All posts by desta32652@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

G11 Review Portfolio Post

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Throughout Grade 11 I feel I was able to complete most of the expectations for CAS. There are however some activities I would still like to continue this year to improve and grow in them. Something I did for the first time last year was culturama which, despite having done something outside of my comfort zone such as presenting and dancing on stage in front of an audience, was something I found I actually really enjoyed. CAS last year allowed me to push myself and grow in confidence as well as helped me to learn more about myself. I turned out to be much more confident in taking leadership opportunities than I had thought, as well as looking outside the UWC community for clubs to widen my training program.

This year, to improve from Grade 11 CAS, I would like to see myself audition for perhaps a tougher dance during Culturama auditions, to really push myself even further in something I found out to really enjoy last year. I would also like to see myself taking more leadership opportunities within my age group. I think the practice last year through coaching a younger age group really helped me to give me a starting point and have a real taste of what leadership in a team really looks like. I think I have learned a lot and am ready to take what I have learned and apply it in my own team this year. I think what was challenging last year was definitely the whole situation with COVID and the uncertainty faced within a lot of my CAS activities. I am proud that last year we were able to overcome most of the challenges and still experience as much of a ‘normal’ season as possible. However, this year, I am really hoping some measures taken last year will not be necessary this year, however, thanks to last year, I am ready to accept alterations of the next few seasons in activities such as culturama and sport and am determined to still make these seasons count.

time vs progress graph of Grade 11 CAS

CAS – CREATIVITY – Activities Executive Committee – Third Reflection

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Every year members of this activity create a sports awards video celebrating some athletes at our school who have shown the most improvements and the most successes in their respective sports. Being a member of this activity, along with 3 other members, we created this video shown to the rest of our high school community. Making this video, we had much liberty and freedom which was a nice opportunity for us to plan and initiate something which would then be shown to a wider audience than just the athletes this video was targeted to. We needed to ensure that we were comfortable talking about each individual athlete with a bit of knowledge on their successes and improvements. This was challenging especially in the amount of time we had to complete this but this is where I saw the importance of collaborating with other people not only in my activity but outside of it as well. I also saw the importance of planning as we could have never done this video without being super prepared on the key ideas and key aspects we wanted to highlight regarding each athlete. This video did definitely take a few takes with a few mistakes of mis communication and a lack of flow whilst talking, however, communicating between each other between takes was critical in order to remove these. Supporting one another not only between takes but during the actual filming of the video and this importance and the impact it had on the final production was something I had also noticed and needed to take into account.

Here is the link to our video:

https://eastsportscelebration2021.weebly.com/

 

YOGA with Tampines MINDS – SERVICE (CAS) – Fourth Reflection

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Over the past couple of weeks, this service has really been something I’ve been looking forward to. Our partners from Tampines MINDS center have been allowed to come so we have finally been able to have live sessions with them. This has all involved a lot of planning and collaboration with them to be able to arrive at this point.

Now that they are here, during our sessions I have really have had to focus on the ethical considerations involved when engaging with them. Yoga is something that, when not done correctly, can create injuries. So our job as their coaches is to help provide support and ensure they do the exercises correctly. This has definitely been a challenge because the majority of them do not understand English very well so learning how to adapt our routine to carefully show them the exercise and learning how to simplifying movements on the spot has been crucial. During my first session with them, one big challenge was definitely having a partner who was injured on his knee. Although it was the first session and everyone was excited to show them our new program, I had maintained a sense of ethical responsibility in the sense that I had to control for him the extent to which he could push himself in doing the exercises and adapt a new routine just for him.

Activities Executive Committee (CAS) – Activity – Third Reflection

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For the activities executive committee this week we have had to plan for the sports awards video. However, we have had to slightly change it from previous years due to SESAC’s being canceled this year and many athletes not being able to participate in them although they would have made the team. This has been a challenge and something we have had to look at and think about. Although these decisions were not directly made by me, I think watching the activities supervisors make these decisions has really taught me about how the importance of ethical decisions. Taking into consideration some decisions for example assuming some athletes would have made the team whilst others would have not and therefore awarding some people awards and some not takes massive ethical responsibilities and the accuracy of these decisions is crucial.

The process of actually filming the video took some planning and I have seen the importance of group collaboration to maintain to a specific deadline. I think throughout this activity there are many occasions where I have seen how working as a big group is really useful to split work up and continuously meet deadlines. For example in planning this video, it needed to be a smooth almost discussion-like video ensuring the watchers are engaged and interesting. In order to achieve this, I have seen the importance of really getting to know the people I am working with as it makes the process a lot easier and makes the final outcome much more interesting as it removes a sense of rigidness in a script. I think this is a very important skill and aspect of collaboration to keep in mind for future projects.

Sports Ethics – Creativity (CAS) – Final Reflection/ CAS Product – (LO3/LO6/LO7)

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To end off this activity another member (lily) and I have organized and created a podcast based on a topic we both felt very passionate about. In this podcast, we talk about the ethical implications of the pressure and stress young athletes face these days as well as the global significance this has. We also then relate this issue back to young athletes at our school and provide advice for teachers, coaches, and parents on how to support young athletes dealing with high stress from various sources which ends up impacting their performance. This is something that has involved almost 2 months’ worth of planning and organizing and I am very proud of the end product and the message that we have been able to give off based on research and personal opinions.

Here is a link to our podcast –

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hVBlvL87otb0Dn3UXiEUFGlSkSdRZiHh/view?usp=sharing

HS FOOTBALL – ACTIVITY (CAS) – FINAL REFLECTION LO2/LO4

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Being completely honest football this year has been very different and a lot more challenging in terms of commitment and resilience compared to the other years. My goal at the beginning of the season was to keep my commitment throughout the whole season even though there is no end tournament or competition to train for. I think I have done quite a good job at doing this throughout the season as I have tried my best to go to as many training as possible and I think what has helped me a lot was to change my mentality. Throughout the other years, my mentality has always been a determination to go to all training and train at my best all the time in preparation for that end goal. However, I have needed to change my end goal this year to simply improving my skills for next year. I have also looked at football this year as a fitness commitment that would supplement touch rugby and in all simply allow me to do some exercise and cut up my stressful days with a fun activity. I think overall as well having to play in pods of 5 really pushed me outside of my comfort zone because football has never been my main sport however it has pushed me to be much more involved in the game and has allowed me to improve my dribbling and passing skills at a much faster and higher level than in the previous years.

Activities Executive Committee – Activity (CAS) – Second Reflection LO4/LO5

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We have still been working on our trick shot challenge which has taken us so far more than a month to organize. I think this has been very hard because we have been trying to get students to be motivated about something which is not required of them especially during complicated and stressful school times. However, I have learned how to show resilience and although it is taking us a long time to organize and execute than we had initially thought, it has been a great learning experience for me to understand that I have to be flexible and adaptable to plans changing. We have not given up on this plan however we have put it aside whilst focusing on other more urgent events that needed our focus. I have learned that changing plans or order of actions is vital in order to make the most use of our time. However, from this, I think I have also learned the importance of reflection. We have needed to reflect upon why our challenge was not picking up as fast as we thought by collaboratively working with others and changing and modifying our original plans. I think collaboration is super important however not only collaborating why the rest of the people in the activity but collaborating with our target audience when executing a plan because they are the ones who we are trying to reach and we need to communicate and collaborate with them to overcome the challenges we have faced.