Half-Term Check-in

Half Term Evaluation

As we have just finished the first 8 of 16 weeks of term one, I’d like to reflect on all my current activities and services which I’ve decided to partake in. In relativity to previous years, I’ve taken a lot upon myself, but my organization skills has also significantly increased. They have really helped me manage with all my activities and academics. Through all these new experiences it has really opened my eyes to what I am truly capable of as a student, I’ve seen a huge increase in responsibly and discipline within myself and have seen many new skills start to really develop. I’m really enjoying all my activities and I feel like I’m actually contributing to them all, especially in my multiple services. The leadership and social skills are easily transferable personality traits that fit into other aspects of life, along with the more technical skills such as camera manipulation and graphic design. Below, I’ll go into more detail about each activity; on which strengths I’m developing, what weaknesses I’m becoming aware on, what challenges I’ve overcome, and goals that have been set. All will be based around the Learning Outcomes of CAS, and I’ll explore how each activity is a vital part of how I develop as a learner and person.

 

Activities and Services

Creativity // Photography for the Sports Teams // Photographer / Organizer  

LO 1 AWARENESS / LO 2 CHALLENGE

Photography originally started as a small hobby for me. I bought a camera for fun, to take photos at swim meets, and to save memories for the future. Over the course of only a year I’ve edited and uploaded over 8,500 photos onto my Flickr and have taken thousands more; for multiple occasions and events: Swimming meets, Culturama, Soccer, and more. My skills have developed to be quite alright and I’m much better than I was. Just by chance I was invited to join the unlisted activity of taking photos of the different sports teams for social media and use of the school (for posters and other stuff). I immediately agreed as I thought it to be a learning experience in a camera environment I wasn’t so familiar with. Through activity I’ve challenged myself to work in situations outside my comfort zone, and have learnt to be more adaptable to situations. Because I’ve already written a CAS reflection for this activity, I don’t want to repeat too much. If you want to learn more a more detailed review on the activity is here.

 

Activity // Swimming // Team Captain / Swimmer

LO 4 COMMITMENT

Swimming has been a huge part of my life since Grade 4, over the years I’ve seen my progress improve greatly. This season I’ve participated in multiple meets including, Dragons Club Championships and TTS Merlion.  In both instances I fall short of my set target times, outlined in my goal setting for swimming. This may be due to multiple training factors such as effort, difficulty or attitude towards swimming. Over the year this has time to improve, despite the results, my commitment to the activity has not necessarily decreased. While I am often late from other commitments (such as my other activities), I always show up and complete the assigned sets, so far I’ve missed 0 sessions without a direct reason. I’ve even showed up early to complete a set before needing to leave for culturama photos (as part of photography). I’ve signed up for every swimming meet so far and I intend to do so the rest of the year, as stated in my goals. My motivation comes from my history in swimming and the others around me who help keep my training and striving to be better. I try to do my best to motivate others by being a good teammate, cheerful and helping out when I can. I also help encourage others to show up and train hard. Through my commitment, I’ve helped others keep swimming and being a role-model (team captain) within the team, I have the responsibility to set a good example for the team. The difficultly, time and effort required to swim everyday while balancing my other school work has been stressful to say the least, but I’ve been doing it a long time and I have no intention, as of now, to stop.

 

Service // SurfAid (Global Concern) // Merch Coordinator / Vice President (-ish)

LO 1 AWARENESS // LO 4 COMMITMENT // LO 5 COLLABORATION

SurfAid is also an activity which I have done before, multiple times. But this year I’ve really put myself out there and decided to really put in the effort be a really valued team member and more of a leader figure. So far in the activity I’ve been really sticking to this. I’ve designed and printed multiple posters, attended several meetings, and presented among various groups (teachers, students, coaches). In each one of these things my skillset has come in handy, whether it be graphic design skills or organisation skills. But all of these things takes time and motivation, my motivation comes from the success of the activity. The leadership this year is not as strong as previous years so I wanted to take it upon myself to step up. Previously I didn’t do all that much for the activity and I really this year wanted to make a difference. Despite the short time I really think I’ve made a significant impact on the activity, my contributions towards swimdonesia really has helped make the event possible. I think my positive, do-it attitude towards SurfAid has really made everyone else more motivated to do something about the activity.

Through SurfAid I’ve also had the opportunity to work with a lot of other people too. Thanks to Swimdonesia, a collaboration of 3 different GCs, I’ve needed to work a lot with Rick Hannah and the other leaders of the GCs along with the swim coaches to make the event possible. Organising 50+ people is no easy task but together and with pretty good planning we are able to effectively assign and distribute tasks, only through our combined collaboration will our Swimdonesia event be possible. As we move forward I think it will be important to make sure that everyone is on board and knows what everyone has to do, and this, I think is the key to good collaboration.

 

Service // Tech Tinkers (College Service) // CAS Leader 

LO 1 AWARENESS

Tech tinkers is an activity which I’ve done previously so I was comfortable with my knowledge of the activity. I knew what the activity was aiming to achieve and how it was organised. So far we’ve, as an activity, really had some good progress; we’ve gone for a scouting trip to Hougang, we’ve inventoried 30+ monitors and planned another shipment, and we’ve collected, renewed, and donated a PlayStation to Blue Dragons. This year was difference from previous ones as as I had a CAS leadership role, this put more responsibly on me and I needed to really step it up and be a positive role model of the activity. I really became aware of how much leadership potential I have, I’ve used my speaking and organisation skills to stand up in front of the group and facilitate where and what people should be doing. An example of this would be leading a small portion of the group to label, inventory, and organise monitors. I’ve defiantly become more confident in my leadership skills, and also I have become more efficient (to past years), but I could become even more organised with organising group movement.

 

Service // Yoga with Tampines MINDS (Local Service) // Communications/Social Lead

LO3 INITIATIVE

Yoga with Tampines MINDS is a new experience for me, while I’ve done yoga before working with the disabled is new. So far we haven’t actually done yoga with the clients, but we have learned about them and what they have. We’ve as a group, visited the clients at Tampines MINDS  to understand how we can change to current course to better fit their needs. We started with a basic yoga course and have adapted the course to make it simpler and easier for the patients with mental disabilities, an example would be the addition of a chair for added support. We also learned how to assist with the patients themselves, an important thing we learned is the concept of “learned helplessness” which consists of over helping until they rely on others, instead of learning to do it themselves. So far we’ve only planned, but hopefully our extensive planning will really help out over the rest of the year. We’ll also figure out if our yoga program really fits the needs of our audience, if need be we’ll adapt and change it to make it easier or harder, depending. This will be done through team evaluation over the next half year, likely recorded on our blog.

 

 

Questions Answered in passage regarding CAS Learning Outcomes:

The Goals

•  What are my goals for participating in this activity?
•  Do these goals represent a risk for me? Why/why not?
•  How am I progressing towards achieving my goals?
•  Did I achieve my goals? Why/Why not?

The Actions

•  What have I planned to do?
•  What am I doing?
•  What kind of impact are my actions having?
•  How am I feeling?
•  What am seeing?
•  Were my actions worthwhile? Why/Why not?
•  How valuable was this activity to me and to others?

The Learning

•  What am I learning about myself by being involved in this activity?
•  What am I learning about others by being involved in this activity?
•  What CAS learning outcomes have I achieved? How do I know that I achieved or failed to achieve them?
•  If I were to do this activity again what would I do differently as a result of my learning?
•  How can apply what I have learned to future activities?

LO 1 AWARENESS (Increased awareness of strengths and areas for growth)

•  What previous experience have I had with an activity like this?
•  What am I good at? What are my strengths?
•  What would I like to improve?
•  How has my involvement in this activity made me aware of my strengths and areas for growth?
•  Have I improved and in what areas? How do I know?
•  Why have I struggled in some areas?

LO 2 CHALLENGE (Undertaken new challenges)/NEW SKILLS (Developing new skills)

•  What was it about this activity that I found challenging/difficult?
•  What risks have I taken as part of this activity?
•  What actions did I take to overcome these challenges?
•  Were there challenges that I could not overcome? Why/why not?
•  How will approach a challenge like this in the future?
•  What new skills have I developed in this activity?
•  How did I measure my improvement?
•  Why were some skills easier to develop than others?
•  How important were the skills I developed to achieving success in this activity?
•  How can I use the skills I developed in this activity in other areas of my life?

LO3 INITIATIVE (Planning and initiated activities)

•  What activities did I plan?
•  What was the outcome of my planning? How do I know?
•  How did my plans change as the activity progressed? Why?
•  What difficulties did I face in executing my plan? How did I overcome these challenges?
•  How did I respond to changes in plans? Would I respond the same way in future? Why/why not?

LO 4 COMMITMENT (Showing perseverance, resilience and commitment in activities)

•  How did I show perseverance/resilience/commitment in this activity?
•  How did I maintain my motivation for this activity?
•  How did I help others or how did others help me to stay committed to this activity?
•  What impact did my commitment or lack thereof have on the success of the activity?
•  What things affected my commitment levels, ability to persevere or my resolve?

LO 5 COLLABORATION (Working together to achieve an outcome)

•  Who did I collaborate with?
•  What made it easy or difficult to work together with this person/people?
•  What challenges did we face when working together? How did we overcome them? Why couldn’t we overcome some challenges?
•  How important was collaboration to achieving the outcome or my goal?
•  What could I do in future to be a more effective team player?

LO 6 GLOBAL VALUE (Engaging with issues of global importance)

Issues of global importance can include any issue that is significant on the world stage. Examples of global issues include environmental preservation; gender equality; race relations; child poverty; ageing population; the effect of pop culture on morality and traditional society; freedom of education; freedom of speech; fair trade; disparities in wealth;

•  What did I learn about this issue?
•  Why is this a significant issue?
•  How have my actions had a positive/negative impact on this issue?
•  How has my thinking about this issue changed as a result of my participation in this activity? Am I more open-minded, caring, principled as a result?

LO 7 ETHICS (Considering the ethical implications of actions)

Ethics are the moral principles that govern or influence our conduct. Ethics are the basis for what we determine to be the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ course of action.

•  At what times did I face ethical decisions when participating in this activity?
•  On what did I base my decision making? Why?
•  How did my moral principles affect the decision I made?
•  Was I ever in conflict with another person because our morals were different? How did we resolve this conflict?
•  Have I become more or less principled as a result of my participation in this activity? Why?