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