Sign Language

I have continued to attend sign language classes which I had started in year 11. Going to these classes every Tuesday has been an enjoyable experience for me personally since I'm able to learn a completely new language.

Throughout this course, I'm able to develop new skills since I learn how to say new things every day. For example, during the last few weeks we learnt how to say colors, alphabets and general greeting through sign language. Doing so also allowed us to work collaboratively amongst one another since we normally have periods where we have to come up and answer questions through sign language with each other regarding the new things that we learnt.

A picture taken when one person had to say his name through alphabets while the other person writes it down.

This has been a really interesting after-school activity and I'm hoping to learn a lot more as this activity progresses. 

Recycling 2014

Recycling over the past few weeks has been running smoothly, with everyone getting familiar with working alongside each other and the new members starting to get the hang of the way things work.

This semester, the majority of the members in our group were new to this service and so with our debriefing secession on the first service block, we were given a chance to properly explain how things work.

For this year of Recycling, I was also able to hold a Student Leader position providing me with more responsibilities while running this service. One instance that comes to mind is the day when I had to run the group myself. Being given instructions on what to do that day, I believe I was able to plan and initiate activities with the other members in the group since that was the first day when we begun the process of collecting waste to be recycled.

As I was the only student leader on that day, I also got to know many of the new members and work collaboratively alongside them. I would count that day as a very important one since I was able to get a taste of what its like to lead.

One of the issues our group is currently focusing on is to provide Recycling boxes for all of the classrooms since there have been a few reports of a few classrooms not having them. And so we've been able to find boxes which could be used as a Recycling box and so every week normally at the beginning or towards the end, we spend time decorating those boxes before sending them off for Recycling.

We were also able to make our first trip of this semester to the Recycling center where we normally give all our waste and in exchange we receive a little money.

Overall, its been going great so far. Having a smaller group makes doing the work much more efficient and to some degree, faster.

Below are a few pictures taken while Recycling:

All the boxes and cardboard stacked neatly ready to be sent of to the Recycling Center.

The Recycling center.

The Recycling Room in the school all cleaned up.

Goals for DP Year 2

Being the final year of the Diploma program, I hope to fulfill the following goals:

 I hope to achieve this year is to participate in badminton training activities and further improve my badminton skills. Through this, I would be able to work collaboratively with others while also being able to increase my awareness about my strengths. However, since Badminton isn't available until October I will be taking part in Table tennis which would allow me to develop new skills since I'm not a frequent player of that sport. 

For creativity, I hope to attend the sign language after school activity. This will allow me to develop new skills and work collaboratively with other members who are involved in that group. In a sense it also allows me to engage with activities of global importance since it allows me to develop sign language skills which I'd be able to put into use with those who are deaf. Although this may not be applicable throughout the word due to there being various sign languages, it would allow me to communicate with individuals from Sri Lanka.

I will be continuing with the service of Recycling which allows me to work collaboratively with the other members in the Recycling group and plan and initiate activities in terms of assigning specific tasks for each members. Recycling also allows me to engage with activities of global importance which in this case would be an issue that could be dealt with locally since it allows me to deal with matters of environmental importance since it allows us to take charge of how the waste in our school is being used while trying to encourage Recycling to its maximum.