Dance Club

We've had to put our latest medley on hold,not only because we have had a few new members joining us but also because we have not even recorded the last medley yet :/
Teaching has been quite difficult for me. I did not realise it would involve so much repetition but lucky for me, the 'students' are actually quite decent dancers and they show difficulty where it is expected. We've managed to rehearse about 2 dance routines so far: Salsa and Move Your Body.
We're much more further than we thought we would be.
For our next plan of action, I intend on ensuring that we film our previous medley as well as our- and I use the term loosely- salsa routine.


Learning Outcomes achieved:

Undertaken new challenges.

Planned and initiated activities.

Shown perseverance and commitment in activities.

Developed new skills.

The Return of Monday Sports Club

Since Mr. Gray left us, the sports club which was held every Monday was put on hold until about 3 weeks ago when Mr. Short asked if we would not mind reviving the club for a number of students whom he thought would benefit more from it. So of course we agreed but the first week proved to be quite disappointing as no one actually showed up. But the second week,we had 2 new members and last week, we had 4 new member making it a club of 8 including the 2 teachers and the IB students. Overall, attendance is not much of an issue. We will just have to make do with those we have.
We play hockey, basketball and football as well. I'm fine with playing basketball but the other two are so hard. There are a lot of fast breaks in hockey and football but not as much in basketball. This is probably because so far, we have only played half-court. And the coordination needed in hockey when hitting the ball can be quite frustrating especially when you are on the losing team :P
In,football though, my feet seem to have a mind of their own and keep on tripping all over the ball or aiming in the wrong direction. Honestly speaking, I prefer being a goalie in hockey and football. I am much more skilled at blocking the ball when I feel like it is about to smash my face.
I plan on trying to work on my foot work for next term which ,hopefully, will not be as embarrassing as it is now.

Learning Outcomes achieved:

Increased their awareness of their strengths and areas for growth.

Undertaken new challenges

Worked collaboratively with others

Developed new skills.

Halloween/Bake sale

For the halloween dance, I helped out by carving pumpkins. I actually enjoyed it as I got to try out something that I'd never done before. I managed to carve about 2  big pumpkins and I had to use quite sharp knives so that was fun :D
It was quite difficult to find a way to cut through the pumpkin and it took me a while to come up with a method whereby I could successfully do so . It sort of aggravated me whenever I did not ave smooth edges to I took quite some type going over my carvings trying to get it to smooth out.

There was also a bake sale at lunch time on Halloween and I baked a cake without using cake mix for the first time. It was quite tiring mainly because I did not want to use an electronic mixer so I mixed everything by hand. I went for a simple vanilla cake as I did not want to try something more extravagant then mess it up.
The recipe was quite straightforward and simple:

Ingredients:

• 1 and a half cups Milk
• 3 Eggs
• 3 cups of Flour
• 1 teaspoon of yeast
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar
  
• 2-3 cups of white sugar
• 450 g of margarine

Method:

• Preheat oven to 180° C 
• Mix sugar with margarine until smooth and fluffy
• Add eggs one by one and mix
• Sieve flour into mixture with yeast and vanilla sugar
• Add milk
• Mix either by had or with electric mixer until batter is smooth.
• Place into baking tin then into over for 30 minutes + or until a knife can be put into the cake and it comes out clean.
  
  The cake actually came out better than expected and it is definately something that I would consider doing again. I realise that there are two cakes in the beginning but unfortunately....I lost track of time when baking the second one and....basically it burnt. -_-

           

Dance Club

I realise that I have been apologising more often than I should about late posts but...once again,due to unforeseen circumstances,I was unable to post for quite a while so now I'll just dump a whole load of what has been going on.

In our dance club,we decided quite a while back that we need to be practicing different forms of dance because it would be fun to learn something new. With our Salsa Week having just passed, we thought we would now dance tribal house/ Southern African house.
This could prove to be quite challenging as my moves are quite limited and just consist of small movements which only last for 30 seconds max before they begin to become repetitive which is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. We have not yet decided whether we would like to dance to "Kwateni Omnona" by Gazza or to "Come With Me" by Homeboyz. The only problem with "Come With Me" is that it's about 7 minutes long so we would have to select which part of the song to dance to and for how long and etc.
 We also have a new member in the club so we've gone back to teaching "Move Your Body" by Beyonce as a warm-up. Other than that,all that is left to do is to video-tape our dance routines and finally post them.

Michael Jackson!

I recently became rekindled my obsession for  with Michael Jackson's "She's Out of My Life" because of the emotion that Michael is able to evoke just by his voice alone. I believe the simplicity of the song assists in setting the whole atmosphere of empathy that he portray and soooo I decided that it would me feel SO much better if I can manage to sing his song with accompaniment before I get tired of the song. I have no idea when that will be but hopefully before Christmas.

International Day

The concert actually went quite well ...besides the order that the contestants were put in. The stage was elongated so that the drums as well as the piano could fit on it and it actually looked pretty decent. This year, people could see the stage much more clearly as the stage was placed right in the centre of the gym so that the chairs were placed in a semi-circle shape around the stage. The practices also went smoothly except for when I had to go around looking for contestants that had forgotten their scheduled time.
Apart from that, our performance was pretty decent. I was really nervous and my hand was more shakier than my voice but it felt good performing. It is definitely something I would not mind doing again.
Videos will follow very soon ;)

Update

I apologise in advance for the long post that is about to follow. Unfortunately I have not had any access to the internet for a while.

Dance Club
We have been a little low on memebers lately so last week,we decided to have a special 'Salsa Week' where we would learn a new dance genre that is completely different from our usual dance routines. We advertised this via flyers in the school registers and announcements as well.  It took us about 2 weeks to learn the routine which is being done to the song "Yo No Se Manana" (sp) by Enrique Iglesias. I actually found the routine quite challenging as it involved a lot of quick,fast and smooth movements. Most of which I am not capable of. Not to mention the hip movement involved :/
Either way it was definitely a fun experience.
Today we had the club and only had 2 members join us. It was quite lower than we expected but we went ahead with it anyways as we did not want to disappoint those that had attended.
We only managed to teach half of the dance because we ran out of time but it was fun! I actually enjoyed teaching and demonstrating the dance. It was agreed upon that the Salsa week will be pushed into the week when we return to school after the half-term. Other than that...I hope that more people will be able to join :)

International Day- Concert

Wow. Well the progress with international day has been quite drastic. I shall start with the simpler things i.e my performance. We had a lot of difficulty finding a song that I could sing to and David could beatbox to. We tried "Shake It Out" by Florence and the Machine then we tried "I believe" by Yolanda Adams and they were both ridiculously challenging to adapt to. Thennnn I chose "Breaking the Law" by Emeli Sande and we asked Ho Geon to play the guitar. So far, to the few that have heard us,we sound quite decent. I feel as though I need to strengthen my voice though as well as project it more because of the long note that comes along in the chorus. Hopefully this won;t be a problem when we perform tomorrow.
Now, the concert's organisation itself involved finding each and every contestant and asking what they were doing,with who and what they would need to perform. I was quite pleased with the job of assisting in organising the concert as I have my experience from the Talent Show in June which I believe was quite successful . This academic year however, I had to collaborate with Mr. Russell seeing as it is the schools's tradition to have the music teacher organise the concert on internaitonal day.This was difficult as Mr. Russell only comes to school On Mondays and Tuesdays. This was especially frustrating today when we had to organise the seating arrangments and the stage set-up without him being there even though he evidently had a few suggestions to be made. I shall not get into detail about this but we decided it would be safer if we just waited for him to come in tomorrow but in the meantime, we tried to fix a few things, such as the lack of space for the sound assistants and performers on the stage and dancers that will be dancing of the stage. We fixed this,sort of, by moving the stage forward and adding extra squares to make it bigger but anywhoooo...we also had to deal with the decorations. Mr. Russell asked me to make a few flyers to ask students to bring in the flags of their country. So I put some in the registers and on the notice boards asking for the flags to be in by today (Thursday) and only like..4 people gave them in so we all split up and made announcements in the class to ensure that more flags would be brought in tomorrow.
Alyona and Polina stayed behind after school and hung up the flags in the gym and in the hall and we are all very grateful to them for that :)
Other than that...all we can do now it twiddle our thumbs and wait for tomorrow.
Bye.