This semester during Muir we learnt about the techniques that are needed for snorkelling. Along with learning the process needed for snorkelling I improved my capabilities that I will need later in life. This includes improving my leadership abilities, my organisational skills along with upping my collaboration.
There isn’t much special gear that you need for snorkelling. A gear that is needed though is a snorkel mask. It protects your eyes and your nose from the seawater and provides you with a clear view underwater which would be cloudy otherwise. A dry snorkel enables you to breathe underwater without raising your head. The last piece of equipment that is needed is snorkelling fins. It allows you to propel yourself in water with more speed, making it easier to navigate between reefs and shallow waters.
A key concept that is needed to snorkel safely in a group is the acronym of S.A.F.E S.N.O.R.K.E.L. This acronym helps us to always stay safe while we are out at the beach. Along with keeping us safe it also taught us to keep the area that we are in clean and safe.
Coogee was a great first experience for snorkelling. Although I had gone snorkelling before this was the first time that I had felt confident enough to do a duck dive. So I duck dived underneath this piece of wood, I was very proud of myself afterwards. The next few trips to Coogee I felt more confident so I did more duck dives down to the bottom of the ocean. Overall coogee was a great expierence for me to improve and become more confident in my snorkelling skills.
Rottnest was the final time that we did snorkelling however it was in water that felt a lot more open, and therefore had more waves and was harder to snorkel in. However because of all the time that we had spent at Coogee I had already improved my snorkelling
Organisation: At the start of the course, I was wanting to improve on my organizational skills, as this is something that I was struggling with. I started of the course pretty poorly as I had forgotten my thing on the first swim that we were going to do in the pool. I then relized that I would need to set reminders on my phone along withs notes on what I have to bring. So I set an alarm to just before we had to leave to go to school to remind me to get all of my things that I needed. From then on with all of my trips to Coogee and the trip to Rottnest I had my things that I needed. This use of setting reminders is something that I have brought forward into all of my subjects.
Leadership: I have improved my leadership ability tremendously over the course. We started of doing some teambuilding games that we had to make up and then explain to the group. Cooper and I was in a group and we did a game where to had to pass a hula-hoop through your group. I feel like I was speaking confidently, however the game we had choose most people had already played so it was easy from me. During our trips to Coogee I made sure I always said something during the brief however I didn’t take on a large part. At Rottnest I decided I would do the signals for our brief, I felt like this was a large role in the brief so it would be good for me to do. I am happy in how I spoke, and I was confident while I was speaking.
Collaboration: This is something that I found that I will need to develop more into the future of the course. For a majority of the course I mainly stuck within my friendship group for who I talked to and who my snorkeling buddy was. While we were over at Rottnest I decided that I would try and extend this. I started by hanging out with a few more people from my year, then by the end of the day I was more comfortable in hanging out with those in the other year groups. Although this is still something that I will need to keep on improving through the next courses, archery and orienteering.
Leave no trace is a very important in ensuring that the environment that we are living in is always kept safe and is always kept with very little rubbish. We want to do this so that for future generations the beautiful place that we were at, the basin will always be kept beautiful. And that the animals that live the will always stay alive which is what we want for our ecosystem.
