Monday Training Session

This training session was dedicated to passing and I believe I did well considering most of my passes arrived at the intended place especially during the long passing exercise. However, this exercise has helped me realise that I need to improve on my confidence regarding short distance passing due to the fact that I don't always know what strength to apply to my passes.

I was able to apply these skills in a short game situation where our team won 4 - 0 in less than 5 minutes illustrating our rapid ability to apply our learned skills to a real situation. However, I think that I should try to improve my long through ball since that seems to be my issue when it comes to long balls. In order for this to happen, I will practice on lobbing the ball when I can so that I get used to the technique that must be applied for this.

Teaching Assistant Week 2

This Sunday, I once again helped at a assistant coach which was funner than last week due to the fact I was a lot more communicative and I look forward to seeing the people there again next week.

The reason for my success regarding people knowing me is due to the fact that I try out new dribbles with the ball in order to help me improve my touch with the ball which was an issue in the previous match our team played. However, I don't hog the ball nor do I keep it for very long. Instead, I pass it very often in order to give other people change with the ball so that they can improve and, more importantly, have fun.

I think that this service activity has helped me become a more caring and ethically aware person due to, not only the context of the activity, but also due to the fact that I consider the fact that this activity would not be fun for others if I was always trying to dribble people and keep the ball. This activity is about helping others improve in a sport they enjoy playing which, I find, is a great concept for me because I love playing football and helping others.

Football Match Friendly 2

We had another friendly match last Thursday which ended up with a draw 3 - 3 and has illustrated to our team that, even though we changed the team around, we can play well together if we try because the previous match portrayed us as individualistic rather than focusing on team play.

We played really well considering we were 3 - 1 down when there were only 15 minutes to be played. I think that I played my role well during this match and contributed well in the overall draw even though I played in an uncomfortable position which I had to place myself in because of the fact someone else wanted to play at left back instead of right back.

However, I still managed to move up with the ball well even though my control is still a bit clumsy which is due to the fact I haven't played on an actual football pitch of any sort for a long while (I normally play in a gym). Nevertheless, my touch was good most of the time even though sometimes I should have put my head up and looked for an easy pass instead of trying to dribble with the ball in defense which is very dangerous.

My passing and combinations with other players was very good because I always communicated well with my team and made my team mates aware of my position. However, I think that I should try to support the midfield and attackers a bit more due to the fact I am situated at the side which I didn't do as much of this match compared to the previous one therefore I shall ensure that I will try to do this in the next football fixture our team has.

Overall, during the next match I will try to run up and support our offensive players more in order to have to work under pressure which will hopefully increase the quality of my touch. I will also try to look up when I am on the ball more often in order to see who is open for a pass and actually pass it if I see an easier option than to run up with the ball.

Football Match Friendly

Yesterday, we had our first friendly home match which ended up with us losing 6 - 1. However, the score doesn't illustrate how well we played having never played as a team before.

In the first half, we were trailing 4 - 0 which illustrates how well we did in the second half. We played well as a team, trying out combinations and moving well with the ball, however, our possession was one of the issues that led to our failure considering we were on the defensive most of the time rather than on the offensive.

I played my role as a left back pretty well considering that I wasn't afraid to run up with the ball and go up to support the attacking midfield which is one of my roles as a left back. However, my touch and control was not at its best because I wasn't concentrated enough and I didn't look up enough. My passes were accurate even though there are several times that I could have released the ball instead of dribble with it.

In the next match, I will try to pass the ball more often and not be afraid to call for the ball back in order to get more opportunities on the ball and develop my skills. I will also try to concentrate more on my dribbling because it is one of my strong points and it is a way of developing my skills. Furthermore, I will go to the gym more often in order to work on my fitness and stamina considering I'm not at my best form right now which is a shame since I used to be a really good runner with high endurance. 

Teaching Assistant - I'm Lovin' it

This Sunday, I went to a football session for the service part of my CAS. This service involved playing football with children and adults with special needs and after doing this today, I will continue doing it every Sunday because it was such a great experience for me. It has helped me become aware of ethical issues and this is something that I have enjoyed doing because I get a feeling of doing something good.

I was able to become a much better communicator since I started talking to new people and build new relationships whilst doing something I enjoy. During this session, I was trying, with success, to be a team player rather than try to dribble everyone since this was the objective of this football session, to have fun. Today really helped me to be more caring, a team player and enjoy playing football instead of, during real matches, feeling stressed about how well I'm going to play.

Next week, I will try to be even more of a communicator on the pitch so that there is a sense of team spirit among my team.Furthermore, I will try to be more encouraging which would help me become more caring and more of a team player which is something that I want to become since it would also help me be more open and thus increase my communication skills.

Football Camp

For a whole week, I participated in a football camp which helped me develop my skills as a football player and a team player. Throughout the week, we took different tests to see at what level we were football-wise and we also played some games in order to be able to apply our skills in an actual game. This week was not only an opportunity to improve my skills, but to also have some fun playing the sport which I do best at.

Throughout the whole week I tried my best and tried to show our coach what I was able to do in order to both impress him and hopefully get feedback that would help me improve my skills even more. I was able to see, through the tests that we took, that my passing needs to improve since that was the test I got the least points in and to improve this, I should practice passing the ball against the wall so that I get a higher degree of precision in my passing. However, I was able to see that my agility and dribbling was a very strong point in my football since I got the best score for that part of the test among the 15 to 18 year olds.

During the games that we played, I tried to show that dribbling skill I had by trying to get passes opponents with my quick feet and knowledge of particular dribbles which paid off really well since I was able to impress both my team mates and the coach with my skills.

We had a game during the week that I stayed at this camp and I think that I was limited to the extent that my team mates didn't play well as a team even though I was constantly putting myself into good position and asking for the ball and talking to my team mates which has helped me become a better communicator. As well as this, I was put into three different postions during this game which were the centre midfielder, left midfielder and striker which I tried to show myself capable of playing, however, I have to once again stress the fact that my team mates didn't play very well as a team so I didn't get the ball pretty often but even so I always tried to put myself into good positions to receive the ball and I kept encounraging my team mates verbally which helped me become more caring in the sense that I have become more of a supportive team mate.

If I am to come back next year, I will, throughout the academic year, improve my passing and my control of the ball since those are the areas I noticed that I need to improve on as well as the accuracy of my shooting when the ball is moving since those are the areas that I was most disappointed about, especially the shooting, so throughout the academic year I will be trying to shoot more precisely instead of always going for powerful shots since that is the way to improve for next year.

Sports Day

Having known that we would be low on numbers today and having it confirmed by the numbers present, I decided to take the initiative of grouping year 7 and 8 together in order for there to be enough people to participate in the activities. I then asked them which sports they wanted to do so that I could chose which timetable to follow between the year 7 and 8 one which demonstrated me as caring in the sense that I asked what people wanted and gave them what they desired instead of taking an autocratic decision.

Apart from that the day went pretty well in the sense that there were no issues that weren't unresolved as soon as they appeared like the fact that Year 10s wanted to do a sport that they didn't have on the table. The day went smoothly and it was fun for everyone which was my main concern; to provide a service to the people of our school and to help them enjoy themselves.

I made sure to come early to school so that I could set up everything before people went to their activities and so that I could fix any problems that would appear before they would be discovered by the people supposed to do the activities.

I have become a lot more confident and communicative since, when our year group was supposed to do dodge ball and the teachers weren't here, I divided everyone that didn't know which house they were in in the houses that they should be in and I was ready to actually organise the activity myself but the appointed hosts appeared before I got to start the first game off to wait for their arrival.

Any queries people had (teachers) came to me and I was able to answer their questions the best I could which shows how organised I was since I had planned everything out and what is even more amazing is that I was able to organise a school event of this magnitude by myself which shows that, in contrast from the beginning of the year, I have become a lot more responsible and less shy.

If I were to do this kind of event with this level of responsibility, I would try to create a sport which is more original than the ones that I have chosen to give students something they have never done before and to make things more interesting and fun for them. This would be a new challenge for me and would help me be more creative.

Sports Day Plan

Tomorrow there will be a sports day that I put myself forward to organise and I did this with almost no help which is a negative side of the organisation but also the positive side since this has made me a lot more responsible and an individual thinker. Throughout several months I have worked very hard to think of every single possible thing that may go wrong so that I can fix it such as the number of people that may attend. Considering it is the last week of the school year, some people may not be here and I accounted for this by giving sheets to form teachers who would then write down the names of the students that weren't going to be there and the students that I may not have included on this sheet which had the houses each student was in which I tried to divide equally by putting the same amount of both genders in each house.

Tomorrow, there will be a set timetable which shall be followed which is different for each year group and to make sure that they know what they are doing at what time and where, I have printed out sheets to, not only the hosts of the events, but also to teachers that I have given responsibility to to look after year groups so that they get on time to the activities that it is planned they do. I have given each host of a sport sheets where they are told the rules of the sport, scoring system and how the games should be played so that all they have to do is read those instructions and follow them to the letter. After lunch time, there will be a relay that all the school will be involved in and this will take place near the volleyball court. The relay will be for each year but the Year 12s will race the teachers in the last race to give an entertainment factor to these races. 

I am going to set up all that needs setting up tomorrow morning so that everything is in place before the day actually starts and that everything runs with minimum issues. 

Organising this day has made me more communicative since I had to talk to students and teachers for this day to run as smoothly as possible. I was able to organise, by myself, an event of such magnitude and bear the responsibility on my shoulders. I have become a lot more of a risk taker since taking this task head on and a minimum of help was a great challenge for me yet I was able to pull through by working hard non stop.

Hopefully, this day will run according to plan and to make sure of this, not only will I be participating to have some fun, but I will also be going around to check that everything is going according to plan and to help any teacher that is unclear about what they are supposed to do.

Sports Day - Like a boss

It was suggested to me to make a presentation in front of the teachers during the meeting as a question to inform them of the upcoming event which I put myself forward to organise: Sports Day. 

I made sure to be fully prepared for this by creating a presentation to make it easier for people to understand what I would be saying since visual aid is always helpful to make people understand what you are saying. For this presentation I made bullet point notes so that it would be easy to understand and not too boring. I made it explicit what each teacher would be doing and I made sure to emphasis that if teachers didn't know precisely what to do they should come to me to answer questions. I did this my repeating this many times so that I would be sure that this day was going to run smoothly and with minimum misunderstanding. 

I had prepared a script for my presentation but instead of reading it out loud, I ended up ignoring it and just spoke what came to mind from remembering part of what I had written. This helped me be more communicative since I found myself speaking with flow even though I didn't have a script in my hands which goes to show that I have become more confident in speaking and that I am not afraid to be communicative with others. 

Considering the fact that no teacher had any questions after my presentation, I can draw from this that I have ticked all the boxes in making teachers understand what exactly I wanted them to do. Some of them asked me if they could change role or informed me that they weren't here and from this I was fast to react since I allocated other teachers to the role of the teachers that wouldn't be here and I made it possible for teachers to switch to the role they wanted with minimal issues. 

If I were to do a presentation like this again, I would try and have a script so that I don't repeat myself unnecessarily and that I make sure to cover all the points I need to even though I did this in this meeting. This would help me speak more confidently since I would know exactly what to say and wouldn't be pondering on what I should say next.

Week 29- the end

This was the last week for the season contrary to what I thought last week and awards were handed out at the start which included: top scorer, best player, best goalkeeper, most improved player, and a trophy and medals for the team that won the league itself.

I was awarded top scorer, a medal for winning the league and best player which I was honoured to be awarded and thankful since every week I was trying my best and supporting my team and it brings me joy to know that my efforts were appreciated and noticed by the teachers who voted on the people who would be receiving these awards.

One could say that these awards I earned motivated me this week since the first game I played I was able to score a hat trick and score a grand total of over 10 goals so it was a great way to finish the season, however there will  still be friendlies after this week which I will make sure to attend.

My skills have really improved and so has my agility since I was able to outrun and dribble several players and then score which was one of my major strengths this week. My shooting has gotten better since I am now aiming for accuracy rather than power when I can and it has been fruitful for me, however, there are some times where I think that I should be tactful when shooting since I sometimes make it too obvious where I am going to shoot and thus I don't score as many as I could. That is why, during next week's friendlies, I will try to fake shoot so that I trick the goalkeeper and hopefully score more goals.

My team play has improved as well since I have become a lot more communicative and supportive since the beginning of the season considering I am not afraid to voice out what I want team mates to do e.g. give me a through ball, and I try to give advice to younger team mates in ways in which they could improve so that the level of football in our club increases and the competition becomes more intense.

Next week, I will make sure not to relax because it is the end of the season and I got trophies for my efforts, but rather keep my efforts high and keep achieving the level of football I think I should be achieving and push myself to be better in order to be ready for next season.

Link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo2U0nsMTl8&feature=youtu.be

Summer Fair Plan

A friend and I are planning to organise an activity during the summer fair at our school in order to give the money we make from that activity to charity which helps us think about world issues and ethical implications of our actions. We decided to do something based on a club that happens within school and is quite popular: PS 3. We are going to set up our activity in the Biology room since that is where the PS 3 club happens therefore regular players will know where our activity is and there is an easy access to it from outside next to where some stands will be therefore it increases the changes of people coming to participate in our activity.

We decided to always have at least 4 players playing since that would maximise revenue considering that is the maximum amount of players which can play. We decided to set a price of 50 roubles per participant for a 10 minute game since that seemed to be a reasonable price and it more suitable for change if anyone needs it. 

We made sure to print out posters in order to make people aware of our activity so that a maximum amount of people can come and that would increase the potential revenue we would earn and therefore we would be donating more to charity. 

We will make sure to set up the activity 2 hours before the actual summer fair so that if there are any technical issues, we have the time to fix it so that our activity will run as smoothly as possible. We made sure to use a game that would convene to all ages which made us think about ethical issues since parents might not approve of having their child play games which aren't recommended for their age. 

Creativity Day

Today was creativity day and I took part in the activity "Enterprise" which involved creating a product which we would then sell during the summer fair the next day. We put ourselves into groups of four and my group decided to produce a lottery which involved people buying tickets for 50 roubles each and having the opportunity to win a prize. To make this lottery more attractive to people, we created 3 prizes so that there would be multiple winners and there would be a higher chance of each individual winning compared to if there was only one prize. We decided to have the same prizes in order to same time since we would produce it all at once, however, a variety of prizes could have been won to add variety to our lottery.

We had everything planned out which is why we ended up having a lot of free time which we used to conduct market research and estimate how much money we could raise from this product so that we knew how much to produce and if we should lower the price or not if not enough people wanted to participate. This market research paid off since we were able to gather useful information including that some people found the prize mediocre and others just didn't want to use money for this product. Nevertheless, our research shows that there was a sufficient demand for this product to give us a significant amount of revenue which would then be donated to charity.

Ways in which we could have improved our procedures to produce the product is that we could have been more efficient in the sense that we didn't have a team leader in order for us to feel like equals, however this led to people not being assigned proper roles which was inefficient in the sense that some of us weren't doing anything productive sometimes when we could have been contributing to the launch of the product.

Today taught me to be more communicative and inquisitive since I joined a pre-formed group and therefore I asked them what exactly they had planned and what we were going to do so that I could help them in the making and launching of the product. 

Week 28 - the end?

I am not definite that this was the last competitive week, but if it was I don't think I ended it with a high note even though I was able to score 5 goals during one game and was able to achieve my target of a minimum of 10 goals. The reason for my disappointment in this week was because of our team's overall performance. We didn't come out as victors this week predominately because a lack of incentive to actual defend. I was one of the few that was actually defending which is why I was discontent about this week. I was unable or rather it wouldn't have been practical for the success of our team if I played my usual position as an offensive player.

Nevertheless, my skills have visibly improved today since I tried to take on players but I think I could have been more confident on the ball and run up with it more often since that would have helped me score more goals and have more chances at goal. The chances I did get on goal, however, were successful since I think that my accuracy was overall pretty satisfactory though sometimes I still try to go for power rather than accuracy which works most of the time but sometimes it ends up disappointing me. This is why I think I should practice before the matches in shooting the ball into the corners like I did this week in order for my precision to increase and hopefully I will be able to score more goals.

This week, my role as a team player was beneficial to the team since I was able to have more assists than goals and taking in mind that I was able to score over 10 goals demonstrates my role as a key player. My passing was more accurate than last week, however, I still think it could do with more practice and focus since it happens that I give away possession with some of my passes, however, I make up for this with my interceptions which I am able to do as a result of my ability of reading plays well.

Next week, even though it may not be competitive, I will play a more offensive role even though our team may be reluctant to defend since that will create an incentive for them to defend, however, I will not forget my role of also defending and marking players so that our team can get more clean sheets next week compared to this week. I will try to aim for accuracy rather than power in my shots in order to score one-on-one situations with the goal keeper and I will try to be more confident with the ball by taking on more players and trying out new moves.

Link to the video:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Oj9w41v4Gw&feature=youtu.be

Week 27

This week was the week before the end of the season and our team marked it with another great performance and we have already won the league because of our large lead in the total score table, however, this doesn't mean that we should just relax as we have shown this week. We didn't start off too well since our collaboration was rather poor but after 2 or 3 games we finally started to move the ball a lot more and help each other by moving around into space and communicating very well which led to a victory of 9-0 against the red team during one of our encounters.

On a personal level, I was able to achieve my target of assistances, a hat trick, and over 10 goals since I was able to score a total of 11 goals which secures my position as top scorer of the season which I am very proud of since it shows a great improvement in my confidence and abilities compared to last season where I wasn't able to score half the goals I did this season. I will make sure to prepare myself throughout the break from the season until we return so that I will be able to score over 300 goals next season and once again be top scorer since that will be the last year I will be able to play in the league.

My dribbling has also improved since after a while I got more confident with the ball and tried out some skills such as 360s which turned out very well and got me several changes at goal. However, there were some moments where I had problems controlling the ball fast enough which led me to waste time and get closed down by the opposing team which then restricted my ability to play the ball. I will try to focus more on my control of the ball next week since my over confidence in my ball control makes me sometimes lose focus and thus I sometimes don't have the most accurate of touches.

My contribution to our team has improved considering that I'm playing my part as a defender and an attacker rather well since I often run back to defend and then run forward with the ball and, if we lose it, run back again. However, this could be improved by increasing my stamina since I feel out of breathe sometimes which limited my potential so I think I will put more time into the elliptical machine in order to fix this so that next week I am in top form to close off the season with an amazing performance.

Link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAVE71xYctk

Another interview, this time filmed

This week I was once again asked to take part in an interview and talk about the school in order to help people form a sort of advert for the school. Considering that the other people around me were reluctant to help these people, I decided to step up and give a service to our school.

I was asked some questions but expected to talk in depth for every question and this pushed me towards being more open and talkative which made me more confident when I spoke. I tried not to think about the fact I was being filmed, but rather thought of it as the interview I had last week. I took more pauses in order to think about what I was going to say so that I would be sure that what I was going to say not only made sense but also answered their question to their satisfaction. This activity made me think of possible ethical issues since I tried to emphasis the fact that this school was very international and has open arms for people from any nationality.

I spotted, however, a few things on which I could improve on. I sometimes felt like I was repeating myself when I didn't know what to say since I felt pushed to continue talking so I think that next time such a thing happens I should either take a pause to think or take a pause and expect the interviewers to ask me another question.

Week 26

Due to a lack of numbers and experience of our players (most of my team consisted of Year 9s) we didn't do so well this week however I think we were still able to achieve a high position this week with a lot of points considering our offensive plays were very effective. On a defensive side, however, our team didn't do so well because of our reluctance to come back and defend which was valid for my case as well but since I suffered from a knee injury at the beginning I wasn't able to play to my full potential which is why I was only able to score 8 goals this week. Nevertheless I think my dribbling was good even though sometimes I took it too far which cost our team the ball.

My passing was acceptable, however, I still think it needs improving since when I have the ball and there seems to be no available pass, I try to make one which I know will be intercepted so I think that next week I will try to move more with the ball when looking for a pass so that my team mates start to move around or I create enough space for myself to move forward with the ball.

Coming back to my dribbling, I think that it was very good since I tried out new things which had a good effect however I think that sometimes I was a bit too shy with the ball, for example, when I dribbled Mr English and was about the dribble the next player, I decided to leave the ball to a team mate which was in my running line and that ended up costing us the possession of the ball so next week I will try to be more confident when dribbling but not too confident that I keep the ball too much and congest our team's play.

My shooting accuracy needs some practice as well since I am finding it hard to hit the ball into the corners most of the time and I often rely on the power behind my shots rather than the potential of accuracy. So next week, in order to fix this, I will warm up by trying to shoot into the corners rather than aim anywhere as long as I have power.

Considering our team mostly consisted of younger players, this gave me the opportunity to be more communicative since I had to set myself as an example to my other team mates and provide them with help because of their inexperience. I took advantage of this by telling them what they could do with the ball e.g. "pass it back" or "in the centre" or "well-played". I think that this kind of support helped them a lot since you could see that they were starting to feel more comfortable in playing and this ultimately helped our team score the amount of goals we did.

Link to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfP4bYpKvNA

Interview for a shy person ...

During our last CAS session, I was one of few to be selected to tell some people about our IB program and enlighten them on was CAS and TOK was. This was a very good experience for me considering I need to be more outgoing and communicative with people and so I didn't waste this opportunity. We talked in turns and I was going to be the last one to be asked to introduce myself and say what I think but when they asked an open question which anyone could answer I decided to take the task in answering their question. I made sure to try to explain as well as possible, however, I think I shouldn't have talked so fast since it didn't give me much time to think before talking so I was unsure of how valid what I was saying was and how well my audience would comprehend what I was saying so next time such an opportunity comes at hand I will make sure to slow down and give myself time to not only breathe but also think of the structure of what I am going to say and its content as well.

Week 25

After a two week break of playing football Thursday after school, our team started this resumption of the season with the most points and me becoming the new stop scorer after passing Stefan who hasn't been playing for about a month now because of exams nevertheless I shouldn't take credit away from myself since I have over 200 goals next to my name which is more than I could have predicted.

Today I was able to score 13 goals and at least a hat trick during a game and maybe two. The reason for this success was because of my positioning which has improved since last time since I always tried to move into space both when I had the ball and when I didn't. I made sure to communicate well with my team so that they were aware that I was open and they could pass the ball to me. This is something I should keep on trying to improve so that it is hard for the other team to stop me from getting the ball since I am constantly changing position. However, I think that my stamina has gone down since last time I played so I will make sure to use the elliptical machine more often and keep swimming on Saturdays so that I could put more energy into my game.

On a dribbling side of things, I think I did well when it came to control and agility however I don't think that this week I pushed myself to try new things or dribble too much which I think is a shame since it is one of the areas I am very good at so I will make sure that next week I try out new things or at least use more old tricks so that I can practice using them during a game.

My passing could have been better at times since I sometimes gave away the ball with a bad pass so next week I will warm up before the matches start by passing the ball against a wall so that my accuracy increases and our team doesn't lose the ball because of a careless pass I did. Nevertheless I was able to assist my team mates several times especially Mr Bruce.

Overall, I think that I did well especially when it came to simple ball control, agility and movement into space which I will try to reproduce next week so that I keep up this high goal scoring and try to reach over 300 goals by the end of the season which is now my target along with scoring 10 goals and a hat trick weekly.

Link to video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxYDwZuEnzk&feature=youtu.be

Holiday CAS

During these holidays I decided to stay active and do some CAS work which I shall divide into different sections to show that I haven't isolated any of the criterion of CAS.

Creativity and Service

I decided to do some more work on the organisation of Sports Day even though it is in about 2 months time. I created several pages of notes on the different activities and what will be needed, what are the rules, who should supervise it and so on. I made some adjustments to the previous plan I had since after going through it I noticed some problems which may arise which has made me a more thoughtful person since I wanted everyone to have fun and I could see that with this issue not everyone would. I decided to dismiss the idea of having a teachers against Year 12 group, however, there will be a relay like this. As a result of the large numbers in Year 12, I decided to make them in one group and divide them in 4 teams so that everyone has something to do during that day since the initial idea was to divide Year 12s into organisers and participants however there was no point in having organisers since there were enough teachers to do this and it wouldn't be efficient to have so many people organising. I assigned teachers to do certain roles such as looking after year groups to make sure they make their way to the right activity and so on and made sure to make notes on what I would need to give them so that the teachers also know what they are doing. I will need to have a meeting with teachers or something of the sort to make sure that they are alright with doing the tasks I assigned them.

I also had the idea of having some people in Year 12 doing photography ( max. 3 ) so that we could sell photo albums at a profit to students and that money would go to charity however I would need to create a questionnaire that I would give out to students the next school year to see if they would buy this album so that I know it will be worthwhile. 

Action

I went swimming 4 times during the holidays as a way to work out and relax at the same time. I have found this to be very productive since I feel like my stamina in swimming has increased since the first time I went, however, I need to improve my speed over a short distance since there has been no real improvement in the 25m crawl that I did in 16/17 seconds before. In order to change this, I will try to go twice a week and if not at least once a week in order to try to get that number up to 15 at the end of the month. 

Week 24 and elliptical machine

This week our team got out on top once again even though our defence wasn't as strong as our offence which led to us conceiving more goals than we should have. I think I should have been more communicative about this so that I would get help when I was in defence since most of the time some of the opponent's were left unmarked yet I didn't say anything.

On a personal level, my dribbling was very good this week though my positioning could have been better at times since I sometimes stood still or hardly moved when there were spaced I could have run into to receive the ball. However, I was still able to score 13 goals including a hat trick. This was because of my dribbling and passing and moving ability which I used very well since my acceleration is one of my strong points. I think that at times I should have passed instead of having a shot since I didn't always take the easy option when I was playing. I sometimes dribbled too much which led to me losing the ball so next week I will make sure to look around before I do something so that I am fully aware of my surroundings.

Next week I will try to play a more offensive role since I think that even though I scored several goals, I could have scored more if I had played a more attacking role instead of staying in defence a lot nevertheless this role I played this week helped improve my marking and tackling. I will also try to keep my determination high since this week I kept putting pressure on the other team which led to them losing the ball several times. To do this I will need to improve my stamina so that I can keep the pressure going. This is why I devised the plan for the elliptical machine.

Ever since this month, and carrying on into next month, I have increased the time of the free run on the elliptical machine to 10 minutes and the challenge to 15 minutes which has proven useful since I feel more challenged than before and I feel more resistant during Thursday football. I mostly run at a consistent rate though sometimes there are big changes in my running which I need to fix.

Link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFkwWH2743E&feature=youtu.be

Week 23

This week our team was able to win a total of 26 points without losing a single game.The cause of our success was primarily due to the fact we passed the ball around very well and kept on moving around the pitch so it made it hard for our opponents to adjust to our constantly changing positions.

On a personal level, I was able to score a total of 11 goals which I was proud of and I was able to assist several of my team mates to score. However, I was unable to score a hat trick in a game which may have been because of the fact that I sometimes hesitated to dribble and instead passed it which wasn't a bad thing since I was being a team player, however, sometimes I should have dribbled instead to create a chance for myself.

My dribbling was excellent this week since I tried out new skills which I was able to do with a good level of accuracy and they very often paid of with a goal. This is an area I think I shall even further improve since I have the agility necessary to move with the ball quickly and change direction unpredictably which I did several times in the game and which very often lead to a goal. I think that even though sometimes I hesitated to dribble, my skills on the ball have improved a lot since I have become more confident in dribbling with the ball and I think that my level of dribbling has also increased as a result of this since I can see that my accuracy of dribbling has dramatically increased since I feel a smoothness in the way I play.

My passing was very accurate and I made sure to move into space when I passed the ball or at least wait for an opportunity to move into a good position so that I would receive the ball back and possibly have a chance on goal. I think that I should try to be more confident in passing since I sometimes hesitate with this too which wastes time and gives an opportunity for the opponents to close down on me and minimise the chances at goal.

Next week, I will try to be more confident in my passing and dribbling so that I do not restrict myself when playing. I will also try to use new tricks in order to test my skills. I will make sure to achieve my target of 10 goals and at least a hat trick and I will try to be more active in my positioning since at times I didn't move into spaces which were open for me to run into.

Link to video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nze9URDlBro&feature=youtu.be

Academic Honesty

We were asked to produce a video on academic honesty which may be entered in an IB competition. We were given a guide to do so which our group, unfortunately, lost therefore there were some rules we didn't follow e.g. abusive language and violence. However, those were only small part of the video so we didn't break the guide lines to a large extent. I think that if we were to do this next time, we should ask for a copy of the guide so that we know exactly what is acceptable and what isn't so that we don't have to correct mistakes.

My involvement in this task was quite important and this task that was given to us has helped me to be a much better communicator since I always put forward my ideas and also considered the ones of others and respected it. I made sure to think about the ethical implication of possible actions, for example, by not creating any stereotypical and possibly racist scenes. I think that my editing skills have improved since this task has helped me to be a lot more creative since I thought of effects I could put in the movie and what would be visually attractive to our potential audience and what would be entertaining. This proved to be successful since we had a good response from our audience today. The song selection, sounds and the transition between them was very well used since it ran together quite smoothly, however, the fading of the music could have been done better.

Areas that could be improve is the acting itself since even though it was good at places, there were some places which could use some improvement e.g. sometimes I was smiling when I wasn't supposed to and sometimes the person filming was laughing. When this occurs, we should retake the video until we get it right instead of just relying on editing to "do the magic". I think that the video could have been shorter since there were some unnecessary parts shown, in my opinion and it kind of lost the attention of some people. The voice of the characters wasn't always heard which was an issue since it limited people's understanding of what was going on so next time we should make sure to play back the video when we have filmed it to make sure the quality has minimum faults. Also, we should make sure to film the videos the right way around since we ended up having videos we couldn't use since they were taken at the wrong angle.

Next time we are to do this, we should use a software we know we can use since it took us some time to decide on one that would be easy to use and high quality.

This is a link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78TbsFmRPV8&feature=youtu.be

Football Match: Teachers vs. Students

The youth of the students defeated the experience of the teachers 11-6 this lunch time.

I decided to organise this event since the year 13s were soon going to leave to prepare for the exams and the school wouldn't be able to see them play anymore. I made sure that I informed the people that would be involved of this event so that they would turn up today at 1.30 in the gym for this event. I selected a referee who did his job very well during the game. I made sure to inform him of what the rules were and the duration of the halves so that the game would run as smoothly as possible. I made posters which I put around the school and in people's register, however, I think I could have improved in doing so since I decided to do this the day of the event so I wasn't sure that everyone would know about it and that is why I took the initiative of going around every form group informing them personally of this event so that there would be a maximum turnout. This proved to be very effective since the support we had during the game was fantastic. The atmosphere there was, in my view, was very motivational which is one of the reasons I scored 9 out of the 11 goals our team scored.

I think that I was well-organised since I made sure to check if everyone that was selected to play would come and if not I had a suitable substitute. This proved to be needed since neither Stefan or Mark came but luckily I had a reserve goalkeeper I had warned in the morning and Daniel which would replace Stefan. However, there was a unforeseen problem. Andy had to leave because of some exams and I think I should have been more informed since we ended up playing a 4 aside game rather than a 5 aside which proved to be very tiring since we had no substitutes. So next time I will make sure I have some so that our team doesn't get so tired and our performance will be at a higher level.

On a personal level, I think I played well since my positioning was good though at times when I felt tired I didn't position myself in a helpful way. My dribbling was excellent since I was able to score several goals after dribbling some opponents and I only messed up a dribble once. To prevent this from happening I think I should be more aware of my surroundings so that I don't do any unnecessary dribbling and that I know that if I do dribble one player, there won't be a second one close by to take the ball from me. My passing was very accurate though at times I felt it was somewhat sloppy even though it reached its intended target.

Today's game also showed me at what level my fitness was since I found myself very tired during these 15 minute halves so I will try to use the elliptical machine more often to increase my stamina so that when an event such as this one happens again, I will be able to endure more.

I shall use this analysis to improve for tomorrow's games so that I can be as effective as possible as a player and that I don't reproduce the same mistakes as I did today. 

Week 22

This week, our team had to do with no teachers nevertheless we were able to finish top this week as well. This was achievable with the amount of passing and communicating in our team. I made sure, as team captain, to talk a lot to my team mates by, for example, showing them where they could pass to make our team keep possession. This week has really helped me to become a better communicator. Our defence plays however weren't as good since most of the time we were too focused on offensive plays which is one of the factors that contributed to us conceding several goals. I did my best to contribute to our defence since most of the time I was the one staying back to defend and I did well in doing so but a one-man defence can't do much. Next week, I will try to be even more communicative and tell people to come back to support me in defence so that we don't concede as many goals and help our goalkeeper get clean sheets.

On a personal level, I have become more confident in dribbling since I wasn't afraid to dribble up with the ball when I couldn't see any easy pass which payed off several times with a chance at goal, an assist or even a goal. I think that to improve this I will try to vary my dribbling since so far I have been repeating the sames one and even though they have been effective, my play will soon become too predictable.

I was able to score 9-10 goals this week, however, I wasn't able to score a hat trick due to the fact I had to stay in defence since I couldn't rely on most of my team mates to defend considering we had a rookie on our team this week.

Next week, I will try new skills to improve my touch and try to move into space more since this week I didn't do as much movement which may be a factor that resulted in me not achieving my target. I will try to play more offensive so that I don't restrict myself in defence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqbgiT6WiXc&feature=youtu.be

Week 21

This week I was able to reach my target once again of 10 goals including a hat trick. The reason for this success was my positioning since I tried to find space where my team mates could pass to me and I could then easily shoot and score. My dribbling and tackling were very good this week since I didn't dribble too much but the times I did I never lost the ball since I knew when the right time would be to dribble and when to pass. My passing was more accurate than last weeks since I made sure to not only have accuracy but also power in my passing so that it would reach its intended recipient without someone intercepting it. I also did my part in defence since I ran back to defend when my team needed me to and as mentioned previously my tackling was very good but there is still room for improvement since I found myself not putting all my spirit into my tackles one or two times which let the opposition a chance at goal.

Our team did well as a whole since we dribbled less than last week and focused on passing and moving which gave little time for the opponent's to readjust to our constant changing positions which is why we were able to score so many goals this week including a 7-1 victory of the green team. Our team spirit was very high this week since we defended and attacked as a team so our defensive and offensive play was very powerful.

Next week, I will try to be even more active in my positioning to score more goals and try not to be so far forward on the pitch since it makes it hard for my team mates to pass to me and it is sometimes harder for me to score that way. I will keep my passing as frequent as it is now but try to dribble a bit more since that is one of my significant strengths.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov7HcVToTIc&feature=youtu.be

Crazy Hair Day

Unfortunately, because of the weather, several people I had asked to go to different class rooms to collect money from students were late however I took the initiative to collect most of the money myself since I found myself with enough time to do so. I also asked people to replace some of the people who would be late in case I wouldn't have the time to personally go around every class. We were able to collect about 10 000 roubles however I still have to collect money from one form group since I didn't know there was one in the Music room. However, this is good since it showed me that I should have asked exactly where everyone form group is so that I waste a minimal amount of time.

I think that today went well since I didn't have any issues organising this event and people seemed to have a positive response to this day even though not everyone came with crazy hair, nevertheless, I was able to select winners for several prizes with the help of other people. I decided to give out more prizes than anticipated considering that people were very creative. I will hand out these prizes to people tomorrow morning along with collecting the money from this final form group. I think that I did well to make my own hair crazier than usual since that was used to set an example considering I am the organiser of this event. 

I think that if I was to do this again I could have been more prepared for prizes since I only got them today however in this context it was a good thing since I ended up selecting more winners than anticipated. The day I selected to host this event was good since I had more time to collect the money and students had a positive response to being able to wear no school uniform on the first day back from their weekend. 

If I were to do this again I would want to install an activity during lunchtime which would involve people paying money to get their hair sprayed or styled however they want since that would involve more people in the idea of this day and it would raise more money for charity. 

Overall, today went really well and I would gladly organise it again soon. 

 

Crazy Hair Day Plan

Tomorrow, crazy hair day will happen. I have alerted parents about this event by creating a letter which was going to be sent out to them via their children. This was something new for me since I had never created a letter with this purpose before and I think the outcome was good since Mr Gray didn't change much in my draft copy I printed out for him. This was possible since I made sure to keep in formal yet not too complex considering parents may not have English as their first language.

I also made sure to create a poster so that students and staff could be reminded of this day when they walked through school so that a maximum amount of people would participate in this event. I made sure that all the information someone would need would be on the poster so that confusion is minimised, however, I also assured that the poster was visually pleasing in order for people to have a more positive attitude towards this event compared to if the advertisement for this day was boring.

In the morning, people I have selected and informed will go to certain form rooms to collect the money for this event and then I will assemble this money which I will then store so that I make a deposit to the charity I have selected to fund i.e. Russian Life Line. As well as this they have been instructed to write down the names of two students with the best hair style which shall also be given to me. During lunch time, a group of people which I have chosen will gather together to determine who the winners are for the following prizes: most original, tallest and craziest. The next day, I will distribute prizes to the winners during registration. 

Week 20

This week our team did very well collectively and I did well personally since I was able to score a total of 11 goals which included 2 hat-tricks and I assisted several people in scoring. Our team did very well to pass the ball around which we had previously failed to do which was one of the reasons for our small collection of points over the last couple of weeks, however, this week we showed dominance by having most of possession during games and scoring the most goals and points.

I made sure to play both an offensive and defensive role so that our team goal score a maximum and concede a minimum. My tackling has improved since I don't "dive" into one, instead I make sure to just be in the opponents way and stop him from taking a shot or passing it which has proven very successful since I stop the attackers' play by slowing them down which enables my team mates to come back and defend, and I was able to intercept balls very often or put enough pressure for the opponent to misplace a pass and lose possession.

I think that I should try to dribble more next week since I limited my dribbling skills today however instead of doing this I passed the ball very often so that I could move into another position which I did successfully as well since my team mates were able to pass the ball back to me behind the opponent's defence. I should also try to focus a bit more on my passing since it was still a bit sloppy and for this to happen, during warm-ups I will practice shooting less and focusing on my passing more so that I train myself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jMHdz-wsLE&feature=youtu.be

Burn dat calory

As a follow up from yesterday, I found myself doing the calory burn as a way to take a break from revision and keep fit. I found myself able to increase the difficulty even during calory burn, cardio and competition so I decided to try to do it in today's session to get more out of it. I was able to stay above 6 km/h throughout the course which is going to be utter minimum for everything I do on the elliptical machine from now on so that I put in the maximum effort. I ran a total of over 1 km through the calory burn exercise which is what my target was. Since I find 10 minutes too short now, I think that in the next session I will run for 15 minutes as well as the 5 minute free run which I was able to complete with an average speed of over 7 km/h and a final 30 second sprint with over 8 km/h. 

The Challenge

Some of you might remember my reference connecting to the elliptical machine that the next time I was going to use it I would try the competition option. Today, I decided to do this to set myself a bar of some sort.

However, before doing this I followed my normal routine of having a 5 minute free run on a level 2 difficulty for which I was able to keep my target of staying over 7 km/h. I think that I have improved my ability to maintain a stable speed whilst doing so but I still have some work on that front so maybe, the next time I do this, I will focus more on the accuracy of my speed rather than its magnitude. To give myself an additional challenge, I have decided to give myself the aim of staying over 8 km/h during the last 30 seconds after showing myself the ability to do such a task today.

Focusing on the competition style course, I found it more challenging than the other exercises so I have come up with a new plan for this activity as a mean of adaptation. I will try to exercise with this machinery 3 times a week with no fixed dates to avoid stress. Theses 3 days will still have the 5 minute free run, however, I will do one of each of these: cardio, calory burn, and competition as a final thing. I think that this will give me more variety which will hopefully push me more since I have to adapt to this change.

Regarding the actual competition course, I think that I did very well to keep a steady rate which I adjusted quickly to at every change of difficulty. I ran a total of over 1 km in 10 mins which is very good considering the course really did test your strength because of the sharp changes in difficulty. To give you an image of the course, it was two half triangles one after the other.

Next time I do this course, I will try to repeat what I did today since I think I was very successful in keeping a steady speed which ultimately helped me to actually finish this activity.

Week 19

This week there was a significant improvement in my performance and the one of my team's which I was made captain of this week as a result of an absence of staff on our team. Being allocated this position, I made sure to communicate well with my team which I normally don't do as much as I did this week so that is a sign of improvement on that front.

My passing was more accurate this week though I think that I was trying to do lobbed passes a bit too often which were successful most of the time but we lost the ball unnecessarily several times as a result of a misjudged lobbed pass. Next week, I'll try to keep most of my passes on the ground since they have a better chance of being successful and it is a faster way to move the ball than through lobs.

My dribbling was very good today, I didn't try to do too much nor too little so I think I will keep this performance level next week. To do so I have to make sure to always look for a pass before trying to dribble since passing the ball is a better way to get in front of goal and keeping the ball to yourself and dribbling all the time doesn't exactly insinuate a team spirit.

I scored several goals, though I am not certain of the exact quantity, I think I may have achieved my targets which not only include scoring at least 10 goals but also a hat trick which I think I was able to do. The reason for my success was my movement and positioning since I always tried to move into free space to create an opportunity for myself.

I played my role as a defender very well since I was mostly defending throughout the games to ensure that we wouldn't concede as many goals as we did last week. I ran back to defend most of the time, however, an area to improve would be my tackling since I think that it could do with a faster reaction time so I think that I will try to keep my defensive role next week to try to improve on that level, however, I will still play offensively to make sure that I keep scoring goals.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5mlEVJM4-U&feature=youtu.be

Holiday Workout

Today, I increased the level from one to two during the free run and still managed to stay over 7km/h thus I think I will resume this until I feel I can improve the level to three.

I decided to do cardio this week and chose a different course than last time I did cardio so that I try a bit of everything the machine has to offer. I did this for a total amount of 10 minutes and achieved a distance over 1km which isn't bad. I will try to always reach a total over 1 km for each exercise I do except the 5 minute workout since that is unrealistic.

Next time I will use the elliptical machine again I will try to use the option of competition which creates a simulation of a competitive course. This will serve to analyse my endurance in a real life race. 

Week 18

After a peak performance last week, this week was bound to be not as good. We had to let Mr Bruce, a key player in our team, go into another team because of a lack of member of staff attending. Our team only got a few points and I was unable to achieve my target because our team was being dominated. Our organisation and passing was poor which is what, ultimately, led to our failure this week. However, our dribbling and movement into space wasn't too bad but since our passes weren't very accurate and neither was our shooting, our positioning was pointless and scoring was very difficult.

On a personal level, I think that my passing was sloppy most of the time and I wasn't the player I normally am since I didn't think through things before doing them e.g. sometimes I just took a shot even though my team mates might have been in a better position. My shooting wasn't as accurate as it could have been but it wasn't that bad, however, next week I will try to focus more on accuracy rather than power unlike what I did this week which is one of the factors that made it hard for me to score. Furthermore, my determination was unacceptable in my opinion since I don't feel like I tried my hardest which is what caused my passing to be sloppy, my shooting to be mostly inaccurate and my positioning to not be very helpful to our team.

However, on a brighter side, the fact that our team was conceding too many goals motivated me to play more of a defensive role letting my team mates play the role of an attacker that I usually play. Regarding my defence, I think I did pretty well since I moved the ball up several times by intercepting passes and dribbling forward which helped our team get chances at goal.

Next week, I think I will start off playing a defensive role since that is what got my motivation back up this week and hopefully it will help me try harder and put 110% every match. I will focus more on my passing and positioning so that my team are able to score goals and win back the points we lost this week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qa0m3_y6zWk 

Crazy Hair Day

For part of service and creativity, I decided to come up with an idea on how to raise money for charity by making the 25th of March (yet to be confirmed) a crazy hair day. All kids can choose to wear non-school uniform on this day if they pay 100 roubles each which will be donated to a charity which has yet to be confirmed. 

The aim of this day would be for students to, not only come to school with no uniform, but also to do something crazy with their hair. Students with the best hair style from each group will be selected and by the end of the day, we will have picked certain winners for certain awards.

In order for this to occur, I would have to send out letters to form groups so that students can take it home and let their parents be informed. During the morning, me and other people will go around form groups collecting the money for this school day and also selecting a person with the best hair style to represent their year group. 

We will have different awards e.g. tallest hair style, most original etc. these decisions will be made by a group of about 5 people which I will select. Prizes are to be determined and will not be paid for out of the money raised.

Drama Queen

During today's CAS lesson, we were divided into groups and given the task to recreate a sheet with information on it from memory since the sheet was at one side of the gym and the scribe at the opposite side. This activity was going to help develop our creativity and communication skills, however, I don't think I took advantage of this opportunity to develop those skills since I didn't communicate enough in my opinion. I think our idea to each remember a bullet point on the sheet (there were 7 in total) was a good idea, however, when it came to telling the one scribe everything turned into a mess because of information overload so we could have planned what was going to happen in more depth e.g. we do one bullet point at a time and each memories a couple of words to recreate the sentence.

Another activity which involved creativity that I was involved in was drama. We were supposed to create a 2 minute drama speech about what we had learnt about the extended essay. Considering that the last exercise I didn't communicate a lot you can imagine that the same thing happened for this activity as well. I think that our group did well to come up with ideas and then pick one and practice on. We did well to improvise during the real thing since there wasn't much time allocated to us. I think that even though I wasn't given a large dialogue, I did well to try to act casually, imitating a class room atmosphere.

The next time we do such an activity, I will be sure to be more communicative so that my ideas are heard and that I can maximise my contribution.

The Motivation Is There

For the third day in a row, I have decided to use the elliptical machine to keep fit. As I mentioned on my last post regarding this subject, I said I would upgrade the time of calory/cardio by 5 minutes in the several days to come. I have decided to do this at the end of the month so that during this month I get used to a regular time frame which is beneficial for me if I want to improve, I have to master one time frame before moving onto the next one.

Today, I managed to stay above the 7 km/h frame during the free run on the standard difficulty. I think that I started of too quickly which I then felt after a while since I was more worn out than I should have been, nevertheless I was then able to maintain a constant speed I was comfortable at. However, since I see this as too easy I have decided to increase the level of difficulty by one and keep the same time duration and minimum speed. This will help me develop more physical stamina for the proceeding workout which was calory burn this time around.

I did this for 10 minutes and decided to change from last time's course to another one so I can test myself with different challenges. I managed well on this one since I was able to endure the course with a certain ease however my speed was quite variable even during the same difficulty parts of the course which I think I can improve to be more accurate since I would be preserving myself some energy by doing so.

Next time I do this (hopefully tomorrow), I will be doing cardio for 10 minutes varying from the course I did on Sunday and a 5 minute free run before that which I will do for 5 minutes on a level 2 difficulty.

Another Day, Another Workout

As I had mentioned yesterday regarding the elliptical machine and me doing it today, I decided to fill that opportunity with action.

Considering yesterday I did calory burn, today I did cardio for 10 minutes but before that I did a 5 minute free run in order to warm up a little. I tried to stay above 7.0 km/h during the free run since that is where I should be at and it is good motivation to set yourself a bar (it isn't  possible for me to set myself an aim during cardio or calory burn since the difficulty of moving varies however I do try to stay at a constant speed during different difficulties).

As an observation from today's session I think that I will push the time duration by 5 minutes i.e. for 15 mintues since I didn't feel to challenged nor tired today thus I think that doing this for more time may push me a bit more and after maybe a month of practice I will push the time boundary even further accordingly.

I think that today I did well to keep a steady pace in order to preserve energy better though near the end I decide to go faster simulating a race where participants sprint during the last couple of metres (in my case seconds/minute).

Next time I do this, I will be doing calory burning for 15 minutes once having done a 5 minute free run where I will try to stay above 7 km/h.

Change a swim for a run

As a result of being unable to go swimming today, I decided to not leave this day with a lack of productivity CAS wise thus, considering I have an elliptical machine at home, I decided to do some exercise.

Considering that I quite enjoyed doing it and that it was a good way to fulfill the action part of CAS, I am going to do this at least an hour every week. My plan is to do 20 minutes of cardio, 20 minutes of calory burn and 20 of free running where I will see how fast I can go on average which will hopefully help me see if there is an improvement in my average speed. By doing all this, I hope to improve my stamina and fitness which may help me when I play football on Thursdays.

Today, I tried to aquate myself with this piece of technology so that I would know how to properly use it for future sessions. I did 15 minutes of calory burn which was quite challenging since I had never operated such a machine nor tried it before. I also did some free running for which I did for about 10 minutes before stopping as a result of a distraction. I feel like this sort of exercise doesn't just train my fitness but also my mind since whilst I was doing it, I kept on pushing myself to continue even though I felt like I couldn't carry on so I am hoping that through this sort of exercise I become psychologically stronger.

The next time I will do this (most likely tomorrow) I will start with a free run for about 5 minutes which will just help my muscles get ready for the real work out. Then I will either do cardio or calory burning (whichever one I don't pick I will do the next time) which I will do for 15 minutes. I will then end my work out with a 5 minute free run to cool down my muscles.

Week 17

This week, I think I did very well considering I scored 2 hat-tricks and over 10 goals which fulfill the aim I set myself and it pays off for week 16 where I didn't. I think the reason for my success in scoring goals is that I was more active in positioning myself and my dribbling was very smooth which let me get past defenders with reasonable ease and bury my shots in the back of the net. I wasn't hesitant in taking shots at goal when I could see the chance, however I wasn't selfish since I passed the ball very often even though I could have had a shot. I made sure that once I had passed the ball I would move into space or communicate things that they could do e.g. I told Mr Harper to have a shot which resulted in him scoring and, later on, us winning the game. I also assisted several goals as a result of my passing the ball effectively both at short and long ranges.

In order to keep this going, next week, I will try to repeat the same routine and keep passing the ball and moving afterwards to find space so that I can get the ball back and maybe take a shot. However, I think I should try to defend more often since, even though I did come back to defend from time to time, I think I should do it more often to let others have a chance to attack.

Compared to last week, I think my determination and communication have gotten a lot better and my role as a team mate has become better as well in the sense that I make sure to always encourage others which is motivating and helps our team win games.

Moving away from a personal analyse, our team got the most points this week after winning all our games except one that we lost. Our success was primarily due to passing the ball around very well and this was largely because everyone on our team didn't always try to dribble and this influenced us all psychologically.

For our success as a team to endure, this will have to resume so that we don't play selfishly and lose the ball stupidly. Moving the ball around quickly is the key since it makes it harder for the opposition to adjust to the movement of the ball and the ball travels more quickly with passes so we will get more chances at goal and keep winning games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rlipyPsxDQ&feature=youtu.be

Jordan

During the February break, I went to visit Jordan but that wasn't going to stop me from doing CAS work. I made sure that, when we were going to spend a night in the desert, we would dune board since that is something I would like to experience considering I am good at snowboarding yet I have never got the challenge of doing such a thing on sand. To my surprise it was very difficult since you didn't get the speed you get on snow and it was harder to maintain an upright position but I tried my best and I ended up not being too bad even though I did several mistakes which I later tried to correct with success.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-xlRtvrGA8&feature=youtu.be

I think if I were to dune board again I would try to focus on my position more since that is one of the factors which led me to disequilibrium and thus falling. For this to happen I will make sure that, if the snow stays a bit longer in Moscow, I buy a snowboard and start practicing since it has been a while since I haven't snowboarded even though I love the sport and I am really good at it.

Stepping away from dune boarding, I decided to create a video of my days in Jordan for fun and also to give me more practice and develop my creativity in video editing. I tried to be as creative as possible by making the pictures go by with the rhythm of the music and it ended up looking pleasant to the eye.

Next time, I think I will take more time in editing e.g. music choice, to make the videos more interesting and I need to figure out a way to flip over the videos with the software that I have or download a new one that will enable me to do so.

Further Planning for Sports Day

Today, we fixed a date for this event which was settled to be on the 3rd of July which gives us a lot of time to plan everything out and make sure that everything will run smoothly.

Along side that decision, we decided who among our year would be running the relay sticking by the rules of having a minimum of two girls. As well as that, we started allocating positions to people in our year as to where they will be and what they will be doing, however, we still need to sort a lot of people out for this and make sure they know exactly what they are doing.

When we come back from the half term holidays, we will ask which teachers want to participate since so far we have only asked Mr Gray who was alright with the idea of playing against our year.

My communication skills are improving with this task since I have to constantly talk to people to see who will be doing what and who wants to do what so that everything runs smoothly. This project has also taught me how to be more caring since I always people what they would want to do and what they would like to organise so that the day is also enjoyable for them and not just the people participating.

I think that in the next CAS session we should be more productive and write down ideas of what needs to be done and then delegate certain people in our group to do this so that we are as efficient as possible and that no time is wasted.

Winter Activity Day

For this year's Winter Activity Day, I helped organise a music quiz as well as sharrades to entertain the Year 10s who weren't planned for anything after their outing in the forest. The activity went really well since the Year 10s were very engaged in the activities we offered and it was nice to have an enthusiastic audience.

Organisationally, I was thorough since I always tried to think of things that could go wrong and therefore plan more out so that the activity would run smoothly. For example, I rearranged the tables so that they would be set in groups which could hold a maximum of 6 people in order to facilitate the task of creating groups. Also, I went to get brand new board pens so that there wouldn't be any issues on that front and I also made sure there were enough words for sharrades by creating more than we needed to which ended up being a slight issue since, even though we created more, we were out of words 2 minutes before the end of the session but we were creative enough to make words up on the spot to keep our activity flowing.

If this was to happen again next year, I think we should be more active since once we had finished preparing our activity and still had time on our hands, we should have gone out and helped others out or participated, however, to some extent is was good that we didn't since we actually had to organise more things and it is only after a while that we realised that. So relating to that, we should be more prepared next time and make sure that everything is or almost is perfect for when the group arrives.

Week 16

This week I think I got my head into the game late since it is only during the final matches that I was able to play at a good level, the rest of the time my positioning wasn't very good that is why I could get many changes at goal and some of my passes weren't powerful enough to achieve its destined destination. However, my lobbed passes were extremely good today and I tried doing them several times to get some practice and to see how good the outcome would be for our team.

I think that next week I will play more defensively since, funny enough, that is the way I think I score the most since I am able to be unmarked considering I am further back and I can get more shots at goal and have more momentum when I run up whilst if I stay up front that isn't provided to me so next week I will be sure to do this in order to score more goals.

I think that throughout all these weeks at football my communication has become a lot better since I say where I want the ball to be passed to me and if one of my team mates should take a shot at goal or if there is an opponent near him. This improvement in communication helps our team play better since communication is very important in this sport.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCb4Vw4HrK0&feature=youtu.be

Organising or Participating

Today, we went around asking people in our year whether they wanted to participate in activities or organise them during Sports Day so that we had an idea of how many people could control what was going on in activities and if we had enough people who wanted to play against the teachers. We found that there were enough people willing to organise and enough people who wanted to participate so that we could have three teams in the teacher and year 12 section. This will make things less tiring for that group since there will be alternations giving people the ability to take a break once in a while and recover their energy.

However, we still need to go and see which teachers are willing to organise and if there are some that want to participate so that we are definite that there will be enough people monitoring each station and enough to play against year 12s.

Another Day Swimming

Today, I decided to try to time myself to doing a 50m length so that I have something to help me track my improvement in a quantitative way. My first try with the crawl got me a time of 16 seconds which was better than my brother by 1 second which is something I am proud of since he was always the "fish" in the family. I then tried to do a butterfly length which is very hard since you can only use your feet in a "dolphin way" so to say but I managed pretty well though it is a hard technique to use with a time of 20 seconds.
I hope to improve my times in a month by at least 2 seconds so I plan on constantly pushing myself to my limit so that I can achieve this target.

Week 15

This week I think I didn't do my best if I am to be honest since my dribbling was a bit off and I think I should have passed the ball more often. Unfortunately, I was unable to stick to my target of 10 goals and a hat trick since I think I was only able to score 6. The main reason for this, I think, is that I didn't position myself well enough to receive the ball and didn't create enough space for myself in order to have a chance at goal. My passing, even though it wasn't frequent, was good though sometimes I should look for a simpler pass rather than doing lobs though most of them were fruitful so I shouldn't completely stop doing them since they were a good test of my skill and it looked good.

Next week, I will try even harder to stick to my target since I felt like I did give all I had this week. I'll try to focus on passing a bit more and warming up before the matches by dribbling with a ball so that I don't make mistakes during a match since that led to our team not doing so well this week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D7CRxOfyZo&feature=youtu.be

Making a schedule for Sports Day

During today's C.A.S session, my group and I decided to get started on the schedule for Sports Day so we have a big part of organisation for this day off our chests. It took us a while to figure out a good plan considering that each year group wasn't going to do at least one activity due to an issue with time management. I think we came up with the fairest way to do it, however I will check with other people to see if they think our schedule is the best it can be and I will personally look over it to see in what ways I can improve on it. During the process of this schedule making, we took some advice from a Year 10 to see what he would like to do so that we make this day as pleasant for everyone as possible e.g. Year 7s won't be playing basketball since we figured that it may be challenging for them to play such a sport requiring height.

During today, we also started to write up what will be done for each sport which includes the teachers that will be monitoring it, but we need to check with them if it will be alright, it also includes how the scoring will work and what rules are to be followed. I think it needs more time on so that there will be no misunderstanding on the day of the event and on the following few days I will invest some of my time in refining it.

This week or next week, we will have to ask who in our year will want to help organise and who will want to play against teachers and the same thing goes with teachers. We are hoping to get two teams for each category so it will not be too tiring and it will give variety and an opportunity for others to play instead of the same Year 12s and teachers playing.

Swimming

I went swimming once again today and I can feel that my stamina is increasing since I didn't feel as tired as I did last week even though I put more work into today's session so it is a sign of improvement. I didn't take as many breaks as last week though next week I will try to minimise breaks even more so that my endurance is pushed every week.

I tried to put an order in my swimming i.e. 5 breast strokes and then 2 crawls though I didn't always follow this pattern since sometimes I felt like I didn't have enough energy in me to do a crawl and other times I had a lot of energy so instead of breast stroke, I did a crawl. But next week I am determined to keep to a rythm I am going to think of before starting to swim, one that will make me work hard so that I get more out of these sessions.

Houses

As preperation for Sports Day, we organised students from Years 7 to 10 in four different houses: Chekhov, Pushkin, Tolstoy and Gogol. We have yet to see how fair these houses actually are considering they were picked according to a systematic selection so in the next couple of days we will finalise this grouping and we will be able to publish them on a school board so that people can see which houses they are in, however, the posting of this housing doesn't need to be done until around April or May when we are closer to the actual Sports Day since there is no real point in posting it before since there won't be much to do with it till then unless we are to make house events before the actualy Sports Day e.g. inter house football and basketball but that is taking second priority for now but we will try to touch on the subject to make school more enjoyable for the lower year groups.

Next CAS lesson, it would be convenient for us to talk to a few members of staff to see what they are willing to do to help and if there are any who would like to take part in Sports against some of the Year 12s and we will also have to talk to our classmates so that we get the organisation ready and don't get any surprises along the road of preperation.

Poem: Childhood Dreams

Our English teacher, Mrs. Gray, gave us the opportunity to write about our own experiences in early childhood but I decided to take a slightly different approach to this in the sense that I wrote about me, in the present, daunting on life and how different it was back then. I decided not to use any real rhyme structure in order to portray the confusion in my head and to add to the depressive tone through the poem. This was my first try and I hope to do such a thing again in the near future and I will try to actually have a rhyme structure since, in my opinion, it is more pleasant to read through a poem with rhythm.

"My life is in the present,

My heart in the past.

I remember dreaming about

Life's opportunities,

Now I think of its miseries.

The world seemed peaceful

From my bedroom window,

As innocent as my childhood dreams.

I felt purposed for something,

Now I fight for anything.

Home was my castle,

The playground was my throne.

Home is my prison,

The playground is my fear.

The walls of innocence

Are deceitful things.

You can only see as far

As it will let you.

Once you fly from its nest,

There is no room for rest.

My life is in the present,

My heart in the past.

Looking back I wish I had more time

To dream, to smile, to laugh, to live.

Life isn't what it once seemed."

Week 14 - New Beginning

This was the first time we played without Mr Brigstock competitively and because of an injury Mr Bruce was unable to play with us too. I was charged as being the captain of our team which is a big responsibility and this will be continued during next week so I am put in charge in organising our team and making sure that we will have enough players on the day to play.

This week didn't go so well since 3 of our key players weren't playing including 1 who will never play for us again: Mr Brigstock, Mr Bruce and Mark. We alternated keepers so that everyone had a fair amount of time playing and that was one of our weaknesses this week. We didn't play very well as a team since our passing was sloppy and we didn't pass enough so we lost the ball very often because of selfishness and I won't shy away from taking part of the blame since in my opinion sometimes I dribbled too much but luckily most of the time it worked out well for the team.

Personally, I think my passing was good though I should have passed it more often and I will be sure to do that next week. I tried out new dribbles that I hadn't done for a while in order to renew my dribbling and they seemed to work well, however, next week I will try to do combinations of skills since that would be a challenge for me considering I haven't done such a thing for a while and it would be a great way to test out my skill level. I scored 10 goals including a hat trick in a game and made sure to get my fair part of assists or at least create opportunities for my team mates. So the resuming of the season has been great for me since I have achieved my aims so far and I hope to keep that going.

Next week, I hope to stick to the aim I set for myself which I mentioned in my CAS plan (10 goals every week including a hat trick in a game) and try to manage our team more effectively since at the start we were all over the place and there was little organisation so I will try to be a better captain next week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sC-lWRdSWVA&feature=youtu.be