New Action and Creativity activities!

I joined the after school sports activity, Badminton and Cricket since the beginning of the semester.

I have taken up a leadership role in Cricket. So, because of this I would not be playing Cricket necessarily, but rather coaching. I would have to plan each lesson with my other two co-leaders, Shwetank and Shubanshu. Both of them have been doing Cricket since last semester as well, so this time, instead of resuming their leadership roles entirely, they have appointed me as the leader and they would act as my mentors. The reason is, I have more experience playing Cricket than they have because I have trained in a Cricket club called NCC for 2 years. I know some strategies which we can apply while in the field and my plan is to teach these strategies to the kids during the Cricket sessions.

I also chose Badminton because I hope to join SAISA Badminton which is to start in Season 4 (January). I have played Badminton before as well but not as rigorously as I play Tennis. By joining the Monday Badminton session, I am able to gain some more practice and hope to develop new skills.

Goals for Cricket:

- Design a proper lesson plan with the help of my co-leaders and show that I possess good leadership skills    in Cricket.

- Reflect on a semesters worth of leadership in Cricket and analyse all the new skills I learnt as a leader.

Goals for Badminton:

- Show that I have greatly improved my skills in Badminton and prove that I have the ability to play at a          competitive level.

- Get chosen for the SAISA Badminton team and reflect on my experience in Badminton at a competitive        level.

Me (in white) umpiring a Cricket match

Me (in white) and Shubanshu (in yellow) giving the kids catching practices

Shwetank helping the kids at the Nets

Me and Shubanshu helping a kid who is a beginner to bat the Nets

Drums: New Drums

On the 9th of November, I went and purchased a new Premier drum kit! With this new kit, I am now able to play drums whenever I want and practice far more often than before (I had to wait till we have lessons to actually practice drums). Also, with more independence I am able to search and try to play different beats than the ones I learn in class. This is very significant for me because this helps better me to accomplish my goals in the Creative field.

As of last year and this semester, this is how the beats learnt compare:

Last year:
- 4/4 basic Rock beat and 2 different drum fills.
- 3/4 Waltz beat
- Cha-Cha beat
- Mumba beat
- Hussle beat

(I completed my last years CAS goal, which was to show that I can learn 5 beats)

This year:
- 4/4 basic Rock beat and 4 different drum fills
- 3/4 Waltz beat
- Cha-Cha beat
- Mumba beat
- Hussle beat
- Bosonova beat
- Oriental beat
- Tango beat
- basic Punk beat*
- 'Funky' beat*
- Variation of the basic rock beat. 

(* indicates beats I learnt on my own)

By getting a new drum set, I was able to undertake new challenges and learn drum beats on my own. It also helped me understand and increase the awareness of awareness of strength and areas for growth, such as in the new drum beats and fills I recently learnt. I have developed new skills, as can be seen by the new beats I learnt and I showed great deals of perseverance and commitment during this very significant learning process. This process wasn't just the learning of new beats, but also the fact that I am able to learn new beats and fills on my own using other resources, other than my drums teacher.

Given below is an unedited video of me drumming (beats from last year).

Tennis matches

Today I went to another session of tennis at SSC, this time, we decided to dedicate the whole lesson to play matches. This was done so that we get enough practice in proper tennis match situation and so that we learn the different techniques, such as good movement around the court, areas where you should stop to play a
shot as well as areas where you should aim to hit the ball in terms of your current position of the court.

Since I was one of the senior players in my class, I was partnered with a someone who was not as experiences during the matches. This helped him to improve his and me to plan and initiate a game plan.

By the end of the matches, I had successfully worked collaboratively with my partner to win most of the matches, and this was due to us showing perseverance and commitment to the matches and with a goal of having a maximum amount wins and in the process, improving out tennis skills as well.