After several times that it has been postponed, the BIS Winter/Snow Day 2013 has finally taken place today. I enjoyed every minute of running my activity but overall the day left me with mixed feelings and I will explain why.
I have mentioned in one of my previous posts my intention to work collaboratively with Dina and Francesco (I had them linked in that previous post) to initiate story telling activity. Unfortunately, my fears weren't false - we did not have enough time to plan this activity to bits. By nature I'm a real plan-B person so without wasting another minute I sat down and made a quiz presentation that we ended up using today.
Winter's Day went down the hill after lunch. According to the timetable we did not have to initiate our activity after 1pm and frankly, I did not have any idea of what was I supposed to do after lunch. I later learned that I was not the only one in the same situation.
In the end of lunch we were all asked to come outside and wait for the instructions of yr13s. Meanwhile younger students started a massive snowball fight with teachers and I must admit it was a terrifying spectacle. Not that I am against having fun in the snow, I am actually a big supporter of that but what was happening at that time was a complete disarray. Shortly after Yr13s asked yr7-8-9 to go down to the football cage to play with snow(?) and yr10 and us to make our way to the obstacle course. I was genuinely excited to take part in the obstacle course race so when our year group was asked to decide on 6 volunteers to participate in the race I did not hesitate to step forward. The race has begun and I was already on the mark when Mr Giddens (Deputy Head Teacher at BIS3) called for our attention. He ordered the whole school to go to their tutor rooms immediately. There we were given an opportunity to evaluate today's event.
I later learned that while we were having fun around the obstacle course, younger children proceeded with their chaotic snowballing at the football pitch. As far as I am concerned, one teacher got severely injured and this was the main reason for terminating the activity. This was indeed a bit of a disappointment for me because until this point I quite enjoyed the day and I don't want to blame it on anyone. I'm just going to say that from this year's winter day I have learned how crucial it is to plan and organize events before hand and very precisely.
I have mentioned in one of my previous posts my intention to work collaboratively with Dina and Francesco (I had them linked in that previous post) to initiate story telling activity. Unfortunately, my fears weren't false - we did not have enough time to plan this activity to bits. By nature I'm a real plan-B person so without wasting another minute I sat down and made a quiz presentation that we ended up using today.
I have tried to make the quiz interesting and educative and this is why the questions were challenging at times. We found our way around that. The quiz involved two groups competing with each other on who will get the closest to the precise answer to the question. The fact that it was now a competition really motivated participants to get their brain juices swirling and even the youngest yr7s made very intellectual guesses. To reward them for that, last night I have baked no less than 70 sugar cookies to serve after completion of the quiz.
In addition to that I made a playlist of songs to be played during the activity:
Elder children managed to answer questions much quicker in comparison to younger kids so we had to improvise on the spot and entertain them in the remaining time. To deal with that, we have introduced a game that involved participants to draw winter themed objects with their eyes covered. Children's reaction was nothing but positive - we always had volunteers to go first.
Overall, we got very pleasing respond to our activity from our audiences. I often got complimented on the cookies that I have baked and this is exactly what my group mates and I needed to be motivated to enthusiastically initiate our quiz until today's lunch.
Winter's Day went down the hill after lunch. According to the timetable we did not have to initiate our activity after 1pm and frankly, I did not have any idea of what was I supposed to do after lunch. I later learned that I was not the only one in the same situation.
In the end of lunch we were all asked to come outside and wait for the instructions of yr13s. Meanwhile younger students started a massive snowball fight with teachers and I must admit it was a terrifying spectacle. Not that I am against having fun in the snow, I am actually a big supporter of that but what was happening at that time was a complete disarray. Shortly after Yr13s asked yr7-8-9 to go down to the football cage to play with snow(?) and yr10 and us to make our way to the obstacle course. I was genuinely excited to take part in the obstacle course race so when our year group was asked to decide on 6 volunteers to participate in the race I did not hesitate to step forward. The race has begun and I was already on the mark when Mr Giddens (Deputy Head Teacher at BIS3) called for our attention. He ordered the whole school to go to their tutor rooms immediately. There we were given an opportunity to evaluate today's event.
I later learned that while we were having fun around the obstacle course, younger children proceeded with their chaotic snowballing at the football pitch. As far as I am concerned, one teacher got severely injured and this was the main reason for terminating the activity. This was indeed a bit of a disappointment for me because until this point I quite enjoyed the day and I don't want to blame it on anyone. I'm just going to say that from this year's winter day I have learned how crucial it is to plan and organize events before hand and very precisely.
During Winter Day 2013 I have achieved the following CAS outcomes:
- increasing awareness of strengths and areas for growth
- undertaking new challenges
- planning and initiating activities
- working collaboratively with others
- shown perseverance and commitment to cookery
- developed new skills
- proved to be a reflective, communicative, knowledgeable IB learner
Nothing can compare to us painting the giant turtle on last year's Winter Day :D
ReplyDeletehaha true, it was epic!
ReplyDelete