LO1- I was initially quite anxious about performing, which is something I normally do while pretending to be someone else. Juggling was a skill I am less confident in, particularly since you can make up a forgotten line, but its harder to recover from a dropped ball. I have partially overcome this just by repeatedly performing and dropping balls. There’s nothing to do but keep going. If I were to keep pursuing this, one point of improvement would be to actually perform a little more instead of simply juggling, but that would take more confidence building.
LO3-We also started our service component, which has required advance planning. Thankfully we have all learned the circus skills, so we had to adapt them to our various service activities. The most frequent was working with groups of children to teach them circus skills. We planned to divide into groups and have the children rotate between different stations for each skill. We have since lowered the time between rotations to suit the age of the kids and divided games that match their skill level. The kids range from ages 5-7, so starting with juggling was a stretch. We kept the original activities for the kids that progressed that far but starting teaching more basic skills like throwing and catching. We also had to plan for our performances, choosing gear that we could transport to the performances we did at retirement homes and coordinating to put together a coherent performance.
LO4-By working on this for the past year we have gained the skills necessary to make this activity possible and an understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses that make a good performance. By spending a season learning the circus skills we taught and performed with, we had something of value to provide instead of bumbling our way through our later service sessions. By learning together we also knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses allowing us to divide up teaching and performing effectively. We also met during lunches to get ready to perform.