About the event
On this Teacher’s Day, 5th September 2024, I performed a dance along with my batchmates in front of teachers of MYP and DP. It was a group dance, wherein we performed on 4 songs back-to-back, filled with enthusiasm and energy for the teachers that have taught us from Grade 7. Later along the day, my friend and I taught Science to a section of Grade-10. More specifically, we planned an engaging session that teaches the students various aspects of science through team games. Overall, it was a fun experience that helped me cater to Communicators Learner Profile in detail (throughout the experience) and developed specific learning outcomes as well.
LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills
In this CAS experience, I faced several challenges. During the dance practice, there were instances where I was not able to learn a particular step, or where others were facing difficulty in learning the dance. Together, we all developed and improved our dance skills to give the best of performances. Moreover, me and my partner had to manage an entire class on our own while teaching, which was a great challenge in itself. We had planned the activity, but executing the activity was a difficult task – bringing the class to a decorum, making everyone listen to the instructions properly, resolving internal conflicts, etc. We developed management skills by combatting all these challenges.
LO3: Initiate and plan a CAS experience
Me and my partner planned the entire session (45 minutes) to teach Grade-10 students Sciences. By creative thinking skills, we planned team games, where the class was divided into three groups, and the activities were to be performed in teams. This also helps the students develop collaborative skills. We planned a game of jeopardy, a buzzer round (where students have to press the buzzer to get the chance to answer to science-based riddles), and a Science Mystery Game. The planning for the Mystery game was the most difficult, as we used our creative thinking skills to make science-based clues, and then asked the teams to solve them. They had to connect the answers with each other to find a location/an object present in school, and get the winning sheet by going to that particular location and finding the sheet. The planning of this session, and the clues/riddles based on sciences was what we planned in this experience.
LO4: Show perseverance and commitment in CAS experience
Perseverance and commitment was shown in the CAS experience by attending all the Early-ins for the dance practice. From 28th August to 5th September, I attended 5-6 early-ins to choreograph and practice the dance along with the group. Furthermore, to plan the teaching activity, I constantly adhered to the deadlines and submitted the plan in a document to the teacher in-charge. Along with my partner, we showed dedication in finding the best activities possible to make science an interesting subject for students.
LO5: Demonstrate skills and benefits of working collaboratively.
Working collaboratively has been the most essential skill required to make the CAS experience a success. In the dance group, there were quite a few disagreements based on costume, songs selection or dance steps. But as this was a group dance, I made sure to account for each opinion and decide the final selection as a group. By collaborating in dance, helping each other with difficult steps, and putting ideas in a positive manner, the dance had proven to be a success. Furthermore, in the teaching experience, I collaborated with my partner to decide the entire teaching plan. We both had different ideas, and after contemplating on the same, we came up with a final plan the includes the perspectives of both of us. Even during the execution of the plan, we made sure to collaborate with each other while leading the class, and divide our roles and responsibilities.
Therefore, through the demonstration of LO2, 3, 4, and 5, this CAS experience helped me develop a lot of skills, polish them, and learn a lot more about how such events/sessions can be organised while collaborating with a large number of people.