Basketball First Few Weeks

ASA Basketball on Fridays, something I did last semester, last school year, since it was something I enjoyed thoroughly and developed countless skills (developing new skills) and decided to continue it this semester also, as I could further improve on my basketball skills and learn new ones as well (showing persistence in commitment in activities).
One thing I noticed from last year is that, my shots and lay-ups are decent (yet still do need more improvement), however my ball handling and dribbling skills is something I need to improve on significantly (increased awareness of areas of growth and improvement). Thus, for this Basketball semester, I wish to focus on improving on my ball handling and dribbling, but still improving on my other skills (shooting, teamwork, etc.) (planned and initiated activities),
One way I believe I can improve on handling and dribbling is: taking my time, not rushing, and looking around for good plays and open teammates. As often when I have possession of the ball (and not shooting) I often get nervous and panic slightly, overall affecting, not only my handling and dribbling, but even other skills (awareness, shooting, etc.) (increased awareness of areas of growth and improvement). Thus, I believe calming myself is an effective way to significantly improve on my handling and dribbling, and also on my other skills (developing new skills and improving on existing skills).
 Last semester I was always a followed my team captain and his words of advice for plays and such, but this semester I have been drafted for captain for all existing occasions, something that I am not used to (undertaking new challenges). Therefore it is important for me to improve on my role as a captain, as leadership is an important role in, not only basketball, but in life. I have been giving advice to my teammates on how they could improve their game, and how they could make better plays, but one thing I need to work on as a leader is involving my whole team (increased awareness of areas of growth and improvement). As often, it is three or four players on the team making the plays and scoring points, with the other two or one playing more of a support role. Which is something I personally would not enjoy, thus I continuously try to involve everyone on the team (considering ethical implication of my actions), by making passes to each other, different people positioned differently to make different shots, etc., but sometimes I do fail in this aspect, and something I do hope I can eliminate fully.

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Semester Goals

Creativity: For creativity this semester, I hope I can continue on my artwork (showing commitment and perseverance in activities)  and challenge myself to create pieces that are unfamiliar to me, thus explore more of the art realm and push myself out the comfort zone in drawing club. This way I believe I can not only improve my art skills, but also explore various styles of art and different approaches. I also hope will be able to try something new in this year's drawing club and develop new skills, and undertake new challenges.
Action: For action this semester, I hope I can try different sports (undertaking new challenges), such as table tennis and basketball, which are two sports that are relatively new to me to develop new skills). Yet, at the same time, I would also like to continue on a sport I had participated in before later on in the year or semester, such as football or badminton, as then I can continue to improve on these sports.
Service: Unfortunately, I will not be continuing TFC this year, but instead try out a different service:
'Mother Tongue Literacy." Where I hope I can undertake new challenges and be engaged in issues of global importance while working collaboratively with others. Where I can continue to help those in need, in every way I can, and hopefully learn and educate myself on issues, not only worldwide, but also in my community, thus I will be able to understand how to counteract such issues. The main objective with Mother Tongue Literacy is to spread culture and language throughout our community, due to the fact that dying cultures all around the world has become a huge global issue. We hope we can stop this, at least within our community.

Semester Reflection

This semester was particularly good, I had the opportunity to participate and take part in lots of engaging planned and initiated activities, where I learned and developed countless new skills and learned a lot about different topics and areas (such as: sewing).
For TFC (The Forgotten Children) this semester we were able to focus on one of main goals/objective: spreading awareness on the topic of child sex tourism in Sri Lanka (engaged in issues of global importance). We were able to travel to different places in the local area (Colombo) such as: Crescat, the good market, etc. where we tried to hand out flyers about our service and our goals and objectives to different people and retrieve contact details of different people, so we could e-mail them monthly newsletters and different updates about our service (working collaboratively with others). Also, currently, we working on a collaborative video within our group that spreads awareness about general safety, targeted to children.
For action, this semester I tried two different sports: Badminton, and basketball, which were quite new to me (undertaking new challenges). Badminton was during the first half of the semester, which was quite fun and interesting, as it was a new sport to me. But with the help of my coaches and peers, I was able to develop a countless amount of new skills and participate in a internal badminton tournament, which a new experience for me. Basketball is still on going, but is quite fun (and competitive) of an activity, and I have been able to learn different techniques and skills of basketball from players who are much better than me, but overall it is a definitely a great learning experience for me!
Creativity has been quite unique and interesting this semester, beginning off with Surface Embellishment, which was new to pretty much everyone in the activity (undertaking new challenges), so it was quite a different experience from other creativity activities I had participated in, but it was really an amazing activity. Where I learnt, again, many new skills such as: sewing (cross-stitch, chain stitch, etc.), stencil making, t-shirt making, painting, and many, many more, from the supervisors from AOD (working collaboratively with others), which I would have never thought of doing before this activity! Overall it was a definitely a new, but fun experience for, not only me, but everyone in the activity! Drawing club is the activity I continued into the second half of the semester, and is still on going. I have learned more about this activity from my earlier experience with this activity in the first semester, such as setting a focus topic for my artwork, in my case: Pokemon, helping me create much better artwork, and I think definitely I have developed new skills and improved on my art skills and works.

Creativity Update

For this half the semester I decided to rejoin drawing club (showing persistence and commitment in activities) (since I have done that before).
One thing I realized and learned from the last drawing club is that I need to set myself an objective that I can achieve at the end of the sessions. A topic focus that I can continue throughout the whole of the drawing club (show persistence and commitment in activity). So I decided to focus on the topic of 'Pokemon,' as it is something that my friends and I are very fond of, especially throughout our childhood, so I thought it would be very interesting and cool to present throughout it in my drawing. Towards the end I hope to make a kind of 'collage' of different Pokemon on a single A3 piece of paper, to resemble childhood (since Pokemon was a big part of mine).
This idea is very new to me, since I haven't done a collage involving an idea like such (undertaking new challenges), and especially since collages are not very common amongst me (developing new skills).
It is definitely a new experience for me in the area of art, but I definitely feel it will be successful as long as I can dedicate myself and show commitment, and I feel like I can learn a lot of new skills and improve on a lot of existing ones. Overall it should be a very fun and memorable experience!

Badminton: The Last Week

A few weeks ago, after many completed sessions, I finally finished my last session (showing perseverance and commitment in activity) of badminton. Throughout the course of this activity, I have learned and developed many new skills and got the opportunity to experience different things, all within the realm of badminton.
I felt that throughout the course I really improved one a variety of techniques in badminton, in a particular my smashing skill (developing new skills), as before the activity I didn't know how to smash, but overtime I learned and improved on it and how to apply to games through the help of peers and coaches, which later helped score many points during matches. But I still feel I could definitely improve more on this skill; and learn to use more wrist and apply more power in the shot (increased awareness of areas of growth and development). Another skilled I learned is how to serve properly, which is a vital part in any badminton game and something that can score you easy points. I learned that you want to serve as close to the boundaries as possible, to make it hard for you opponent. When playing singles, you want to serve far, as the boundaries are more lengthy, while in double you want to serve wide, since the boundaries are set wider.
Towards the last few sessions, we started playing an internal badminton tournament, which was quite new to me (undertaking new challenges), where we could really test all the various new skills we had learned throughout the course, it also gave rise to all players to be able to play amongst other players we haven't played much against, giving us all an opportunity to learn from others and improve ourselves overall. During this tournament one of my colleagues advised me to improve on my stance and balance, as wasn't able to reach the shuttlecock in time to hit it back, and so I lost quite a significant amount of points due to this (increased awareness of areas of growth and development). But overall the tournament was a really great experience and great opportunity to test my skills in game, play against different opponents, and improve (a lot)!

Chadoo and I playing a match

Action Update

For the remaining month of the semester, I have decided to try out a different sport, Basketball (undertaking new challenges). 

For the most part I haven't really played basketball too much, thus I hope I can develop the basic skills I need to play decently in a match (developing new skills), through the coaching of players on the school's SAISA Basketball team. 

So far, I have been improving on my layouts as I often miss easy layups under the basket. They advised me to take my time and aim for the top right of the box, because often I panic and completely miss the target (Increased awareness of areas for growth and development) (Developing new skills). 

One thing I still need to work and improve on is my dribbling and control of the ball (Increased awareness of areas for growth and development), which hopefully I can take action on within the next few weeks.

By the end, hopefully, I will be able to play decently during a game and present and use some of my newly learned skills.

Surface Embellishment Update

A couple weeks ago, I finished my last session of surface embellishment, which was quite an interesting and engaging course.
We learned a variety of skills (planned and initiated activities), some skills were more difficult than others, but all of them were greatly helpful for the making of our shirts (developing new skills), some of the skills we learned were sewing, how to make stencils, how to use fabric paints, etc. Most of which I haven't experimented with or used before in the realm of art (undertaking new challenges), such as sewing and stencil making.
All the skills were quite a challenge and required quite a bit of practice before it could be applied to our shirts, but one of the more difficult skills was sewing for me (increased awareness of areas for growth). As there were multiple skills and techniques involved in this skill, such as the 'hem-stitch,' which was the basic stitch in sewing and held to fabric together, and was quite easy to tackle. One of the more harder stitches was the 'chainsaw stitch,' which added a design to the fabrics as well, and required quite a bit of practice, but I managed to get the hang of it after a lot of practice and the help of the teachers and other peers (working collaboratively with others).

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For the final product; the shirt, I started off by sketching out what type of design I wanted on my shirt on a piece of paper, and I deduced I wanted something simple, but still would stand out, so I went for a shape type pattern like the shirt shown below:

except my shirt will involve more shapes and such, but still uses the same idea as the shirt above. After I figured out my design I started to make a stencil for this design. Once that was done I glued my stencil to my shirt and painted it with bright colours; such as red, yellow green, sky blue, purple, etc. It turned out really good, especially the colour combinations, but it still needs work and some finishing touches, perhaps with some sewing. 

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