Overseas School Volleyball Tournament & Goals

Friday 17th October OSC hosted a Volleyball tournament inviting 3 different schools in Sri Lanka for   an inter school competition to prepare the volleyball team of OSC for the upcoming tournament that we are taking part in that will be hosted in Dhaka, Bangladesh. This program that we had over the past 6 weeks were to prepare us for teams and prepare us to take what we learned and transfer it to the way we play and how we deal with situations during a game.

The way the team had set up their goals were very similar to the coaches expectations. Our idea was that each individual would work on one aspect that they personally feel like they could improve on. Initially what we had hoped for was developing the teams unity and strength as a whole. Through out the matches we've played and training we've gone through there always seemed to be something that dropped out performance down, instead of keeping the game on and playing at 100%. We hadn't noticed what seemed to be the problem with us as a team because we would work so well with each other but there would always be that one aspect that would put us down. During the first 2 games in the tournament we were able to figure out what that was and it was being mentally positive. Whenever we would lose a point, or make a mistake on a service of ours we would not just put ourselves down but the whole team would be upset. It all came down to being mentally positive within the game and never giving up. Although we had lost all the games we had played due to being inexperienced compared to the local teams that we had faced, we were still able to take what we had learned during practice and use it in every game situation which we as a team felt deserved a round of applause.

My goal for volleyball and the upcoming tournament that we will be taking part in during the next week will be to maintain control of my passes and become consistent with the way i play. It is important to me as an athlete to be able to play at my best during whatever situation in the game because i personally believe in second chances and dropping your game will not get you any. I want to be able to keep the amount of mistake to a minimum and prove the right to play on the court with the rest of the team. Being chosen for the starting 6 in the first game is a place i needed to earn and keep through out the whole saisa tournament and that is something i wish to achieve. I also want to earn the MVP but i know the requirements for that and i do know that it will be something really hard to achieve because it also expects me to create points by myself and compete with those who are spiking the ball for the point. My main focus on achievement during this competition will be to control the game and be consistent as well as maintaining possession within the team. Our objective as a whole team is to place top 3 teams in the game out of the 8 teams competing. In order to take that place we need to work as one and play our best with being consistent as possible because coming first or 3rd is something that needs to be earned and i believe that we as a team will be able to make things happen if we have that right metal train of thought and determination for victory.

Environmental System Field Trip

Our class decided to take a short field trip to gather some information based on water reliability in our lakes close to the school. We are going to be creating a lab report that will prepare us and give us a better experience of the environment surrounding us. Our aim for today was to be able to start up a lab report based on what data that we have gathered but we were unable to complete the trip due to the limited amount of time given to us during the period. We managed to cover the aspect of being able to gather some information, taking data of lake water and testing it's temperature and PH level to identify how pure or how clean our water is here in Sri Lanka.

What we intended to do was go to a few different locations on the Lake and gather water samples from each of these parts within the lake and see if we were to test their purity would they all have something similar in them or would there be something completely different. This does allow us to understand how to not only test water but identify what makes it clean. We will be facing more field trips like this that will involve us to do more hand to hand activity with the environment, simply for taking information and transferring it into ways that help us understand the process of things.

CAS Primary School Presentation UN Day

During our CAS meeting on Thursday 2nd October, my group and i had discussed about the first step to raising awareness within our school community.  Our ideas scattered between presentations, raising money and getting students to try a challenge that was related to what we do in the field when we travel to local routes in Sri Lanka. After having a brief discussion about what we should choose and which topic would be the most reliable we came up with the suggestion that we would combine both a visual presentation as well as interact with the students by getting them to do a fun activity.

The activity that we had come up with was known as the "Marshmellow Challenge" and it was one of the best ideas brought up in our meeting. This challenge had everything to do with Habitat for Humanities and what we stand for as a Service group. We are all about collaboration, thinking critically and constructing. The Marshmellow challenge allowed students in groups of 4 to collaborate with each other to finish the almost impossible task given to them. The rules of this challenge were that students were given a list of materials that they could use to construct a standing tower. They would only be able to use 20 sticks of spaghetti, 1 meter of tape, 1 meter of string and 1 marshmellow. With this list of materials they had to be able to create the tallest tower that stood without falling apart, rules said that the marshmellow had to be at the top of the tower and no where else.

On the 3rd of October, Overseas School UN Day we were given a time to go to the primary students classes and begin our presentation and activity. We created a powerpoint that would be simple and understandable. We essentially followed 3 questions of the powerpoint that would bring out our goals as a service group and educate the minds of the younger students who are yet to choose a service activity in the near future.  We covered questions such as; What do we do in Community & Service and why? What materials to we deal with when working in our field? How do we collaborate as a group?

These question were answered through visual and verbal communication, we would show them an image of the materials we use or deal with when we construct houses and then we elaborate on them by explaining why we used them and for what purpose. Our goal for this presentation was to not only be able to interact with students but to have them transfer what they know into real life situations. We had really good responses and questions from the primary students about our presentation. To conclude our presentation we had got all the students to work together in completing the Marshmellow Challenge. They were given 20 minutes to build the tallest tower and over that period of time we were able to see how much students really relied on each other and what they were thinking about because it's really all about planning and working according to the time. For primary school students we had well achieved our goal and interacted with the students well enough to know what they were interested in. The game had helped them understand what we do and how much work it takes just by working on their mini activity. We managed to gain more experience with presentation and figuring out solutions to raise awareness. It was an experience well worth our wild as leaders of Habitat for Humanities Service group.

IB Orientation

For our IB Orientation we travelled to Kithulgala Borderlands. It's a place filled with adventurous activities that relate to working together with the people you are surrounded with. Our class had spend 3 days and 2 nights there where we would contribute to all these outdoor activities as well as develop key aspects of people personality and change the way particular students see things in reality. This whole trip could be a life changing experience to a lot of the students because it trains your mind to be patient and relaxed depending on what situation you are in.

The reason why we as a grade travelled there was so that we can all come together as one class but at the same time to have fun.  Each day we spent there we were given challenges to accomplish and figure out solutions to. One the first day, once we arrived at our location we all got straight into the water and started with our first activity for the 3 day trip.
The guides there prepared us for the water and that was going to be the first challenge we had to get used to the cold iced river water. We went rafting, as a class we were divided up into even groups so that roughly 6 students per 1 guide and 1 teacher would join together into one rafting boat. The aim was to be able to work with your boat group, it was to show collaboration and communication to see if one voice could lead the whole group in order to control & paddle their raft to the end of the river. The other days involved something new, something that we as students could all achieve. By the end of the trip we really were able to see a bond between newer people, this trip had connected people and separated their differences from each other. Our goals were to have fun, learn and develop our knowledge of the outdoors, their goals as a adventure club was to get us to unite and work as one which was well achieved by the end of these 3 days and 2 nights.

CAS Goals

Creativity:

When is comes to aspects of creativity for this year i have enrolled myself into doing after school activities that will help benefit myself for the subject of creativity. I have gone with the ASA  of Drawing Club and what i'm doing there or what they do there is they draw, practice creating an image by looking at a visual or real life content, being able to create sculptures using clay or any other constructible material that is used today for art. We are given a time and with that we are supposed to form something from either our imagination or something that we wish to copy off. The whole point of drawing club is that it brings out the best of your creativity, it's a subject that goes under the topic of creativity very well. Using our intelligence we are asked to do things that are related to art and that will help us understand the different artistic techniques that were used and are being developed to this day. It's practicing all the skills and defining them as you go on. Another subject for creativity is my Community and Service group and there what we do is we spend our time thinking of ways to raise awareness and that takes creativity, you will need to be able to figure out a solution for being beneficial to the public by raising money for a good cause as well as help the service spread its awareness to show people how important it is and what we stand for, and what our goals are. 

Action: 

For action i am doing Saisa volleyball which involves being active and practicing for out of school tournaments in other countries. We train regularly on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. The reason why i had taken this sport is because i wanted to be open to new activities as well as develop another sport of mine that i could be capable of playing well at. Now that i have been taking part and joining every practice i have the ability to play the sport and for that there are a few techniques that i wish to develop. I want to be able to have a consistent service as well as consistency with my setting. My main goal is to get the athletic award in sports. Not only do i play volleyball but once a week i play community football with students and teachers from my school. Every thursday at 5:00 pm we play football matches against each other. All the people that come are divided up into two equal teams and we begin playing and finish at 6:30 pm. My aim when attending those football matches is simply getting my football skills better, i've been playing the sport for roughly 7 years and all i've been doing is working to be the best in that sport and to this day i still struggle with achieving somethings. I am very active and i used what i know on the field and what i don't know it is my goal to make better so that i play with consistency and experience. 
Then theres CAS (Community & Service) just like creativity my CAS contains several aspects of action within it and that relates to creating and going to local areas and assisting those that need help. Attempting to solve the family problems and making sure that they have a better life. We present things for awareness of our cause and we also teach children how to construct a house and what the materials are at the most. We teach to younger students who will be asked to sign up for service in their next year of school. 

Service: 

I am a Community and Service leader for my group and i am joined by 2 other student leaders from my grade to assist me with taking responsibility within the group. Our CAS is called Habitat for Humanity and what we do as a community is we help the organization Habitat for Humanity here in Sri Lanka and we work together with them in helping local people who don't have houses or want to remodel their houses. We construct their houses for them, focusing mostly on those who don't have the house for their need. My goal for this Service is to have an interrelated school organization that involves other local schools to join in and what i plan on achieving with that is that we will not only be able to expand our community but become more efficient with spreading awareness in our schools and on our streets to other people. Having this become manageable will make things a lot easier for us. That is what i am focusing on at this moment, starting to try organising meetings with the other schools principles so that we can make all this possible and see how many students from each school will actually volunteer for this CAS.