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

Start of a Project

During our C.А.S. lesson today, a group of us decided on taking the responsibility of planning and organising this year's sports day and took on the burden of making it as successful as it was the previous years. We considered other possible projects of doing but this one seemed like the funnest and the one closest to our reach.

We talked about what would need to be done i.e. co-ordination, sports, timing, participants, scoring etc. We figured that since only 4 year groups would be participating, since years 11 and 13 would be having their exams, we would need 4 sports in order to make rotations more convenient, however, from the sports we came up with: dodgeball, basketball, football, running and volleyball we didn't want to exclude one so we decided that it would be nice to have some of the Yr 12s be against teachers just like Yr 9 are against Yr 9 and Yr 8 are against Yr 8 since it would involve the teachers a lot more (last year some of them joined in our sports so it would be more convenient for them to have a team of their own) and there would be more activities to do. As a final activity and a tradition to some extent, a relay will be held like previous years after lunch involving every year group one by one and the final race will be Yr 12 against teachers.

But to do all this, people would have to be divided into different houses therefore we asked for a list of every year so that we would put people into different houses for that event. We did this with systematic selection to make it easier and if the houses were unfair we would move things around but as it was things seemed pretty even.

To advance in our progression of this project we will need to talk to teachers and Yr 12s to see who will be operating and supervising what so that there is no confusion and we will also need to construct a scoring system to announce winners. We will have several months to prepare everything but we aren't going to let one day slip by without contributing in some way to the preperations.

Finding Nemo

I was finally able to go swimming and if I am to be honest, I loved it and I might even go 2 or 3 times a week which may include Sundays and Tuesdays. They would be 45 mins sessions but that is more than enough to keep fit and train physically.

I tried out several ways of swimming such as crawl, butterfly and breast stroke since those are the ones I prefer doing and require more strength than back stroke. I think I should have put more order in what I was doing since I was just acted in the moment rather than having any plan e.g. I could have done 3 lengths of crawl followed by 5 of breast stroke and then 1 of butterly or something like that and I will try to do that tomorrow if I do go again or next week on Saturday. I think I should also take less rests and just keep going at least until I finish a full cycle such as the one I mention as an example previously.

Also, before I do start swimming I think I should do some sort of stretching since near the end I got a cramp and getting a cramp whilst swimming in the deep end is never a pleasant experience.

C.A.S Plan for the Term

Considering my brother has his exams this year, once he has finished his mock exams I will help him look over what he did and give him tips which helped me do very well in my exams. I think my brother really does need my help since even though he is a smart person, he can be very lazy at times and that, I'm afraid, may not give him the marks that he may have wanted.

Also, every Saturday I am going to go swimming since there is a pool near my house which is easily at walking distance and it will help me prepare for a triathlon I am participating in during the summer and that I hope I will do better in. I want to do this since I think I need to keep fit and get myself involved in more activities in order to achieve this and it will hopefully help me feel more energised since I think that I have been let down by my laziness several times lately.

I will continue playing football every Thursday since it is something I thoroughly enjoy doing and it keeps my active and fit. It is something that keeps my motivated since it is an area I excel at and where I constantly want to improve and use my creativity to get past players.

Sundays will be a cooking day for me since it is something that I used to do in my school and I not only did very well in but enjoyed doing since it got my mind off things and in the end I got to judge myself what I had done which might result in me being more critical about things I do e.g. homework, at that may in turn improve the quality of my work.

This next thing will all depend on whether or not I will have spare time on my hands. I may start writing things like poems to enhance my creativity and since I like English Literature it will help me boost my skills in the subject and hopefully my range of vocabulary will grow.

One of the things I am going to do through a long period of time is to get back into playing the drums since I partially let it down because I just needed to pass my music exam but the major reason was because I disliked my teacher and the fact that that brought me to stop playing the drums is a sign of failure to me so I plan to take it up again step by step retracing what I went through with my teacher and I will then play a piece to see where that training got me. 

The Basshunters

On Wednesday, we had a task to get into a group and produce a musical piece of around 30-45 seconds with objects around us. Our group were called 'The Basshunters' and consisted of 4 people: David, Han, Francesco and me. 

It took us a while to actually get a plan together since we were experiencing with different things we could use but in the end we decided to follow simplicity since we figured that anything too complex would increase the risk of us either us messing up or everything sounding terrible as a result of an excess of solo performances rather than a group thing.

After some experiments, I decided that it would be good to start off with a simple beat and then adding on to that one after the other and then slowly creating an effect of fading away by each one off us, one by one, stop playing. 

We ended up winning as a result of this coordination even though we might have messed up a bit whilst we were performing but none the less the end result was the one we wanted. Victory.

If we were to do this again, we should get a plan together faster and not spend as much time experiencing with things considering that we ended up not having enough time to get our act together which put us on the edge since we didn't fully know what was going to come out of our performance.

Brand New Start

If I am to be honest, I was disappointed with my performance at the start since it took me a while to get back to the sport after the endless mountains of chocolate I ate over the holidays. I thought that my shooting could have improved since I wasn't thinking well enough on how I wanted to position it and so on so I will try to think more before shooting next week in order to be able to score more.

However, in the end, I was able to play at a satisfactory level in my eyes after having scored a hat trick in a game and over 10 goals which are both part of my targets this term; to score a hat trick and at least 10 goals every week. I will pursue these targets with great determination because my new years resolution was to stop being so lazy and give 110% to everything I do. 

On a brighter side, my dribbling was good even though I hadn't done any football for a couple of weeks and I was able to run past defenders most of the time and create a change at goal though I think, at times, I should have passed the ball instead of dribbled. So I will try to limit the amount of dribbling and try to pass a bit more in order to speed up our offensive plays.

I hope that next week I won't feel so tired after playing a couple of games and in order for this to happen I will go swimming on Saturdays since last term I told myself I would but never had the time to but this term will be very different from the previous one.