I have had the amazing opportunity to sign up and coach the Cowan interhouse debating team, which I have done for multiple terms. I have coached various year groups, including Year 7/8 and Year 9/10. Through this role, I have been able to interact and build connections with people from other years that I might not normally talk to on a daily basis. Another positive of the role is that my organisational skills have improved greatly from when I signed up, since an important task is to organise meetings in advance and to ensure that everyone has all the necessary information for the debate.
I feel that my personal debating skills have improved, as I am able to listen to ideas and techniques from both the team and other coaches that might have debating experience. Even though the team might not always win each debate, I think that it is very important that we take the feedback provided so we can improve for the next time.
In the Humanities course in year 10, we were able to choose and research a project of our choice to showcase at the final exhibition in term 4. The topic Amelia and I have chosen is Civics and Citizenship. I was very happy when we chose this discipline as there are so many things we could do. We decided to focus on a cold case, specifically the murders and disappearance of the Dupont de Ligonnès family. For our presentation, we will be creating a report detailing a timeline of events and information about all the family members that were involved in the crime. Also, we will have a pin-up board with a map of the area and pictures of potential sightings.
Table Set Up
We have completed our 10 annotated references each and this has helped us to collate all the information we need to construct our project. We are now working on making our report with all the elements in that and we will be creating our pin up board next week. The sheet below is a planning document which helped up come up with ideas about what we wanted to focus on and how we wanted to present. Also, it allowed us to think about what steps were involved and to reflect on some key values which we needed throughout this project.
Planning Document
A few key values that we need are: – Communication – Problem solving – Creativity – Organisation – Collaboration.
Communication is very important as we need to make sure everyone knows what they are doing and when we need it done by. Creativity is needed as we are creating our own project and want it to be interesting and unique. The other value that we need is problem solving, there is no doubt that we will come across bumps in the road, but we need to find solutions so we can continue on with what we are doing.
On Friday 20th of August 2021, I travelled to Optus Stadium with other All Saints Students to take part in the Anglicare Sleepout that raises money to support people experiencing homelessness.
Throughout the evening, we completed a simulation activity in groups with students from other schools. The people in each group had the same character card and needed to try and find things, such as a place to sleep, identification, and Centrelink, amongst other things. I found this activity really eye-opening into the struggles that homeless people face on a daily basis.
To simulate the experience of what it is like to sleep rough, we all had a piece of cardboard to sleep on as well as our sleeping bags, and were provided a light meal for breakfast and dinner. I found the sleep cold and uncomfortable, but it really highlighted to me how lucky I am to have a bed to sleep in at night and food in the fridge that I can have at any time.
I feel that this was a really great event that raised a lot of money and awareness for the issue. I had a really good time and I learned a lot about the daily struggles that homeless people face.
Throughout Semester 1, I did an outdoor education elective called Wind Waves Water. The activities which I participated in were sailing, stand-up paddle boarding, synchronised swimming, and diving. Many of these activities involved teamwork and communication with people that I didn’t know too well.
My first activity that I participated in was sailing. This was a great experience as I have never done it before. We learnt all the parts of the boat, how to steer it, control it, and use the wind to move. At points there were times where we didn’t have much movement because there was no wind and times where we were moving at quite a bit of speed. The times where we weren’t moving much provided an opportunity to teamwork and find ways to solve the problem. On each boat, there were two or three people. One person would be the skipper, another person would be controlling the ropes, and the third person would be the lookout. If you were the skipper of the boat, you would basically be controlling it. It gave me a great opportunity to improve my communication skills and improve my overall sailing skills. The lookout would have to be clear and always attentive. We took turns rotating through the roles and this enabled me to improve lots of different skills, including communication, awareness, and knowledge of how to read wind patterns. Overall, I feel sailing helped me in not only just boat skills, but also everyday skills like communication.
The second activity I did was stand-up paddle boarding. Though this was a lot more independent, it still required a lot of communication and teamwork. We worked in pairs, however predominately only one person was on the water at a time. We learnt multiple paddle strokes which allowed us to move forwards and turn. I didn’t realise how much technique was involved in just standing properly in stand-up paddle boarding. When I was on the board individually, I still had to communicate with other people to make sure that we didn’t run into each other. On a few sessions towards the end of the lesson, we went on the board in pairs. One person would be standing and paddling at the back and the other would be sitting at the front. This was actually a real challenge as balancing was a lot harder. Teamwork and communication were both key concepts when we were doing this, the person at the back would have to tell the person at the front whether they needed to move to balance the board correctly and the person at the front would be looking for other boards to make sure that we didn’t run into them. I thought stand-up paddle boarding was really fun and I learnt lots of different techniques which I didn’t know I would need.
The last two activities were synchronised swimming and diving. Diving was very much individual but was a very fun experience as I have never done it before and we were able to jump of springboards and different heights of platforms. Synchronised swimming definitely required teamwork as we worked in groups of 3 or 4 when first learning the different positions used. Throughout the sessions, we would learn little routines and practice and perform them. Towards the end in groups of 4 or 5, we choreographed a routine with everything we had learnt and chose music to go along with it. Teamwork was heavily required for this as we had to decide what we would do in the routine and would need to count at first to synchronise our moves. I found it really fun as I had never done synchronised swimming before and learnt a lot of new things about it.
I feel that all activities which I participated in throughout the Wind Waves Water elective where great experiences as I have never done many of them before. Also, they allowed me to work with people I haven’t previously worked with and improve my communication and teamwork skills.
