Instructional Writing

For PE, we had to write down a strategy for a game called Capture the Flag, where basically, you have to get the opponent’s balls from their side to yours without getting tagged or without dropping the ball. To make it easier to read than we had done in our first attempt, we had to write in an instructional form of writing, with numbered steps and they should not be too specific. Here is my strategy relating to Capture the Flag: CTF_strategy_323yoced

What I learned about instructional writing is that you cannot put too much detail in your writing. Otherwise, the reader would not be interested in reading the manual and just look at another site or just give up on the thing that you are trying to get the other people to do. In instructional writing, you can not make your steps too long, yet they have to clear enough to instruct the reader of what to do, which I find is a bit tricky to do.

PE Dance Unit Reflection

For the past ten weeks or so, we have been doing a dance unit for our Physical Educations (PE) class. Our final assessments were to create and perform a modified version of the Gangnam Style dance, with a partner, and create our own version of a dinner dance from the movie Beetlejuice, in a group of 8 people. For the Gangnam Style dance, we had to change the moves from the second half of the song. I was paired up with Johan. As for the dinner dance, we had to create a dance completely from scratch, and we had to choose or make our own music. In my group, I had Spencer, Kate, Maya, Tomoka, Sukran, Mihaela and Jack. This unit was assessed, not only your dancing skill, but also how much you are engaged in the group and how you work as a team or small group.

During our making of the Gangnam Style dance, in many ways, we both contributed about the same amount of effort and knowledge into our moves. Mostly, our process was that Johan would do something random as a joke, and then I put that random move into account. So basically, Johan thought of some moves (almost completely original), and I would figure out where to place those moves, according to the beat or rhythm of the music. We borrowed only about one move from our surroundings, or rather form another group. And since we were both good friends, we worked well as a team and barely had any arguments. As for our dinner dance, I had suggested a couple of songs to dance to, but they had been turned down. What was difficult about choosing the songs were that it had to be a “cliché” type of songs that we can dance to. So finally, we chose to make Macarena and I Gotta Feelin’ into one song. As for the moves, three of my suggested moves have been part of our dance.

I thought our group worked fairly well, but there were some parts of our working skills that needed to be improved. One major part was that, in our dance, there are two boys, Spencer and Jack, who dance something different to the rest of us. Because of that, Spencer and Jack are mostly separated from the people dancing around the table. Maybe, instead, if we had those two and us six work together, we could have suggested each other some things like moves or advice on how to improve. Of course, when we rehearsed our complete one, all eight of us danced at the same time. Also, our time management skills were quite poor, in my opinion. We spent much too long on deciding which music to choose, then we had trouble finding moves suitable for our dance. Because of that, we didn’t have a variety of dance moves and much less practice time than we were supposed to have. Other than that, I will have to say that our group worked well together, and we didn’t muck about so much. We had a couple of jokes, but none of us crossed the limit.

What makes a good performance?

In class, we have been talking a lot about the aspects in a good performance. We decided on many things, so much that I don’t know if I can remember all of it or not, but for this blog post, I will list what I think are the three most important aspects on what makes a good performance. The first one is synchronization. Synchronization means to all be put together into one as a whole, or at least look like it. But I learned from watching the other group’s performance (Johan, Yudai, Raveena, Elina, Zerric, Juulia, Alex and Sena), that synchronization can come in other ways as well. To be synchronized, you don’t need to be so with each other. But you can just be synchronized with the music, and the whole dance will make sense. I also found that being in a formation, like a straight line or a shape of some sort, is also another form of synchronization. Second most important aspect in making a good performance is how much energy or exaggeration you put in your dancing. If you look bored and do it just for the sake of doing it, it would look bad and you would look rather lazy. However, if you put energy in your moves to exaggerate and show enthusiasm, it would look much better and, even if it might look silly, it will catch the audience’s attention towards the dance. The third aspect that is significant in a good performance is the level of creativity put to the dance. If the dance consists of what many people has seen before, then the audience would not be so interested in the performance because they have already seen it. However, if you think of something completely different that has not been used ever (which is quite unlikely) the audience would be interested and would want to know more about what other original moves there are. Creativity, however, is not all about creating something completely knew. You could use something from somewhere else, but adapt it in your own way according to the music and how it will flow, to make it original. For our group to be synchronized, we (the six of us dancing around the table) just did the same moves that go with the music. As for the two boys dancing on top of the tables, they did their own dance that fit the music. As for creativity, we mostly just took ideas from other dances and adapted the moves into our own. We told each other to show some energy into our dances, so I trust that most of us showed energy.

Reflection on Gymnastics Unit

For the past six weeks, we had been doing our gymnastics unit in PE. We have been learning about how to do proper gymnastics moves like how to do a cartwheel, forward roll, backward roll, log roll, and a round-of. We have also been working on the vaults and the spring boards. At the end of this unit we did a whole gymnastics performance including what we learned on the floor and on the vaults. Here is the video for our group’s performance.

I think we did well on the floor routine because most of our moves were quite easy to do. They were only forward rolls, backward rolls and cartwheels. Just in a specific routine which may make it look like a good performance. However, our one was still too simple to get a good enough mark. I think our moves were sequenced and had a flowing routine especially with the routine after the jumping over the vaults.

I think we should have done the vaults a little bit shorter by doing each jump on the vaults once, or as you can see, makes the routine much more longer. I should have worked on my landings since one of my landings was not good and that is the one where I missed the crash mat and landed on the wooden floor. Luckily, I landed on my feet and not on my head or any spot like that or I could have gotten badly hurt.

The most challenging part of the performance was the part where Johan had to stand on my back while I was on my knees because, I don’t want to offend him, but he was a little heavy for me, fortunately the post lasted only for about 5 seconds so I did not have a big problem. In addition, I don’t think I had my back straight enough for him to be able to stand on top of me easily, so next time we have a gymnastics performance similar to this, I should think about that.

The most enjoyable part was the part where we do a forward roll in the air while jumping from the vault. When you are turning around, it feels as though you are spinning in slow motion, and you have completely no idea when you are going to land. Landing from doing that skill is quite hard, even I can’t land on my feet after doing the roll. However if you are going to practice this, a wide crash mat, trampoline or any other soft but big material is required. Otherwise you could hurt yourself.

Even though the performance was good, the practice was also important. Some times we were not so productive during the practice and happen to fool around. One of our members even goes to other groups and annoy them, as a result we had to chase him all around the place. Fortunately, no one got hurt because of goofing around. Next time, I would like to be more strict about fooling around so we get the work done quickly so we have time to evaluate the performance even farther. Overall, we still improved the performance to the point of the final performance.

During the performance, we needed to have some music. We did not have the music ready, so we borrowed Charlotte’s iPhone and selected a song. As you may have seen, the music was too short for our performance. So next time we would like to be more precise and ready with the music for the performance.

At first I was a bit negative of having a gymnastics unit judging from my previous experiences, but when we tried many different things, my mind started to change about the gymnastics unit. I really enjoyed this year’s gymnastics unit, and I am looking forward to next years gymnastics unit. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more.

All cross country time and feelings

As you might know we had cross country practice which is 2.6km. I have summarized all the times I ran in a graph and table.

Here is a graph of all my times

Here are all the cross country times that I ran.

We had to give ourselves a score out of 8 or 10. Here is a table showing what I give myself.

Cross Country time and goals 4

It was my 4th time running around Negishi Park and this time it was 14:05. I was so close to reaching my goal which was running faster the 14:00. My goal is still the same but this time I would want to try and use a few running techniques that my dad taught me. I felt that I ran pretty well because I improved by 15 seconds.

Cross Country Time 3

At 14th October we went to practice our cross country runs. My time was 14 minutes 20 seconds, I beat my last time and I also reached my goal which was to reach the finish line before 14 minutes 30 seconds. I felt relieved that I got to my goal but that does not mean that I am not going on further, my next goal is to reach the finish line in 14 minutes. I would try to improve by 30 seconds each time I reach my goal. However we have a break of two weeks, we have field studies for the first week then we have autumn vacation. So that means that I have run during the autumn break or my running stamina level will go down.

Cross Country Time 2

Today we ran two laps of Negishi park for cross country practice. Today my time was 14 minutes and 38 seconds, after the run I figured that I was faster than last time by 22 seconds since my time last week was 15 minutes. I was happy and not so happy at the same time. I was happy because I improved, but I was not so happy because I was close to reaching my goal which was to run 2 laps within 14:30 by 8 seconds. I have chosen to keep my goal the same because I think I can still make it. Although I have to admit that I was pushing myself too hard so next time I will push myself lighter.

Cross Country Time and Goals

This is my first time running two laps of Negishi Park which is 2.6km. My time was exactly 15 minutes.

My goal is to be faster than 14:30 in two laps.