Final Reflection

GOALS	Creativity Action Service
Learning Outcomes	Achieved?	Nature/Location of Evidence
Increased awareness of their own strengths and areas of growth	Yes	Over the past 2 years i have participated in various amount of after school activities that made me realize my weaknesses and my strengths. participation as a musician and sportsman. Some of the areas that i need growth is leadership as I haven't done much of leadership related stuff in the past two years as i hoped to.
Undertaken new challenges	Yes	I have definitely undertaken new challenges in service as well as action. In service going for builds, in the beginning of the service project was a completely new challenge for me as i have never really helped anyone to build a house. For action I did wall climbing as that was a completely new challenge for me and i did it to get rid of my fear of heights.
Planned and initiated activities	Yes	In Habitat for Humanity we planned and initiated a primary school movie night, which was a lot to handle because they were all little kids, it did take a lot of planning to initiate.
Worked collaboratively with others	Yes	I have worked collaboratively with others when i play football on every Saturdays and also in Habitat for humanity whenever we go on a build I had to work with the local community as well.
Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities	Yes	For all of my activities i have stayed committed and I have been on time for almost all of my activities that i have taken part in. Such as Saturday football, All the builds we went on Habitat for Humanity.
Engaged with issues of global importance	Yes	This was something that i didnt do as much compared to the other outcomes of learning, but in my service project we helped to build homes that were destroyed from the tsunami.
Considered the ethical implications of their actions	Yes	Over the past 2 years when representing the OSC, I try to behave and consider the ethical implication that would cause due to my action such as ruin the school name.
Developed new skills	Yes	The past 2 years i have gathered a lot of new skills especially from Habitat for Humanity as it helped me be more punctual, to work collaboratively with the local community even though we dont speak the same language, and also how to use local tools. I also learned how to wall climb and also some new skills in guitar when I was practicing for the concerts that i have played. And finally i developed my football playing skills as i played more matches.

Habitat Build

Habitat Build (service)

For my CAS Habitat we went on a build to Pattayamawatta. This was a place that one of our CAS groups have gone before but I asn't on that trip so it was my first time seeing that place. According to some people who went on the trip before, the place has improved a lot from the last trip and a lot of the houses were completely finished and people were already living in them.

 This is going to be my last build so in the morning Itried to be on time for the build and also i wanted to contribute as much as I an. We started working around 9 o clock and the first job that i had to do was to make cement and transfer the cement and the meson put the cement into the pillar. I tried to work collaboratively with others as well as i tried to communicate and collaboratively work with the local community. I also tried to show perseverance and commitment as I did fair share of work even in both my jobs making the cemenet and also when digging the foundation.

Wall Climbing (Action)

Wall Climbing (Action)

 In order to try out new activities and to overcome my fear of heights i decided to try out wall climbing. I had to miss out two of the days because in one of the weeks I had to stay home and study for my mocks and the other week i had tuition and i couldn't miss out tuition. The goals I set before I went to my first wall climbing was to at least make it to the top in the easiest one. When I went to wall climbing i had to climb the second hardest wall because it was the only one set up. I couldnt make it up the first time but i managed to make it all the way to the top in the second wall climbing day.

Habitat for Humanity (Service)

Habitat for Humanity Goals
Goals I would like to set for this semester for service are:

- To increase awareness of my strengths and weaknesses. Such as being more on time to go for the builds.
- Undertake new challenges, for example take new jobs in the builds such as mixing cement.
- Working collaboratively with others, like always.
- Showing perseverance and commitment, be more on time for the meetings and also builds in the morning.
-Engaged with issues of global importance. This semester I would like to be more involved and engaged in issues with global importance as Service has to do something that is of global importance.
-Developing new skills. I would also like to improve and also develop new skills while i am at the build which would somehow help in the future.

British School Talent Show (Creativity)

British School Talent Show (Creativity)

As for my other band, blood brothers, we were asked to be the guest performers for a talent show organized by the British school. For this concert as a whole band we practiced only 4 times which was not enough for us to play to out best potential. The songs we were going to do were Entersand man by Metallica, Living on a prayer by Bon jovi and Knocking on heavens door. We decided to play knocking on heavens door on the last day of out practice and i had to learn two new solos for this song which was a hard task to complete.

For this my goals were to
- Show commitment and perseverance which meant that i had to show up to all the practices on time and I have to be determines to what i am doing which meant that practicing other than just the practice times, and getting the solos almost to perfect or at least good enough to perform on stage.

- Work collaboratively with other band members, which meant to help them out when needed and also listen to what they have to say about me so that i could improve and this is exactly what i did when we were in practices.

We performed and i have to admit it was the best we have ever sounded as a band. I was really happy with my performance as well as the whole bands performance. I think the whole band was really happy with what we managed to accomplish with having just 4 band practices. I learned a lot from this experience as well and one of the main one was that being punctual is very important in being a successful band.

Battle of the Bands (creativity)

Battle of the Bands (Creativity)

Battle of the bands is a concert organized by Cleft pallet the CAS and it is a competition where 5 bands compete and which is something that "Still Thinking" has being practicing for the past few weeks. How the competition works is that every band gets 15 minutes, and the bands can fit any amount of songs in that 15 minutes. Then the bands have to perform in front of a panel chosen by the cleft pallet group and this panel is usually people who has being in the Sri Lankan music industry for a long time. They judge the bands in a criteria also provided by cleft pallet.

My first goal for the whole concert was to come up with a line up. I had already to talked to Bryce, he has being the drummer for still thinking for a long time and i still needed to find rhythm guitarist, a bassist and a vocalist, as the former band members left the band or were not in the country. So i asked around school to find a bassist and i heard Yo from the grade below was a bassist. So what i did was i told him to learn the songs that i was planning on doing for the concerts which was a Maldivian instrumental song called "your betrayal" by Fasy live and "Ecstacy of gold" by Metallica. Both of these songs are tricky songs but yo managed to get a hold of the two songs fairly easily so my next job was to find a rhythm guitarist and a vocalist. I asked the vocalist from my other band if he would be interested in playing with us, he said he will play with us if he can play the rhythm guitarist, and he managed to find a vocalist fairly easily and my first goal was achieved easily. So the line up was Me on lead guitar, yo on the bass, Prabodhya on rhythm guitar and Ray on vocals.

The main goal in our practice sessions were to practice the songs as much as we can, and to do this i had work collaboratively, with the rest of the band. I also had to show Commitment and perseverance which meant that even with all my school work i had to show up to practice on time and give my full focus onto practicing. From all these practices i managed to also Develop my skills in playing guitar as well as the bass because I learned the bass line that was for the Maldivian song as there are no Tabs online that we can follow so we had to learn the song the old school way by listening.

The Concert day came up and all of us were really excited to play and show what we have been practicing for the past few weeks. We got to play 3rd last. Before i went on stage, the goals that i set to accomplish was firstly to have fun and have a good time, secondly it was to win the competition and play with no mistakes
thirdly work collaboratively  and be as synchronized with the rest of the band as possible.

We played really well and we came of the stage with a big smile on our faces, the songs we played were Ecstasy of Gold to your betrayal and then seven nation army by white stripes. Although we didn't win we had a great time and in our hearts we won so that's all that counts, but i was happy to come second and i think the rest of the band was also happy.

I learned a lot from this experience, like i learned that having fun and having a good time is much more important than winning and i think that i accomplished thee two goals. I also learned to have a little faith in others when working collaboratively with others, because in the practices Yo did make a lot of mistakes when playing the songs but on that night his mistakes were to a minimum.

Habitat Build (Service)

Habitat Build (10th of November)

Background Information

The family we are going to help is the Ranjith Family. Ranjith is the father of two a daughter and a son. The daughter attends school but the son is too young to attend school. He lives in Minuwangoda which is 1 hour and 30 minutes from school. Ranjith fell from a tree and he legs are paralyzed, and he has being lying on the bed for the past 8 years. At the moment the whole family is living in a very small shed, with no walls or rooms. The pictures are shown below.




As you can see from the pictures they are living in very critical condition. They have no walls, and if it rains all the stuff would also get wet. I cant set the goals until we go and see the place we are working at which we will be going on the 10th of November which is a Saturday.





The Build

We were asked to go to school at 7.00 in the morning, and we left the school at 7.30. when we got there it was around 9 o clock and just as we went to the place we got a very warm welcome and we got straight to work.

The goals i set before i started working were

- Work collaboratively with the local people and also with the other people who came with us on the build.

- Learn how to use new equipment.

- Get as much done as possible.

We got to the place and I noticed that the place they were living was in a very critical condition and a place that no one should live, I also saw the house they were building and it was about half way done but still there were a lot of things to do such as putting the foundation for two rooms, and the builders who are already there were building the walls. The job we were asked to do was to flatten out two rooms that were filled with sand and to get the rocks out of a sand bank. In order to complete this as fast and as efficiently as possible, what we did was we divided ourselves into two groups and one group worked on filtering all the rocks from the sand bank and the other group flatten the two rooms. and there were more people working on flattening the two rooms as it needed more man power. I was assigned to shovel all the sand and to put it into a container. As this is not my first build i had some experience in shoveling and from experience i knew this was going to be hard work and something that takes time so without wasting any time i started to shovel all the sand out.  As a team we managed to finish one room by tea break. After having tea and some bananas we went straight back to work and everyone worked on finishing the other room. This room had more work to be done as there were a lot of sand in it. This time we took turns in doing all the jobs and i got to do all the jobs which was shoveling, hitting the sand so it is soft and the transporting the sand and throwing it into the next room which needed more sand. By lunch time we were done with that room and we had done about 4 or more solid hours of good hard work. After lunch we were all very tired and we all were ready to go home but we still had one other task we had to accomplish which was to filter the rocks out from the sand. We managed to finish half of the sand, but because one of the people who came with us got sick we had to end out trip early and head home, i wasn't complaining much as i think i have done a lot of work and i think i have contributed a lot to the family.  From this build as with a lot of other builds i learned a lot, I learned to work with others and also to work collaboratively with the local community.