CAS GOALS

Last year I began the DP CAS program, taking part in various creativity, activity and service components outside of the school day. Midway through our second semester, school closed due to the coronavirus pandemic causing major changes in my approach to the CAS program. Fulfilling the different components when confined to my house posed challenges that I was eventually able to overcome. Fortunately we were able to start our senior year face to face, but the school organised activities I had taken a part of for years were no longer running. Therefore, for the following year I have to come up with new ways to fulfil the CAS requirements and lead a balanced lifestyle.

GENERAL GOALS

My over-arching goal this year is to develop planning and organisational skills when creating different CAS activities to take part in by myself. As of the first quarter of the school year, in-school activities are no longer allowed, thus, I have to plan and allocate time in order to fulfil the CAS requirements. In order to do this, I need to be self-motivated and push myself to learn how to do CAS activities without supervisors or peers. Additionally, this year I want to focus more on integrating the seven learning outcomes for CAS in my reflection. Throughout my posts, when I make references to a learning outcome I will put it in brackets at the end. An overview of the outcomes by Mr. Lockwood can be seen below:

CREATIVITY

Singing:

Last year our final performance for Senior Voice, a singing ensemble in our school, was cancelled due to coronavirus. It is unlikely that Senior Voice will be performing or practicing together due to coronavirus protocols in our school. In Senior Voice we are assigned different harmonies that combine and overlap in the song. As I am planning on pursuing singing individually at home, I no longer will be singing different harmonies but the melody instead. As a result of this my goals for singing have shifted. My first goal is to develop a greater range, thus, being able to hit higher or lower notes than I usually can. In order to achieve this I will be practicing scales and singing exercises before practicing songs. My second goal is to gain more confidence to sing in front of others individually, this will be achieved through additional practice. My final goal is to get a better understanding of how to read sheet music so that I get a more in depth knowledge of music as a whole and learn how to apply it in my singing. I will be practicing singing everyday for at least 15 minutes, focusing on one song at a time.

Guitar:

Over quarantine, I decided to attempt to learn how to play the guitar using various youtube videos and help from my sister. Although learning the guitar self-taught proved challenging, I want to continue to persevere and learn a greater selection of songs and subsequently more chords. My first goal for guitar is to learn different strumming patterns that I can play simultaneously to chords on my left hand. My second goal for guitar is to learn a song that I can sing while playing it, in order to do this I have to ensure that I get the rhythm correct. My final goal is to create a notebook with different chords and a notebook with all the different songs I learn in order to help remember them all.

ACTIVITY

My goal is to partake in various different types of activity in order to ensure that I don’t get bored due to only participating in one type. One thing that I discovered during quarantine was that I was heavily reliant on physical activity in order to be mentally productive for the rest of the day. Overall I want to do activity at least 3-4 times a week, and at least 3 times before school from Monday-Friday.

Gym:

The gym in my apartment has cardio equipment, free weights and a few weight machines. In my gym workouts I mainly use the cardio equipment in order to warm up before moving onto a HIIT workout. I am planning on going to the gym 1-2 times a week in order to develop strength and toning of my muscles. I am planning on going to the gym on Tuesday, Thursday or Sunday. In these workouts I can choose to either focus on one body part (arms, abs, legs etc.) or do a full body workout.

Swimming:

The pool in my apartment is 25 meters long, therefore, I can do a proper swim training workout in the morning before school. I have created several workouts that focus on speed, cardio or technique but I am likely to start with longer-distance workouts to develop better endurance before participating in specialised workouts and then move into sprints. My goal is to be able to do longer distance workouts in shorter amounts of time and to gain overall fitness.

Running:

Approximately 1 kilometre from the apartment that I live in is a 3 kilometre running track that I run on on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I am not a particularly strong long distance runner therefore it is already difficult for me to run continuously for that distance. As I am running before school I normally only have time to complete the loop once. I have been using the Nike Running App in order to track how far and fast I am completing the loop. Therefore, my goal is to reduce my kilometre split time to 6:30. Once I feel comfortable for the full 3km, I may start using the training sessions on the Nike Running App which dictate when to speed up and slow down making the running more like interval training. Overall running will help me build up my endurance which is important for all of the sports I am likely to partake in.

Yoga:

My mom is a yoga teacher who teaches throughout the week, I normally join her Saturday class that she does for the teachers in school. As I am very inflexible my goal for yoga is to improve my flexibility in my hamstrings and open up my chest to improve my posture. Over the summer I did yoga 3-4 times a week but now I unable to join as many classes, therefore, I need to be conscious of practicing some elements of yoga for a short period of time potentially after my workouts.

SERVICE

ReefKeepers:

ReefKeepers is a student led service group dedicated to advocating for awareness and reducing plastic use within our community and beyond, to help protect the oceans. This would have been my fourth year as a part of this service group but unfortunately due to the coronavirus protocols in our school we are unable to meet as a group weekly. Therefore, Alex and I are planning to take our own initiative to continue with our service regardless of being unable to meet as a group. My goal for this year, specifically for our CAS project, is to work with Alex to print and distribute her “Rosie the ReefKeeper” book that she had created in 10th grade. I hope that we can also raise money in order to be able to give out the books to local schools to help raise awareness in our larger community.