Surviving CAS @survivingcas - Tumblr Blog

No I’m not too old to play with Lego.... not according to the box anyway.

Somewhere between school and growing up I lost touch with my love of Lego. Over the summer, I found a “Maersk Container Vessel” Lego set that my aunt had started to build years ago and never finished. With her permission I took apart the quarter of the boat that she had constructed and started from scratch. 12 hours and 1500 bricks later my masterpiece stood proudly at the centre of the dining room table and I was in a state of childish glee that I hadn’t felt for years.

For my 18th birthday and for Christmas the only thing that I asked for was Lego sets. My parents were confused and wanted to know why I did want something typical that "normal 18 year olds" would ask for. I explained to them that Lego was the perfect gift for me, I could follow the step by step instructions and create awesome monuments or I could let my imagination run wild and create new, unique, structures that are entirely mine. I honestly did not believe that anything else would have been more entertaining.

I love Lego and I especially love how unconventional it is for me to love Lego. Undoubtedly the best part of my last Christmas before university was the Lego Shuttle Adventure Space rocket that Santa brought me.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Developed new skills

+ 24 Creativity

Creativity 123/50 Activity 157.5/50 Service 128/50

Total CAS Hours 408.5/150

Another Injury... More Piano Time

CAS Element(s) - Creativity

As I mentioned a few days ago, I fell during a football game and got my third football related concussion and had to wear a neck brace for the second time in 8 months. Luckily there was no severe damage but I’m on a one month, no sports recovery period, once again. Fortunately enough, all of my seasons have ended so I’m not missing anything and will be ready to start back in late January.

In the meantime I’ve been using music to keep me sane amidst the stress of all the deadlines for IAs EEs and TOK. I’ve resorted primarily to piano because I play at any hour of the day or night (thanks headphones). Turns out my neighbours don’t like waking up to the sound of a violin but then again most people don’t like waking up at three on a Wednesday morning.

Learning outcomes:

Undertake new challenges

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Developed new skills

+ 5 Creativity

Creativity 84/50 Activity 148.5/50 Service 128/50

Total CAS Hours 360.5/150

CAS Element(s) - Activity

Last GG game and a free kick two years in the making.

Having helped the team to a second consecutive final and with a title to defend I stepped on to the pitch for the last time in a Greengates kit, ready to leave everything on the field. Two mins before half time I was kicked while jumping for a header and hit my head on the floor as I fell. It was a bad fall and it took me a long time to get up, the doctor on site was worried that it was a concussion. After being checked out and told that it was up to me whether I’d continue playing or not I made the decision that I wouldn’t let someone else’s actions decide how I ended my Greengates career. I wanted to go out on my terms. Start of the second half, 2-1 down, I marched back on to the field determined to make a difference. I scored the equaliser within 10 minutes of reentering the game and took the lead with this left footed free kick with 10 minutes left to play. This is a shot that I had been practicing for months in training but as a natural right foot I never had the confidence to take it in a game. This was my last chance though, I knew it was now or never, so I went for it. Unfortunately two late goals from the other team meant that the game ended with a scoreline which we thought we didn’t quite deserve but aside from that I couldn’t have asked for a better way to say goodbye to a team that has given me so much. It’s not everyday that your best friend and co-captain (who plays centre defense) finds herself on the score sheet next to you thanks to a half field free kick (her first goal in about six years) and it’s not everyday that you get a concussion in the first half of a game and score a brace to launch a comeback in the second. All in all I’ve fully enjoyed my time as a Greengates football player and will definitely miss all the great moments that I had with my teammates both on and off the pitch.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Developed new skills

+ 1.5 Activity

Creativity 79/50 Activity 148.5/50 Service 128/50

Total CAS Hours 355.5/150

Even More Football: Pre-Season Camp.

CAS Element(s) - Activity

Last weekend my team and I took our first ever pre-season trip with our new coaches. There were two goals for this trip, primarily, for everyone to get to know each other better and to become closer as a team and secondly to regain the fitness that we lost during over the break.

We left on Saturday morning and returned on Sunday afternoon. Between this time we trained for over 10 hours.

This is yet another one of those unique experiences that have helped me grow as a player and grow closer to my team. Between singing on the bus, running around on soapy plastic, not being able to bring the stick down in the team building exercise, even more singing, by the camp fire (that Mike forgot the marshmallows for), brainteasers and riddles, consuming way too many packs of chips, and finally knocking out on the bus on the way back, I think it’s safe to say that this is one of the best experiences I’ve had as a part of the FutAcademy team and as a footballer in general.

The entire team looks forward to hopefully returning in January.

And as the FutAcademy always has an embarrassing video too of some of our best moments, here’s my awesome weekend from another perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nnqx9GOCt4

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Developed new skills

+12 Activity

Creativity 67/50 Activity 95/50 Service 128/50

Total CAS Hours 290/150

Football Filled Vacation

CAS Element(s) - Service

Over the years I’ve taken part in my fair share of summer football camps but never like this. As an athlete you never really realise how old you are until you find yourself coaching 13 year olds, I was just 13 years old. I occasionally still act like 13 years old. 18 and 13 are pretty much the same thing, right?

I spent two weeks this summer volunteering as an assistant coach for boys and girls between the ages of 4 and 13. 8 hours a day training hard I definitely grew as a player and as a person because of this experience. Having 8 highly qualified coaches around you at all times isn extremely rare and they each have unique coaching styles that I learnt so much from. I think one thing that I’ve learnt between coaching at camp and at school is that you never really stop growing as a player, you can always learn more, you can always improve your game and you can always train just a little bit harder.

While the actual coaching was an invaluable experience that I will always cherish, undoubtedly my favourite part of the camp was FutBase Fridays - cause kickball and slip and slides should always go together.

For your entertainment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFpO3aKsANY&feature=youtu.be (Please note my highly skilled slide into the blue pool at 1:16)

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Engaged with issues of global importance

Developed new skills

+80 Service

Creativity 63/50 Activity 83/50 Service 128/50

Total CAS Hours 274/150

CAS Hours Breakdown

In about 6 and a half months I successfully completed another 82.5 hours of CAS which brings me to a total of 145 hours over the past 8 months. This is how I did it:

C = 47 A = 50 S = 48

Creativity-

Piano: 20 Violin: 20 Composing/Transposing/Rearranging: 7

Activity-

Football: 20 Basketball: 13 Volleyball: 17

Service-

Coaching (helping out): 7 Coaching (Extended Project): 22

Tutoring: 12 Piano Lessons: 4 Make-A-Wish-Greengates: 2 Mathcounts: 1

#CASJournal #part2 #SurvivedIt

Crunch Time

CAS Element(s) - Service

As of today my student has done 1 of the 3 papers that she has to do for her IGCSE. With the most important paper (the long paper) yet to come we both agreed that it would be best to work through some past papers. Most of the questions she got through on her own so I was really only there to clarify any doubts and show where she could have picked up a couple more marks. As expected she is quite nervous but I have no doubt that she’s ready for this exam and will do just fine.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Engaged with issues of global importance

+ 1 Service

Creativity 46/50 Activity 50/50 Service 48/50

Total CAS Hours 144/150

Just A Little Extra

CAS Element(s) - Service

After completing our extended project we decided that we’d stick around and help out some more. Admittedly it wasn’t entirely our decision, upon learning that we would no longer be in charge of training sessions the girl instead that we dropped in every few weeks - to ensure that the new coaches were doing it right. Today when told to run a quick lap for warm ups the girls informed their coach that they had a full warm up routine and quickly got the cones to set up their two lines. They pretty much ran the first 10 mins by themselves going through warm ups, the lap and stretches. With exams soon approaching it’s getting harder to stick around after school, but we have a responsibility to check in on our girls.

Learning outcomes:

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Engaged with issues of global importance

+ 1 Service

Creativity 47/50 Activity 50/50 Service 48/50

Total CAS Hours 145/150

Physics Tutoring

CAS Element(s) - Service

A friend of mine in the lower sixth plans on taking the IGCSE Physics exam this year, after realising that she needs it for college. Seeing as she’s not in ks4 she has no formal teacher and is relying on her friends to tutor her. She’s already had a lot of help with the basics and seeing as her exams are fast approaching my job is to help out with revision and exam technique. Today we worked on easy and clever ways to memorise formulae.

Learning outcomes:

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Engaged with issues of global importance

+ 1 Service

Creativity 45/50 Activity 50/50 Service 44/50

Total CAS Hours 139/150

Violin Duets

CAS Element(s) - Creativity

My 8 year old brother has recently taken up violin and wants to play all the songs that I play with me. Obviously, he’s not exactly at that level yet. I took it upon myself to find ways of rearranging the music so that he can play along.The music has to be simple enough for him to play but not so simple that he gets bored. I’ve found that it helps if he plays the chords, something easy to do but very important and easy to hear when listening to orchestral versions.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Considered the ethical implications of their actions

Developed new skills

+ 1 Creativity

Creativity 41/50 Activity 50/50 Service 23/50

Total CAS Hours 114/150

Improvements

CAS Element(s) - Service

I’m happy to report that our planning worked! The girls had a lot of fun and didn’t even realise that they had done a complete practice in 1 hour. We got our stretches and our warm ups done, then went on to a bit of fitness and agility on the ladder, squeezed in time for some shooting, added in some short control drills and finished off with the girls’ new favourite game - shark attack. I think we’ll definitely be using shark attack often because it’s a fun way to work on control, defence, resistance, positioning and sight. It’s a complete game and the girls loved it. For me it was fun to see them fully engaging in the activities, some were even trying to come up with their own drills on the ladder. Definitely looking forward to next week.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Engaged with issues of global importance

Developed new skills

+ 1 Service

Creativity 40/50 Activity 48.5/50 Service 14/50

Total CAS Hours 102.5/150

The Importance of Planning

CAS Element(s) - Service

After the surprising first practice we came to the conclusion that we needed some professional help so we did what any pair of 21st century teenagers would do - we asked Google. Women’s football, although growing, does not get very much attention globally This became very obvious to us after noticing that all the activities for the 8-10 age range were aimed at boys. You’re probably thinking "well surely all drills must be unisex". To an extent yes. Physically the girls are capable of doing these exercises but in a team sport like football there are other factors involved. One main one being numbers. At that age the number of boys playing football is much greater than the number of girls. I'd hazard a guess that there are about 5 boys in training to every girl. Surprisingly enough the more 8 year olds you have running around, the easier they are to train. At that age the most common problem is positioning: getting into space when you're attacking, and falling into your position on defence. Needless to say that it is difficult to properly organise a 7 a side positioning game with numbers that dwindled between 6 and 11. With this in mind we decided to switch to more technical activities: shooting, passing, control etc. We'll find out soon enough if the girls enjoy it.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Engaged with issues of global importance

Considered the ethical implications of their actions

Developed new skills

+ 1 Service

Creativity 33/50 Activity 47.5/50 Service 13/50

Total CAS Hours 93.5/150

Christmas Break Upsets

CAS Element(s) - Creativity

After finally reaching up to the speed that I wanted for my violin piece, a long Christmas break out of the country, without my violin, did a great job of slowing me back down. This just goes to show the importance of constant practice. As of tomorrow I am turning violin practice into a daily thing, in an attempt to recover lost time over the vacations.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Developed new skills

+ 2 Creativity

Creativity 31/50 Activity 45.5/50 Service 12/50

Total CAS Hours 88.5/150

Coaching Experience - Extended Project

CAS Element(s) - Service

Today I realised that things aren’t always as easy as they look. For our extended project, a friend and I decided to take over the girls football team that we were previously helping out with. With more than 20 years of training experience between us we figured that it would be pretty simple. We were mistaken. See, our problem was that we hadn’t considered the age group that we’d be coaching (8-10) and failed to realise that we had completely forgotten what training was like at that age. We were forced to scratch our initial plans when we realised that for some of the girls this was their first time playing football and we had to work on the basics first. Luckily the girls are attentive and caught on quickly. Planning for next week’s session is going to be more challenging than we thought. Now we see how our coaches feel

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Planned and initiated activities

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Engaged with issues of global importance

Developed new skills

+ 2 Service

Creativity 31/50 Activity 46.5/50 Service 12/50

Total CAS Hours 89.5/150

9 Days, 2 Sports, 3 Teams, 6 Games, 2 Championships!

CAS Element(s) - Activity

This is an adrenaline high I won’t be getting off of any time soon. This week was a hectic non stop week. Coming down to the end of the season for all the different leagues that I play in. I played one basketball game and 5 football games, 1 for school and 4 for Futacademy. This was the first time I ever had to play so many games consecutively and learnt quite a lot about the importance of a proper diet and getting enough sleep. Out of the 3 finals I played in we won 2 of them (both football). Unfortunately we lost the basketball final in double overtime by one basket after a very intense game, our first loss of the season. As a team we’re looking forward to next season so that we can redeem ourselves. Our school football final was probably the most exciting game of the season simply because we had lost twice against that particular team this year and 3 of my teammates from Futacademy were on that team. Beating them by 4 goals to none was a great end to the season.

Learning outcomes:

Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas for growth

Undertake new challenges

Worked collaboratively with others

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Developed new skills

+ 10 Activity

Creativity 29/50 Activity 45.5/50 Service 10/50

Total CAS Hours 84.5/150

What to Do When You Can’t Do Sports

CAS Element(s) - Creativity

This week was a very bitter sweet week for me. I pulled a muscle in my back so I wasn’t allowed to participate in any sports this week. No football, basketball, volleyball or even swimming gala. To say that this was a challenge for me would be an understatement. For as long as I can remember sports have been my escape from hectic school life. It’s how I focus my thoughts, cope with stress and keep my energy levels up. This week I was tasked with finding alternative methods of doing so and luckily - as most people do - I found it through music. I’ve had my violin piece on a loop all week, determined to get up to the same speed as the professionals in that orchestra. I’m still not at the point that I want to be at as yet so I got a little frustrated. I realised that it helped to shift my train of thought slightly so whenever the violin got to be too much I would play the piano line instead.

Learning outcomes:

Undertake new challenges

Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities

Developed new skills

+ 3 Creativity

Creativity 26/50 Activity 35.5/50 Service 9/50

Total CAS Hours 70.5/150

CAS Hours Breakdown

Ok so over the past 2 and a half months or so I've managed to successfully complete 63.5 CAS Hours. This is pretty much a run down of how many hours I did per activity because I'm pretty sure that I have a limit of 20 hours per activity.

C = 23 A = 32.5 S = 8

Creativity-

Piano: 16 Violin: 6 Composing/Transposing: 1

Activity-

Football: 14.5 Basketball: 9 Volleyball: 9

Service-

Coaching: 4 Piano Lessons: 1 Make-A-Wish-Greengates: 2 Mathcounts: 1

#CASJournal #Part1 #SurvivedIt

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