Chess tournament

On this week I helped Mr. Cribb to with organising the chess tournament.
I made a notice for the notice board of the chess club and on Wednesday and Friday when the games actually took place helped Mr. Cribb to record the results. The tournament has not finished there will be more games next week.
On the first day quite a lot people came to play and it was quite difficult to maintain order and record the results. Next time I will need to spend more time planning.

Progress with the ship

On this weekend I had some free time which I have spent on building by model. I have finished gluing the ribs to the keel. The next step was the main deck. It was already cut out but when I assembled the hull to see how the parts fit I found out that it was 1 mm above the place where it should have been.                                This could seem a tiny error but because of the small scale of the model and the fact that I was planning to imitate the planks I decided to correct it. Using a small saw I made long cuts on the bottom side of the deck just where the ribs will be. So that the ribs would go 1 mm inside the deck piece and the deck overall would be lower.

When I did that I started making holes for masts and other deck equipment and cutting out hatches.

Mission statement for our school

On the CAS session last week Mr Parker (our IB coordinator) asked us to think of a mission statement that would be more informative and better reflect the mission of our school than the current one. The best one will be placed on our school's web-site.

I did this task together with Han and Benny and that is what we came up with;
Our mission is to provide high quality internationally recognized qualification as well as extra curricular activities which sculpture our students to be balanced, reflective and caring individuals. Our international community creates an unique multicultural environment which guides our students to be a part of a modern global society.

The competition will certainly be high but I think that our statement is quite good because it mentions the qualities for the IB learner profile and activities that lie out of the curriculum such as CAS.

Chess

On this week and the previous week I went to the chess club where I learned some new things. Mr Cribb explained some strategies, for example he showed us the sicilian defence and a very simple but interesting combination called "the fool's mate". Since on previous wednesday I was the only one who came, we started a game and continued it on friday (yes, chess is not a fast game :D)


Being reflective and looking back I should say that I need to think more of the strategy of the game as a whole. I can analyse the opponent's moves and respond to them, but I need to think a couple of moves ahead and focus on the opening moving my pieces out.

News from the shipyard

I have spent some time on the holidays working on the ship. I have finished transferring the outline of the paper templates on plywood. Then I started to cut them out. That was a difficult and time-consuming process. Even a minor inaccuracy in cutting would lead to a distortion of the hull. So, if I had made a mistake, I would have to redo the whole part. Fortunately, I had to do that only once when I noticed a crack in one of the ribs (the parts perpendicular to the axis of the hull). Then I assembled the hull without gluing the parts together in order to see whether they fit in properly. Of course for the first time most of the parts did not fit well. So I had to slightly adjust their shape and assemble them together again to see whether my adjustments improved the situation. I repeated this procedure a couple of times until each part was finally in the right place.

Then I was ready to glue the ribs to the keel. I had to be very careful because I used super glue that is very strong. It would be very hard to remove a part that has already been glued.

I have not finished the gluing yet (on the photo only half of the ribs are already glued).

International day

On Friday the 19th an International day took place in the school. Earlier I mentioned my plans for it. In general we followed that plan.

We organized the traditional tea-drinking with samovar. Yaroslav prepared a presentation about Russian history and I made a short quiz on interesting facts about Russia. First I showed the group a brief presentation, which was an introduction. Then we offered them to try the tea with baranki and some other sweet snacks. While they were drinking tea Yaroslav was telling them some interesting things about Russian history. At the end there was a quiz. I made it interactive so that by clicking on the answer they could see whether it is right or wrong. (To do that I had to learn a new skill: how to make hyperlinks to another slide in a PowerPoint presentation.)

We gave pieces of paper to every group that came to us so that they could write whether they liked didn't like something about our presentation. Most people said that everything was good that's because they liked the food :) However some of them mentioned that they would like the quiz to be longer (it had only 6 questions) We thought that we should be reflective and extend the quiz. So we came up with a couple of new questions and on the break I added them to the quiz.

Although there were some minor technical issues (on one point the overhead projector turned off for some reason) I can say that in general we managed to cope with all the difficulties. Probably the most difficult thing was to prepare enough disposable glasses and snacks for mare than 50 people but we managed to do this. This International day was a great event and I am happy that we took part in organizing it.

Ship modeling

In my activity plan for CAS I said that I will be doing ship models. At last I found some time to clarify what I meant by that.

I always liked doing something. When I was little, I made numerous things from Lego. As I grew older I got interested in models of sailing ships. I had made some models in the past from card but I always wanted to make a model from wood. So I decided to make one as a part of my CAS program.

I decided to make it from scratch because that is more interesting and much cheaper than buying a kit. I had spent some time on the previous weeks looking for plans on the Internet. Finally I found very detailed plans for 'Santa Maria' (the flagship of Columbus in his first voyage to America). The plans were for a paper model but I decided that after some modifications it will be possible to use them.

On this weekend I finally started working. I transferred  the outline of the paper templates on a 2mm plywood and started cutting the first part out. This it a quite labour-intensive process. All the cuts must be very accurate otherwise the whole hull will be crooked.

Last week activities

There are a couple of things I did last week but didn't have time to mention. First of all I went to the chess club again. Unfortunately I was the only one who came. Nevertheless I still had chance to learn some new things. This time Mr. Cribb showed me what is a 'middle-game'. Unfortunately I didn't make any photos this time.

There is another activity that we started on the CAS session last Wednesday. In groups of thee we were asked to make a three minute long silent film on any theme we want. My group mates and I decided to make I about the two years of our IB diploma. We want to show in this film how we think we will spend this time. We should finish it for our next CAS session. This is a relatively simple activity which can be done by everyone who has a camera and a simple video editing program. It provides us with an example of activity which will count for creativity in our CAS program.
I will post some photos and hopefully the film itself when we will finish it.

Plans for the international day

As a part of our CAS program we were asked to take part in organizing the International Day in our school. We were split in groups and in each group we had to come up with ideas on how to represent a country we are from. The group I am in will represent Russia. We decided to organize a traditional Russian tea-drinking. We will bring a samovar (a special device for bowling water), baranki (a ring-shaped roll) and some jam and honey. We are also planning to dress in national clothes and possibly teach some russian expressions. I will present a more detailed review on our activities after the international day will take place.

Chess club

Today I went to the chess club in my school.
I know how to play chess, but I always wanted to learn how to do it well. So I decided to take the opportunity and do it as one of my CAS activities.

Mr. Cribb taught us some basic thing about this game. For example I learned what is an 'opening' and which different types of them exist. Then we played a game.

Looking back at the game I played today, I should say that I need to spend more time thinking on my next move and strategy of the whole game rather than just the current move.

So I think that this is a good activity for CAS, because it provides an ability to learn new things and develop my skills.

My CAS activities

I must admit that this is not the final list and that I might make changes to it.
These are the activities that I am planning to do regularly.
It does not include occasional activities.

Introduction to CAS

CAS stands for Creativity, Action and Service. It is a part of the IB Diploma programme which I am currently doing. It's main objective is to make students participate in activities that lie out of the school curriculum in order to demonstrate the qualities of a good IB candidate and to aid students becoming well rounded individuals.
Our CAS activities must must achieve learning outcomes:

• Increase a wariness of our strengths and areas for growth
• Undertake new challenges
• Planned and initial activities
• Work collaboratively with others
• Show preseverance and commitment in our activities
• Engage with issues of global importance
• Develop new skills
• Develop qualities stated in the IB learner profile

Beginning of the blog

This blog starts today to record my CAS activities.