Tutorship

Today I have tutored our french teacher for the first time this term. The first couple of weeks were stressful for Mme Merlet as she had a lot of marking to do but she expressed her wish to continue with our lessons on lunchtimes this term as well. I was very glad that she did because that was an indication to me that she enjoyed our previous lessons. 

The topic of today’s lesson was “Our Body” and I have taught Mme how are different body parts called in Russian. Together we drew a body and a face and annotated all around the pictures. After this we have played a russian version of “Guess Who?” to make the new material settle and to practice asking questions about appearance. In the end of the lesson that ran over 30 minutes I asked my “student” to review what we have studied at home. Next lesson I plan to bring in an image of a woman or a man and ask Mme Merlet to describe her/him in detail.  

Overall I think tutoring is a great service activity to get involved in as it develops organizational and communicative skills. I strongly advice everyone with fluent russian to ask around teachers (especially those who have joined our school this year) if they need help.

Meanwhile I have already:

• undertaken a challenge of making the lessons interesting and educative 
• developed organizational and communicative skills 
• considered ethical implications of my actions 

Drawing Club: Service + Contribution to my project

As I have mentioned in my previous posts, on Thursdays’ lunchtimes I provide a service of teaching Mme Merlet some Russian. Coincidentally, Mr Harper runs a drawing club at the same time. Occasionally though, I got a chance to attend the club and work on my portrait of a good friend of mine - Polina Orlova. This was my first portrait and in my opinion not a bad try. 

Mr Harper’s club has been a great success, judging my the number of people regularly attending it. After a month or so Mr Harper decided to make an exhibition of student’s works and I volunteered to help. Together we have arranged this beautiful gallery along the school’s hall: 

By being creative and providing a service I have:

• developed new skills
• increased awareness of strengths and weaknesses
• undertaken a challenge 
• worked collaboratively with others 
• considered ethical implications of my actions

Gym - Getting to my goal

I have been regularly going to the gym as promised in my CAS plan and I should say that I am gradually getting to my goal of running 5km in half an hour. My today’s result was 4.23km. 

Initially my plan was to go to gym twice a week and purely jog on a treadmill attempting to run faster and faster every time until I achieve my target. However this strategy was changed (and hopefully improved) since now I only jog on saturdays and attend group practices on other days. For instance this week I went to Pilates and ABL (for those of you who don’t know what that is, its a lower body workout). I feel like those 55 minute group classes in addition to aerobics and yoga that I also indulge myself in should increase my 

stamina greatly and consequently lead me to my 5 km target.

As for my aim of swimming under water for 40 seconds - this is not going as progressively as my treadmill challenge since in winter time my skin gets really dry and exposing it to chlorine dramatically worsens the situation. Nevertheless I found my way around this. I will be merely holding my breath in the bath and in end of each month attending pool to apply my developed skills. 

By working towards my goal, developing new strategies and posting about my progress I:

• develop new skills
• undertake challenges 
• increase awareness of strengths and weaknesses 
• show perseverance and commitment to my activities 
• am being reflective, principled and open-minded

Home Made Tiramisu

Despite the fact that cooking was pushed away from my updated CAS plan by other two projects, it still remains something that genuinely enjoy. This is why I today I have prepared traditional italian desert - tiramisu. As always, I am sharing the outcome in my CAS blog. 

CAS outcomes met:

• developing new skills 
• undertaking new challenges 
• showing perseverance and commitment to cookery

Service at Parent - Teacher Meeting

Today’s Parents-Teacher evening at BIS 3 has been a real opportunity to provide a service of preparing and serving coffee and tea to teachers and parents. 

Along with several other IB students from my year group, I have dedicated 2 hours of my personal after-school time to help make this meeting pleasurable for both teachers and parents. My duty today was to go around asking if anyone wanted to have tea or coffee and then delivering the drink of their choice to them as fast as possible. I also showed the way to the classrooms for parents/guardians that were lost. Lastly, I worked as a personal translator for Russian parents with weak knowledge of English language.

I believe that by engaging in organization of the meeting, I have proven my communicative skills, worked collaboratively with others and considered ethical implications of my actions. 

Making a start on my Drawing Project - Video

Updated CAS Plan

The new school term (and a new year) has begum and I thought that I should alter my original CAS plan posted in September 2012 (http://karinasemochkinacas.blogspot.ru/2012/09/my-cas-plan.html)  slightly to give myself an opportunity to try something completely different.

This post will be all about which CAS activities I will be getting involved in, my goals for each activity and the resources that I will use to achieve those.

Creativity.

I have always been more of a drama person rather then the music type or artistic. This is why I have chosen the following for my completely new plan for creativity.

1. Playing Piano. 

This is something I have attempted to do a long time ago but gave up on shortly after. This time I have set myself a target of learning how to play it with at least one right hand or by accompanying my sister Polina (who already has some experience with playing piano). 

The song that I have chosen to play is called "The Hill" by Marketa Irglova from the musical "Once". It has a very beautiful tune that I have fallen in love with ever since we used it in one of our devised plays for IGCSE drama. 

I am giving myself a one month period to learn the notes for the left hand only and three months period to learn it as whole. This is approximately what I strive to be able to do: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nXggeQ11BA 

2. Drawing an A3 Piece.

Art has been something I never actually longed to because I thought that I do not have that patience to sit for hours just drawing. This time I have made up my mind to produce a finished piece of drawing of A3 size in three months time (taking that I will be drawing for at least an hour every weekend).

This is the image that I have chosen to recreate: 

My first step to achieve this goal would be to research one point perspective art, tips and tricks for that as well as the use of graphite pencils of different thickness. 

Action.

1. Yoga - Moving on to Intermediate.

I have been practicing yoga systematically every sunday since September 2012. I have also made a video of myself demonstrating some of the poses that I have been doing during my practices most of which were for beginners. 

A couple of weeks ago I have stumbled upon an article in Women's Health e-magazine that was focused on the classification of yoga asanas. There is a whole selection of different poses broken down into three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced. 

This term I will be aiming to be able to do the majority of intermediate poses, presented here by attending my practices with a teacher and revising what I've learnt at home. 

2. Gym - Treadmill Jogging and Pool.

Just before the New Year I have posted about my first workout at the gym and I intend to continue doing this.

I anticipate myself attending Kimberly Land fitness center on average twice a week to achieve a goal of jogging 5 km on a treadmill in 30 minutes and being able to hold my breath underwater for at least 40 seconds. Just to give you a idea of what I am already capable of doing: I can current jog about 3-3.5 km in half an hour and hold my breath for around 25 seconds almost suffocating myself. 

Service.

For Service part of my CAS I am going to keep maintaining what I have been doing since September. That is:

1. Recycling. 

With recycling I am hoping to get not just my family but also other people who live in my apartment block to recycle with me. I am going to achieve this by setting up a box in the main hallway on the ground floor where people would be able to place their magazines, newspapers and other trash paper for me to recycle once it gets full. If that does not go too well, I will attempt to implement this in our school. 

2. Teaching Russian to Mme Merlet.

I have been very much enjoying staying behind after our period 5-6 french lessons every Thursday to teach Russian language to Mme Merlet and I will continue to do that this term. 

Extra.

In addition to what I have mentioned above, I will be indulging in other small CAS activities that I will get an opportunity to do.

I am also hoping to get a chance to test my organization skills by engaging with planing and initiating of major events in our school including Winter day, Saint Valentine's Day and Sports Day. 

Ice Skating Video

One of the most popular winter past times is ice skating and there are plenty of rinks all around Moscow. One of the most prominent places where you can indulge yourself in skating is the "GUM Ice Rink" on the Red Square. This is where I spent today's evening. 

I won't go into much detail about that experience because I have already done that in this video: 

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Service at the Ice Rink

Today my siblings and I went to an ice rink to skate. When we came to the rink we were faced with two problems. Firstly, my sister and I did not have skates and we couldn't rent a pair either. Secondly, after the last night snow fall the rink was covered with a thick layer of snow which made it very difficult to skate on, especially for small children.

My sister and I immediately identified this as a great service opportunity. We asked for shovels and progressively cleaned up half of the rink while our brother was enjoying skating. This activity involved physical work (which potentially makes it an active activity too) and I got tired easily but didn't stop until there was enough of cleared ice for all of the people present at the rink to skate on. In addition to that I also helped out kids who couldn't skate well by picking them up from the ice and attempting to teach them how to ice skate.

I thought that both of my service activities were good for CAS and what's more important didn't feel like a drag at all.

CAS Objectives:
- developing new skills
- undertaking new challenges
- considering ethical implications of my actions
- being communicative and caring