have decided to present Japanese cultures, foods and school life (in Japan) in a form of quiz. In addition, we are planning to teach them a Japanese traditional game called ‘Fukuwarai’. Then we decided who will do which task until International day. My task was to make the presentation for the quiz.


Preparation2
I spend 2 hours making the presentation and so far I only finished 30% of the whole presentation. The reason of taking such time was because I spend quite long time thinking questions that small kinds (i.e. year 7 and 8) would be interested. Also one of the major difficulties in making  the slides are the design process. Since I will present it to people, it should look professional, beautiful and appealing. I used tried to use my art skills from IGCSE art to sort out the issues. After the long consideration I decided to make to presentation in a quite classic design (monotone).  I think if I make it too colorful, it would not fit in  the atmosphere of Japanese culture and I rather used black-and-white theme because I believe it describes the peaceful mood.


Preparation3
I finally finished my powerpoint slides! It took me about 6 hours in total, including the research time for questions. I think the quality of the presentation is quite high. In order to make it interesting, I included a lot of animation effects (and transitions effect). Also I inserted some Japanese music(J-pop) as a BGM, so childrens will be learn about Japan not only through 'eyes' but also by their ears. Using more senses would allow them to have better understanding and to feel the mood of Japanese culture.

Preparation4
On the day before International day, we decorated the math room – sticking pictures of Japanese shrines and famous buildings on the wall. Also we tested and practised the presentation and It was quite good.

International Day
We performed what we prepared over the two weeks to the small kinds. I am going to report how was the International day.

The first group we met was the year 9s which was the biggest group with 15 students. We gave them a quiz about japan, but because it was our first performance, we ran out of time . Also we the year 9s were quite noisy so things didn't go really smoothly

However, from the second group, we were begging to get used to the situation and the mood. Things are starting to go smoothly and fewer mistakes were made. As we present, we got better and better and at the end of the day we were able to keep control children's attention to the presentation.

It was my first time to stand in front of year 9s and 8s to speak and give a presentation to them. The most difficult thing was to keep the talking interesting and joyful, to make the students listen and concentrate.

Overall I think this project was a quite successive with great outcomes and I enjoyed. Everything went good as planned – done in time.
Throughout the project, I worked collaboratively with my group members and it was a good chance to apply and practice my art (design) skill that I learnt from IGCSE. It was a new challenge for me to introduce my country in front of many students. Unlike normal presentation, small kids would easily  get bored so I had to make my story as interesting as possible.

I posted the slides I made.

Volunteer Work (tutor) & Monthly Feed Back

This is my monthly feedback section on the tutoring project.
As mentioned, I have started a lesson from the 4th of October, as a tutor of a Year 7 student and teaching him English and Maths based on the textbook he has.

I tried to cover as much as possible but we could only able to cover only half of the targets. My aim for next week is to cover more exercises and organise a better lesson. Also I think I should use more easy words when explaining, otherwise it might cause misunderstanding.

• Worked collaboratively with others – working together with the student I have
• Planned and initiated activities – I already planned the lesson for next lesson
• Undertake new challenges – This was my first time to do a lesson.
• Developed new skills – I found that teaching is a really hard thing because I have to explain intangible concepts in an easy way. In order to do a better lesson, I think I should care about the pace of the lesson (slow down the pace) and use easy words.

Ice Hockey Monthly Feedback (October)

Today I would like to give some feedback on ice hockey.
As mentioned previously, my aim is to improve my shooting skills and etc. (look at previous post related to ice hockey).

This month, I think the communication with my teammates was quite good – they were on their own position, but also looking after and covering each other when there is an error.

However, I think my passes were not as accurate as planned, and my colleagues might have felt difficulties in taking my passes. So this would be my next element to improve on.

October 31, 2012

Basketball club

I joined the school basketball club, October 31, 2012. I was mainly playing at the right forward or the left forward when we are on offence but on defense, there wasn't a fixed position because we were constantly moving around and making space for pass.

I made 4 fouls, which was relatively a lot. In addition, I didn't make any baskets so my next weeks target is to take more shots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Qo86YirWM&feature=player_embedded

Learning outcome:

·      Increase awareness of your strengths and areas for growth

·      Undertake new challenges

·      Worked collaboratively with others

·      Developed new skills

CAS Filming Project

We started to film using our phones for our CAS task provided by Mr Gray during Thursday's class.

Johnny, Yaroslav and I formed a group and it was our first time working together. We took turns filming and acting, although it was me who did all of the editing, tiles, and production. If this was a real commercial film, I would be much more than the other two.

The theme of the clip was spending the school day doing cool tricks such as high coordination throwing and simple acrobatics. Because these tricks were difficult and had not been rehearsed, it took many takes to perfect a scene – 269 in total.

The learning outcome
•    Increase awareness of your strengths and areas for growth – I had some experience of film editing previously but it wasn't as good as this time. However, I enjoyed doing the editing.
•    Undertake new challenges – filming and editing
•    Planned and initiated activities – we planned the scenes and movement first
•    Worked collaboratively with others
•    Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities – the filming took a long time because most of the movement is basically try-and-error – 269 cuts in total.
•    Developed new skills – film editing e.g new effects and transitions

Basketball Club, 3rd of October,

From today, I joined the Basketball Club after school (every Wednesday), so iwould like to give some feedback here (but normally I will be posting feedback monthly, because there would not be a significant improvement in a week). Today I scored 2 points and 2 assisting. These results are better than the previous week's one which was no scoring, therefore I am starting to make progress and getting better in playing basketball.
My aim for next week is to score more than 2 points and pass around the ball faster and more accurately.

Overall, I have covered these outcomes:

• Increase awareness of your strengths and areas for growth
• Planned and initiated activities – achieving the aim set last week
• Worked collaboratively with others – playing as a team and organise our structure of positions
• Developed new skills – practised lay-up shoot during the training section beginning of the club.