My Final Reflection of CAS

After two years of new experiences, taking part in a variety of different activities and working together with my fellow IB peers, it has finally arrived to this: The final post...

As I have said previously in my older posts, The International Baccalaureate programme was whole new experience to me. The IB is far different from any of the other international syllabi I have done in the past and one of these differences is CAS. CAS has truly changed me as student and as well as a person. If someone were to tell me that I should do an after school activity, I would probably choose a couple of sports like Cricket and Tennis and be done with it. However, CAS made me challenge myself. It required me to do activities that involve Creativity, Action and Service. I have barely ever taken part creative or community service related activities in the past so this was a real challenge for me because I needed to go outside my comfort zone. I can honestly say I am glad I did so because I've been able to see so much more potential in me that is not just in the Action category. It was exciting to do activities that fall in to three different categories and so I really tried to give my best effort in each of them. I continued to play Tennis as always and then later joined SAISA Badminton in grade 12. But I also took part in two community service activities; Recycling and Sustainability, and SOS Orphanage, and two creative activities; Drums and a leadership role in Cricket. I have become two things I never thought I would be; a musician and a leader!

Since I have already made a final reflection on Service, I will only reflect on Creativity and Action in this post. Initially for Creativity, I started to learn how to play drums in the beginning of grade 11. The first few lessons were exciting and strange at the same time. I'm used to seeing drummers on YouTube who would rock out and play amazing drum solos! However in my first lessons, I wasn't doing anything even close to what I consider drumming. However, as the lessons progressed I realized that the beats were actually starting to come together. More lessons passed and I was beginning to play all kinds of beats such as the Rock beat, Punk, Waltz, Cha-Cha, Mumba, "Funky Town", Baila, Oriental and so on. I had developed a new skill and that was drumming. Recently, I even started to learn how to read sheet music; another new skill. It was in drums that I learnt the importance of patience as well as perseverance. If had lost interest and quit in the first few lessons then I would not be here today trying to play along to some of my favorite AC/DC and Nirvana songs. I showed great deals of perseverance and commitment to see that I would carry on playing drums for the remaining two years. In Cricket, I did my first ever leadership role along with my co-leaders, Shwetank and Shubanshu. This was a fun new experience for me because I learnt to plan and initiate activities for each Cricket session and take part in the sport as well. Every lesson, I grew as a leader and I was seeing my true potential for the first time.

Going to my Service activities was something I really loved doing and looked forward to every week. In grade 11, I took part in my first service activity which was Recycling and Sustainability. In this activity, we went around the school collecting paper from all the recycling boxes in each room and then took it down to the recycling place to sell it. It was fairly simple task but it was a great community service at the same time. Unlike most of the other service activities in OSC where service was provided to people, Recycling provided a service to the environment. In Recycling, I was directly engaging with an issue of global importance. This service was important because keeping a clean environment and to be an international school that recognizes the global importance of recycling is very honorable. Later on from semester 2 of grade 11 till now, I took part in SOS Orphanage. This was very different from what we did in Recycling. Children from the SOS Orphanage Village in Colombo would come our school every Thursday. We then proceeded to teach them English, math and gave a presentation on a particular country. The highlight of the activity was the swimming session. We would all go down to the pool to teach them how to swim and guide them through it for the next hour. On lazy days, we would have a game of piggy in the middle (monkey in the middle). SOS was really fun because we learnt to communicate and engage with the children, as well as just have fun with them. Service required teamwork and I feel that I have definitely been able to work collaboratively with others to give the children a great experience here at OSC.

IB CAS may have ended here, but the Creativity, Action and Service in me will continue to grow and thrive. I hope to continue to play drums, try out more sports and certainly try to take up a leadership role in a community service in the future :-)

Final Reflection: SOS Orphanage

At the beginning of the year, I set out to achieve four goals for service. These are:

• Prove that I can follow the examples of the leaders in SOS Orphanage and achieve tasks with my best effort applied to them. Then, reflect on my experiences and of all the self accomplishments in the service sessions.
• Formulate my own service activity either in school or outside, or take up a leadership role in an already existing service activity.
• When the second goal has been accomplished; reflect on my first days' work as a leader as well as prove that I am capable enough to continue my leadership role.
• Reflect on my overall experience of service work by the end of this year and show how I have grown as a service volunteer as well as how it has affected me.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to accomplish the second and third goals as specified by the goals. However, I was able to take up a leadership role in an after-school activity; Cricket. Since this activity does not involve helping the community in need but rather providing a service students in our school, this activity only falls under the creativity aspect of CAS. But even though I did not take up a service leadership role, I'm still proud that I took up a leadership role. This is something I have never done before and so it was a great experience for me. I learnt to take more responsibility in to my hands as well as learnt to collaborate with my fellow co-leaders. I carried out my leadership role for the entire semester. The kids were always very enthusiastic to play Cricket and their favorite was doing the high catches practices (besides the match at the end). Overall I felt that it was a great learning experience and has definitely helped me out for my future. 

I strongly believe that I have accomplished my first goal. During the service sessions I learnt to communicate better with kids much younger than me as well as developed my English and Math teaching skills. I feel that I really tried my best during during swimming sessions. One of my favorite moments was when I was able to get a kid to swim complete laps, when before he wouldn't even stay away from the pool edge because he was scared of the water. This happened in just 2 lessons. He and I both tried our best to make it happen. 

Service at OSC has been a great experience for me. I took part in two service activities, Recycling and Sustainability and SOS Orphanage. In both activities I met amazing people and we all worked collaboratively to achieve all that we set out to do. Given the fact that this was the first time I have ever taken part in a service activity at a school, I feel that I have accomplished a lot during these two years of service. 

Badminton: on the team!

On the 10th of Monday, our coaches Mr Pradeep and Mr De Silva announced who is in the final Badminton team for SAISA. Of the 25 students, only 8 boys and 6 girls are chosen to be on the team. So it is a difficult task to get on the team and I'm proud to say that I have been chosen to be on the final 8 SAISA team. This is a big accomplishment for me because I have never been to Badminton classes before SAISA this year. Since the beginning of SAISA Badminton, I feel that I had shown great deals of perseverance and commitment to the sport, and it's this that allowed me to be chosen for the team. I've developed new skills and improved my existing ones such as in service, lob (hitting the shuttle to the far back), drop (hitting the shuttle close to the net) and the smash (hitting it hard vertically down). Since we have to play both singles and doubles matches, we are required to work collaboratively with others in order to advance in the game. I feel I have done this well in our practice sessions and will continue to do so.

SOS Orphanage: My Presentation on Pakistan

On our last SOS Orphanage service session, I was meant to give the country presentation for that session. The country I chose to present was Pakistan because I had lived there for 2 years and so I have some experience with the culture. Unfortunately, the kids were not able to come to the session and so the service was cancelled for that day. I will be giving my presentation on our next session.

SOS Presentation - Pakistan from 4kila

Sheet Music for Drums

Up until now, I have always played drum beats by memory and learned them by copying what my drums teacher demonstrated to me. Many drummers prefer to do this as opposed to learning how to read Sheet Music and play according to what it says. My teacher recommended that I learn to read Sheet Music as well because it would help me in the long run. I decided to take this opportunity to undertake a new challenge and started to learn how to read it in the previous lesson. I learnt a lot in that short time span. I feel that I have definitely developed a new skill because I am able to read and play the notes well according to my teacher. Since drummers to not have to exactly play notes, but rather a specific pattern, I think I should be able to learn how to fluently read Sheet Music very soon.

 

Badminton

We are slowly nearing April which is when we will finally have our SAISA Badminton games, where schools from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Oman come to OSC for a week of Badminton. These games, like the other SAISA sports, are very important and the participants are required to have had an ample amount of training before playing the matches. Over these few weeks, I feel I have shown perseverance and commitment in to this sport in order to make the final 5 SAISA team. Every lesson, I've developed new skills in the sports, the last skills being efficient placement of the shots and moving in the court.

Me doing a short serve

Playing a drop shot

SAISA Badminton (and Goals)

This semester, I decided to join the tryout lessons for SAISA badminton (season 4). The tournament is to take place in our school during the first week of April. Although the tournament is very close to our May examinations, I feel I can still be able to commit to the sport since we won't be travelling to the play the tournament.

I have never played badminton at a competitive level or even been to any classes. However, I still decided to to join SAISA badminton because I feel that I will be able to apply the skills I acquired playing tennis in to badminton as well. This is not an easy task because although both sports are played using rackets, there are some significant differences between the two that I need to work on. The first being that badminton is not played with a ball, so the amount of power apply to a shot will be different. Other differences include, tennis involves the movement of the entire arm with a stiff wrist while playing shots, however, badminton involves a loose wrist while playing shots.

I have addressed all these issues and I think I have got a good handle of the game. On the 3rd of February, Our coaches, Mr Pradeep and Mr De Silva, formed two groups, Group A and Group B. Group A consists of player who have good skills and are likely to make the final SAISA squad. Group B consists of everyone else who still needs to work on their skills. People can move up from B to A and they can also go down from A to B. I was placed in Group A which I took as a good achievement and as proof that I was able to address the issues I had in the beginning. Of course, I would have to work hard to keep my place by being consistent and constantly improving.

My Goals for SAISA Badminton:
- Prove that I am capable of getting a place in the final 5 of the SAISA squad.
- Show that I can win matches in the SAISA tournament and reflect on my experience in the tournament.
- Reflect on my overall experience with badminton and compare my skills to the skills I had when I first started out badminton.

Reflection on Grade 12 semester 1 and reviewing of the Goals (part 3)

Service

My first goal for the service is about achieving all tasks given by my service leaders.

Prove that I can follow the examples of the leaders in SOS Orphanage and achieve tasks with my best effort applied to them. Then, reflect on my experiences and of all the self accomplishments in the service sessions.

I feel that I have certainly achieved this goal for semester 1 and I will continue to do so for semester 2 as well. Our basic tasks in SOS Orphanage are to teach the kids some English and Maths, then teach them about a country via a PowerPoint presentation and then finally head down to pool and teach them swimming. I have been able to do 2 out of 3 of these tasks, I have still to give a presentation about a country. This is something I hope to do soon before the end of the interim. Nevertheless, throughout the semester, we have planned and initiated our activities whilst working collaboratively with each other in order to give the SOS children a fun learning experience here at OSC. My biggest accomplishment this semester was probably helping a kid who was very scared of the water, to move away from the sides of the pool and swim a complete lap (width). It took some time but in the end, it was rewarding to see him overcome his fears of the water.

My second and third goals are based on taking part in my own service activity as a leader.

Formulate my own service activity either in school or outside, or take up a leadership role in an already existing service activity.

When the second goal has been accomplished; reflect on my first days' work as a leader as well as prove that I am capable enough to continue my leadership role.

Though I was not able to obtain a leadership role in a service activity, I have however been able to obtain a leadership role in Cricket, which is regarded as a Creative and Action activity. Shwetank, Shubanshu and I became leaders of the After School Activity (ASA) Cricket, which is an activity where students from grades 6 and up can come to play cricket with us whilst learning some cricket skills as well. This was one of my favorite activities I did this year because of my love for Cricket. Since the beginning of the year, my co-leaders and I worked collaboratively and show perseverance and commitment in to being good leaders of this sport at OSC. We got good feedback from the kids in our ASA and I could see their improvement from the beginning of the semester to end of it.

My final goal is:

Reflect on my overall experience of service work by the end of this year and show how I have grown as a service volunteer as well as how it has affected me.

Since this year hasn't ended yet, I have yet to accomplish this goal completely. However, I have had a great experience so far in CAS and I can see that I have changed in terms of my perspective of CAS and its global importance especially in the Service aspect.

Reflection on Grade 12 semester 1 and reviewing of the Goals (part 2)

Action

My first goal for Action is to compare the improvement of my tennis skills over the course of two years.

Compare and reflect on the my skills at tennis by the end of this year with the skills I had when I started out the diploma programme. 

When I first started out the Diploma Programme at OSC, I was not new to tennis. I have mentioned this before as well. I had stopped for a while to focus on exams so I had some warming up to do in order to get back my momentum of the sport. I feel that I have been able to both do this, as well as significantly improve my skills over the past two years. This is mainly due to me showing more perseverance and commitment to tennis since the beginning of IBDP.

My second goal is about taking part in tennis competitions.

Take part in more competitions this year which include contenders with high amounts of skill. The previous year I completed my goal of taking part in a competition organized outside class where my doubles partner (Hemeka) and I made it to the quarter-finals. This year, I hope to take part in that same tournament-which is an annual event. I hope to reflect on my experience as well as evaluate my skills in Tennis and in all the competitions.

I have been able to partially achieve this goal. I did take part in another competition however it was not the same SSC open tennis tournament I played last time. This was a tennis tournament for everyone in my class, along with the more experiences adult students who go for coaching from my teacher as well. The adults proved to be my biggest challenge, but Hemeka and I were able to win quite a few games by the end of the tournament. I was able to work collaboratively with my partner during this tournament and to make an effective team.  

My final goal is about winning in a tennis competition(s).

Obtain a place in the podium by the end of a tournament and then by the end of the year, reflect on my overall experience that I had in Tennis during the course of two years and show the transition from how I stood last year and how I will stand by the end of this year.

This was a goal I made to last to the end of the two years of CAS. However, in that last tournament I played which included everyone in my tennis class, Hemeka and I were able to work collaboratively in order to obtain a third place position by the end of the tournament. This was a points based tournament as opposed to the SSC open knock-out based tournament. I'm proud that I was able to do this and I feel I have increased awareness of my strengths and areas for growth.

Reflection on Grade 12 semester 1 and reviewing of the Goals

Another semester of CAS comes to an end and this is another time for us review back to the August when the our Goals for grade 12 were written up and see where we stand now in terms of which goals we completed.

Creativity

At the beginning of the semester, one of my goals was to learn a total of 10 beats by the end of grade 12.

Continue to work on all the beats I learnt the previous year and apply these skills to this year to show that I can learn a further 5, more complex beats. With the 5 beats I have learnt the previous year (4/4 beat, 3/4 beat, cha-cha, mamba and hustle), this would mean that a total of 10 beats has to be perfected by the end of this year. 

I feel confident that I have certainty been able to achieve this goal as well as exceed in this task as well. I have been able to learn 6 more new beats and also 2 more drum fills with another beat, the 'Baila' beat, currently being learnt as well. I feel that this is a great personal triumph for me because I did not expect to learn this much before the year had even ended. I do know that I was very passionate about drums and I showed perseverance and commitment throughout this learning process, since the beginning of grade 11 however, and buying a new drum set really helped me learn more beats than I expected. I feel that the pursuit of this goal allowed me to increase the awareness of my strengths and areas for growth. One of the greatest challenges I faced during this learning process was switching between drum beats and fills (this can be seen by the video I had previously posted). They all vary in terms of the rhythm and pace, but I have been able to overcome this challenge and I hope to perfect all beats flawlessly by the end of grade 12. 

My second goal deals more with the creative aspect.

Prove that I can compose a range of my own drum beats without the help of my teacher; this goal is a continuation from that of last years, which I plan to accomplish by the end of this year. The goal is to compose 1 or more drum solos (non-stop drumming with different beats played one after another) and present them via video, accompanied with a reflection on how it I got to that point.

This was a chance for me to really test my creative side and to really see whether I had the making of a drummer. I have been able to compose a few beats of my own and I have also posted a video of me drumming everything I have learnt since the beginning of grade 11 to half the first semester of grade 12. The new beats I composed can be seen in the video as well, though of course they need more work done on. I have never composed any piece of music before and so I feel that I have certainly developed new skills. I am not sure however, whether I have truly posted what makes up a drum solo, since I stopped after each beat in the video while usually in a drum solo, all beats must be played without the drummer stopping. This realization has allowed me to increase the awareness for my strengths and areas for growth and so I will continue to work on these beats and hope to perfect them by the end of the year. 

Unfortunately, I could not achieve my third and final goal for creativity yet. 

Play at a few school musical events and/or musical events in or outside school and reflect on my experience and what I accomplished from that experience. Then, compare and evaluate how I was in the beginning of grade 11 and and how I will be by the end of grade 12 in terms of my drumming skills and my confidence in the creative aspect.

This was probably my most challenging goal and as of now, I have not been able to perform in any musical event. Do to the amount of work we were getting since the beginning of grade 12, I feel that I was not able to commit to this goal at all. I had been given the opportunity to play for a couple of school concerts but due to the assignments I had during the time these offers were made, I could not attend any of the practice sessions. Hopefully, there will be another event that I may have the chance to perform in if I feel that I can allocate the time for it. 

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.

Tennis: Outsiders

On the 21st of Saturday, our coach Mr Chandaka called over two kids from another Tennis group to come and play a few matches with me and my partner Hemeka. This meant that I was given the opportunity to undertake a new challenge, since I have never done this kind of thing in class before. Since I was once again going to play doubles with my partner Hemeka, it gave me the opportunity to work collaboratively with others. The two kids, one of age 17 and the other of age 14 have had far more experience playing Tennis compared to both me and Hemeka. They also practice 12 hours a week according to my coach where as I only practice 2 hours a week (I hope to increase this time later this year). Because of this, playing a match with them was a great learning experience for us since it allowed us to challenge our self and push us to the limit. Both Hemeka and I showed perseverance and commitment during the entire match, which allowed us stay focused and play well. We also learned how to move faster around the court whilst playing and play much stronger, more confident strokes.

The final score was 6-4, with a win to them (we only played one set due to the lack of time). Although we lost the game, I was really happy with the final score because as I said before, these kids practiced a lot more tennis a week than us. To be able to win 4 of the games played was to me a great achievement. My partner Hemeka and I both thought that with more practice per week, we may be able to do much better in the tournaments to come, than we did in the previous tournament.

My CAS Goals for Grade 12

CAS So Far...

It has been a year since I started CAS as well as joined the IB programme. Through out grade 11, I have been able to develop my skills at both keeping up with my CAS Goals and making sure to upload my experiences and my reflections on each of them to my CAS blog. I hope to continue to always keep time for my CAS activities and to keep up with my goals since I feel it was a very worthwhile and helpful experience and that it has helped me to grow both as a person and as well as an IB student. This year I hope to take part in more sporting activities and spend more hours on my creativity activity (drums) as well. As I did the previous year, I will continue to attend all Service sessions (SOS Orphanage) this year as well, and also try to take part in another Service activity. At the moment, I am learning to play drums, attending Tennis practices and taking part in the SOS Orphanage service activity.

Creativity:

• Continue to work on all the beats I learnt the previous year and apply these skills to this year to show that I can learn a further 5, more complex beats. With the 5 beats I have learnt the previous year (4/4 beat, 3/4 beat, cha-cha, mamba and hustle), this would mean that a total of 10 beats has to be perfected by the end of this year. 
• Prove that I can compose a range of my own drum beats without the help of my teacher; this goal is a continuation from that of last years, which I plan to accomplish by the end of this year. The goal is to compose 1 or more drum solos (non-stop drumming with different beats played one after another) and present them via video, accompanied with a reflection on how it I got to that point.
• Play at a few school musical events and/or musical events in or outside school and reflect on my experience and what I accomplished from that experience. Then, compare and evaluate how I was in the beginning of grade 11 and and how I will be by the end of grade 12 in terms of my drumming skills and my confidence in the creative aspect.

Action:

• Compare and reflect on my skills at tennis by the end of this year with the skills I had when I started out the diploma programme.
• Take part in more competitions this year which include contenders with high amounts of skill. The previous year I completed my goal of taking part in a competition organized outside class where my doubles partner (Hemeka) and I made it to the quarter-finals. This year, I hope to take part in that same tournament-which is an annual event. I hope to reflect on my experience as well as evaluate my skills in Tennis and in all the competitions.
• Obtain a place in the podium by the end of a tournament and then by the end of the year, reflect on my overall experience that I had in Tennis during the course of two years and show the transition from how I stood last year and how I will stand by the end of this year.

Service:

• Prove that I can follow the examples of the leaders in SOS Orphanage and achieve tasks with my best effort applied to them. Then, reflect on my experiences and of all the self accomplishments in the service sessions.
• Formulate my own service activity either in school or outside, or take up a leadership role in an already existing service activity.
• When the second goal has been accomplished; reflect on my first days' work as a leader as well as prove that I am capable enough to continue my leadership role.
• Reflect on my overall experience of service work by the end of this year and show how I have grown as a service volunteer as well as how it has affected me.

Tennis: SSC open grade 'A' tennis tournament

On Saturday the 18th, My doubles partner Hemaka and I played our qualifier match for the semi-finals. This gave me the chance to work collaboratively with Hemaka. I have successfully been able to address one of my CAS goals which was to take part in three tournaments, so this makes it 1 out of 3 so far.
We were up against some very skilled players as we had expected. Of course, we did not expect to win against them because the amount of time and practice they put in to the sport is much much greater than we put in to it. Yet we showed perseverance and commitment to the match and improving our techniques as we played. We did lose heavily unfortunately-although coming very close at certain points such as having three deuces  in the first three games. Since this was my first ever tournament, I was under a lot of pressure and while playing, I could see myself making very stupid mistakes that I usually do not do when playing matches with students from my tennis lessons and I also saw my partner not performing his very best either. However, the important thing is that we gave it a shot, we hit the ball hard, served to the spot most of the time and at the end of the day of course, the better team won. The two players we were up against even gave us some pointers after the match to do better in the next one, this was very helpful and so I really tried to take as much of their knowledge as I can so I can use them in my next tournament/match.

What I learnt:
So over all, this was merely my chance at experiencing some real world tennis first hand and challenging my self to take on the pressure. As this was my first tournament, I was very nervous during the match and as I said before, I did not perform the best that I could. However, as we played on the pressure slowly began to fade away and I started to feel a lot more comfortable with the environment. This increased my awareness of my strengths and areas for growth, both in my physical skill and mental capability for improvement. I feel that this is a great achievement for me because I am now able to put aside my fears of all the eyes looking down at me and taking on competitors who I have never met before. Though we lost very badly, We kept our heads up high and soon, even began to laugh about the whole thing. I hope to continue showing dedication to the sport and to always show sportsmanship during a competition.

The tennis court at SSC, as seen from the balcony

Reflection on Grade 11

I joined OSC at the beginning of this year through the scholarship program. This was a huge transition for me because in my previous school, education wasn't as free and very open-minded as it is in OSC and in the IB Diploma program. At the start, I barely had any clue as to what CAS or even TOK encompassed and I had a hard time trying to come up with CAS goals, writing up blogs etc. However, after about 2 months or so, I finally began to understand what CAS really asks from its diploma students.

CAS is about pushing the IB student to take part in activities that help both the student to grow as an active human being, as well as doing an activity that provides a service to the community we live in. Service allows to us to take in to consideration the different religions, the different races as well as the different communities that are in our world and to get an understanding as to how they live their day to day lives; these aspects help us to get out of that bubble we live in and to really see how those that are under privileged than us are living their own. Of course, if the service one takes part in is directed towards the environment, they will be able to understand the natural environment that surrounds us and why it is so important that we must do our best to preserve it. Since I was took part in both 'Recycling and Sustainability' as well as 'SOS Orphanage', I had the opportunity to experience both these learning outcomes.

Action allows us to bring out that animal inside of us! In most other high school education programs, the action aspect is almost completely forgotten and they would focus solely on the academic aspect of education instead. I feel that this would only make us very lazy human beings. Sports or any other action activity such as Dance is something anyone can enjoy and something anyone will enjoy if they remember to give their 100% to the activity that they are even mildly interested in; for me this is tennis, which I have shown interest in over 5 years now. I really like to play tennis because it not only allows my body to push itself to undertake a particular challenge but also. my mind as well. I would never give up tennis for anything, ever because it is simply an amazing feeling to win a match or to know that I gave my 100% to at least make it a good match if I lost. Over this year only, I've been able to refine a lot of my strokes, such that to making me feel confident enough to actually take part in a tennis tournament that will be happening over these few weeks.

Finally, Creativity. Being a very math and science oriented person, I would say that I thoroughly lack the creative side of me. I am definitely not a very artistic person which I learnt through my time in art class over the past few years and so I decided to simply stop it. However this year, with the introduction of IB and CAS, I thought I would try to improve the creative side of me which I know is there within me somewhere! but, through a different medium which is music. Music is something I love and I know that I would actually work hard towards learning music as well as possible if I was to actually do it. That is why I started learning how to play Drums; which has been both very difficult to do as well as really fun to do. As I have said in my previous posts, this learning process is quite slow for me. Nevertheless, I am improving my drum skills even if it is at a relatively slow process. So, I hope to improve on this and hopefully be able to grasp beats much more easily and quickly in the coming future.

Overall, CAS is about doing something important or worth while that could really encourage us to work hard on getting these activities done and in my opinion; I would say that CAS is that one thing, that separates an IB student from any other student and would love to continue doing CAS more and more in the coming year.

Tennis: SSC open grade 'A' tennis tournament

The Sinhalese Sports Club (SSC) is holding a tennis tournament open to anyone who wants to take part in it at the SSC tennis courts. The Junior divisions (ages 8-18) began its qualifying rounds on the 6th of May for players taking part in the Singles matches. I will be taking part in the Doubles matches which will begin later on next week (the schedule is made the day before the matches for the day that follows so I would need to check in with the official website for m matches).

This would be a great opportunity for me to address some of my CAS goals, which is to take part in a tournament as well as try to gain some kind of position in the podium. Since I am taking part in a doubles tournament, this gives me the chance to work collaboratively with others, undertake a completely new challenge, and show perseverance and commitment to try my best at the tournament.

tournament schedule and other info can be found in this link: http://www.tournamentsoftware.com/sport/event.aspx?id=5F193CA1-E3D5-4E35-84B8-FF35350E5C4B&event=10

New Community and Service activity: SOS Orphanage

At the start of this new semester, I decided to change my CAS activity from Recycling and Sustainability to SOS Orphanage. The reason I switched was because; since Recycling was based on service to the Environment, I wanted to try out an activity program that provides service in the Human aspect. This change would allow me to increase the awareness of my strengths and areas for growth, since I would be seeing how I would cope in a different environment entirely.

In SOS Orphanage, we bring the kids from an orphanage and we basically try to teach them various skills such as; Swimming (which takes up the majority of the time spend in Service sessions), English and also teach them about different countries, in order to give them a global perspective and to actually give them an insight as to what is out there, since these kids have never had the opportunity to travel to other countries like we have. I try to plan and initiate activities during the group sessions, such as by making sure teach them new words on one day, and maybe grammar the next. Because there are a large number of kids who come here; we are divided in to separate groups consisting of at least one of us from OSC and two of the kids from the orphanage. This way, we have the chance to get to know them better and teach them much more easily and effectively as opposed to teaching them all together at once. Fortunately in my group, I have a partner, Hyung Suk, to help me in teaching the kids. I am given the opportunity to work collaboratively with him, in order to teach them effectively. My group consists of Me, Hyung Suk (from OSC), Sandaruwan and Madu.

During SOS sessions, we are meant to stay with our assigned kids from the time they arrive to the moment we get in to the pool; in the pool we are to attend to all the kids due to safety reasons. Hyung Suk and I teach them English through ways they like to learn, and this is through drawings. I have asked them draw a picture of their liking and then after that, label all the objects that are seen in the picture in English. Since I can also speak Sinhala like them, I am able to teach them English words quite easily.

After this, we go down to the pool area where we teach the kids some basic swimming techniques. We try to teach them to be confident to take on the open water, as well as assure that they learn all the techniques needed for swimming as well.

I feel that I have made a good decision by joining this CAS activity because it is something that tries to educate under-privileged kids in an international community, we teach them things that are outside Sri lanka and also where our country is in our world. Kids being orphaned is an issue of global importance, and being able to work, teach and simply have fun with them in the pool would surely mean a lot to them, since they are not given as many opportunities as we do.

me (on the left) helping out one of the kids to swim

group photo of the OSC students in SOS

Drums

I have now been learning drums for about 4 months now-since I've started in October. However, during this time span I have only played about 8 hours of drums since a lesson is just 30 minutes long and I can only go once a week. This is a very short amount of actual time on drums whilst over a large time span and so because of this, I have decided to go for lessons at least twice a week and also make them 1 hour sessions each by the next month. In order to this I would have to start lessons outside school and with a new instructor. For my part, I would say that this is showing perseverance and commitment to drumming because I have really learnt to love this instrument and I want to do more.

So far, I was able to successfully learn how to play 4 beats, these are: the 4/4 basic beat, the 3/4 Waltz, the Cha Cha beat and the Latin American Mamba beat. I still have a few difficulties with the last one; such as the drum roll part (this is played after the regular beat usually when changing between different beats), however, I am able to to play the other three beats with no difficulty including each of there drum rolls and I would be posting a video of it by next week during the next lesson or before it begins (I don't have a drum set at home yet). So overall, I'd say have definitely developed new skilled since I have never been able to play anything in drums before.

Looking back at what I'm able to do in drums now, I certainly feel that I have learnt a lot over those short sessions much more than I expected I could and I have constantly gotten better with hand and feet movement after each beat I've learnt, but, I also feel that I have the potential do much better and maybe I will be able find out whether this is true after I start going for extra lessons. Mr Roshan; my drums teacher, told me that he will bring in a few songs to the next class so that I can actually play along to them rather than just playing the beat, stopping and then starting again. By doing this I will be able to gain more confidence and improve my concentration in order to play beats without stopping or messing up.