Newspaper Issue #1 of 11.11.13.

This is indeed so, we have finally been able to issue our very first official school newspaper, and it has been both a thrilling and busy day for us as we tried to coordinate everything in order to deliver a good impression of our cause, and most importantly, have people enjoy our work. As stated in a previous post, we are planning to make the paper a bi-weekly edition, although if we struggle with the timings we may revert to a tri-weekly scheme. 

Front page

For the primary edition, we have been able to gather a wide variety of gripping articles from students of differing ages, all the way from year 7 to year 13. Our issue contained an editors' note reflecting the purpose of our enterprise and thanking the students for taking time to read our newspaper, although this notice was placed on the final page whereas usually the editor's column goes on the front page, so for the next issue we may consider transferring it. The creative writing showcase consisted of three very diverse pieces: we had a descriptive article on snow, a poem, and a story in many parts which we will publish consecutively in every issue. We had informative writing on skating opportunities in Moscow, along with a captivating article commenting on the death of a fascinating artist named Lou Reed. Two entries constituted the list of so-called 'personal' contributions: a confession of a student on their love of singing, and the expectations of a young year 7 upon their arrival in high school. We've had some discussion-based writing on the matter of celebrating disparate occasions, an encouraging article written by Cveta herself asking students and teacher to join in the Movember phenomenon to raise funds for charity, and a book review produced by a devoted reader. A few advertisements went up concerning the Art and Literature Expo which is being organised by Cveta yet again, although I have volunteered to write a welcoming entry piece boosting people to attend it, and a comic strip competition hosted by the newspaper. Finally, we have included a 'guess the teacher' rubric which features images of teachers at a young age, an art focus commenting upon recently produced school artwork, and a crossword, all of which has been formalized by Cveta. 

First double page

Unfortunately I was off sick for the whole of last week and therefore unable to aid Cveta with many preparations for issuing the newspaper; this time I shall most certainly put my best effort into helping her with this grand project of ours. Due to lack of coordination on our behalf, we ended up printing the papers on Monday morning, although that was when we were supposed to hand them out; ultimately, we distributed them during class which was incorrect for we disrupted lessons, and this is why next time we shall prepare the copies in advance so that they can be administered for the long registration period on Monday.

Second double page

Another significant improvement that should be made is to ensure that our supervisor examines the final draft of the paper before it is issued, so that if any problems occur concerning the material, then logically the teacher and not the students will be held responsible; for this issue we ended up printing it without finalizing the content with our main editor, which could potentially cause some concern, hence next time we shall agree on everything prior to setting the edition into stone.

Final page

Albeit I believe that we have done a good job for a first ever issue of a complete newspaper; we may have experienced some trouble with formatting it since the software that was being used wasn't acting exceptionally user-friendly, however that is a minor issue that could easily be averted next time. What's most important is that we have tried to adopt a more liberal approach, allowing our correspondents to compose on a topic of their choice, yet we were successfully able to edit the material so that we excluded some inappropriate or provocative parts (which is a very important ethical issue, especially in our multinational institution), although we didn't fully deface the work submitted to us. Both me and Cveta look forward to the following issue and we shall work hard to improve the quality of our service, hopefully making the newspaper more appealing every time. 

Expanding our newspapers' benefits

That's right, just as the title suggests, Cveta and I have decided to extend our newspaper to not only cover its natural purposes of delivering information to the eager readers, but to also enable us to be more ecologically-friendly and well-aware of the surrounding world. With the additions, we hope to encourage the population of our school to seek and use any opportunity they can to aid our planet and its peoples.

The first advancement is the idea of recycling the newspaper; it may seem trivial, albeit we will be issuing around 200 copies of about 4-5 A4 sheets, which would otherwise simply end up in dustbins when that significant amount of paper could be reused with a benefit to the environment; moreover, we will ask both the students and the teachers to contribute to the general pile with newspapers brought in from home, for it is evident that there must be allegiant readers in a fair few families. The collected material we will then transfer to the nearest recycling facility, with a small portion being donated to the art department for further creative usage. To make the compiling process more efficient, I have decided to make a special box which will be used as a drop-off facility: I began with some plain cardboard which I then decorated with old newspapers (I believe that too counts as recycling...) and a fancy label welcoming people to dispose of unwanted material.  

The attractive label

Overall view of the box

The other change that we have decided to implement into our work is a fund-raiser: we realised that it is of vital importance for the school as a community to donate money to those in great need, and gathering finances through our service seemed like a workable idea. As of right now, we don't have a concrete charity or cause that we will be collecting the funds for, albeit we plan to find one as soon as possible; we chose to set up a coin jar in the hallway of the school, next to the recycling box, to attract greater attention from the students and the teachers; through the newspaper itself we shall alert them both of the significance of our enterprise and our desire to get everyone involved. The jar has been designed and renovated by me in attempt to make it noticeable and potentially capable of collecting large amounts; as a sort of an encouragement, I have placed a few coins and a note into it so that it wouldn't appear empty upon placement.

Frontal shot of coin jar

Piggy-bank style opening

I will further keep updating information concerning both the recycling and fund-raising activities in order to create a legible account of their progressions. We may add a few more tweaks to the newspaper because we see it as a great opportunity to expand our knowledge of the school population and involve everyone in various beneficial events.

Flickr beginnings

A while ago I finally decided to commence a photo stream through the use of a famous website, flickr.com; I have become interested in photography only recently, and in order to somehow enhance my ability to take reputable images and to turn my constant camera shots into something more fruitful, I chose to set up an online image bank so that people could view my work and hopefully become interested in what I do.

As of right now, my page contains only a petite amount of images, albeit I plan to expand it to house tens of pictures which will reflect my surroundings as well as my personal feelings. Instead of just uploading photos in a disorderly manner, I will work towards creating streams of related pieces corresponding to, for example, the season of autumn, or a certain place I may have visited; that way I hope to make my page more alluring for those interested in photography. In order to expand the amount of material available for editing and display, I shall ensure that my camera will accompany me almost everywhere I will go, and I intend to offer the services of a photographer at different events being held both within and outside my school. 

Screenshot of my page

My photo stream can be viewed here; I hope to update it regularly, and I shall post new entries on my thread concerning any developments that I may make or any projects I may become involved in. I will also track what will hopefully become a development in my image skills so that I will have something to show for my work.

Newspaper agency meeting

Today at lunchtime me and Cveta held the very first meeting of all those pupils who were willing to get involved in our project; many of them have approached us in the hallways asking if they could participate whilst the others were recommended to us by the English department as excellent students. We had a total of 9 volunteers, which for me is a significant improvement from the one lonely person that I have in French club. 

The purpose of this meeting was to become acquainted with our participants and to introduce them into the concept which we have developed, for running a school newspaper is rather challenging because deadlines have to be met and the content has to be moderated, just like it would be with a global newspaper agency. We drew up a set of ideas on the whiteboard so that everyone could form a better understanding of what it is that we will demand of them; afterwards, in order to show greater care towards our fellow 'staff members', we gave them the freedom to chose one of the topics on which they would like to compose an article. That triggered great enthusiasm amongst everyone, and it had been very pleasing to observe for we weren't expecting such a rush of excitement on what was the very first day. 

Our assemblage

On the whole, I think that our meeting had gone relatively well for a first experience because we weren't exactly familiar with how to manipulate a gathering of people, all of whom are willing to contribute at the same time and find it difficult to concentrate for too long. We managed to engage them, as it seemed, which was probably the main target for us; furthermore, we were able to allocate tasks for the upcoming issue, the deadline for which had been postponed to the 11th of November. We have gathered enough material to work with, and hopefully what we have collected will make a decent first publishing that will appeal to our rather fastidious audience. 

We asked a fellow IBDP student who had attended our assembly if they had any suggestions or evaluations to offer upon the organisation of the matter, and they have told us that next time we should invest greater effort into systematising our narrations since some people tended to talk over us and pay limited attention overall. Also, we had forgotten to ask for people's emails, which was very inconvenient for we will require them to monitor their progression with the articles; this is why next time we have a meeting, we should plan it more thoroughly in order to avoid fatuous mistakes occurring and to make the outcome of the discussion much more effective. 

Ultimate decisions for first issue

French club returns

After the half-term break we have indeed decided to continue with our club as it seems to be assisting our only student greatly, and we hope to further extend our service by encouraging more pupils to attend the activity; after all, with a larger number of participants it will be easier to conduct the tutoring for we could organise them into groups for the completing of certain tasks which would make the sessions more interactive and potentially more rewarding.

Unfortunately, our student has been absent today and we were unable to run the club, although I have prepared some worksheets for them beforehand (courtesy to languagesonline.org.uk): the handout consists of two sheets on the simple future, one of which is a reminder of how to form that tense and what exceptions apply to it, whilst the second sheet contains a number of exercises which help practice its use. I was supposed to have given out this information to our student about a week before the holiday, which shows the lack of consistency in my contribution to the club; this is certainly an area in which I will have to make concrete improvements for I not only want to aid Natalia, but I also wish to support the one participant we currently have so that they can apprentice greater knowledge which will expectantly benefit them during their exams. 

First sheet of handout

Second part of handout

Despite the fact that I try to provide our pupil with worksheets to be used for practice and future references, I might try to integrate some of my own examples into the exercises instead of just using the ones provided by the language website which I constantly refer to; in that way I will be developing my own skills in French by building sentences which pertain to a given grammatical rule. In addition, I could share some of my older work with our student so that they can obtain a better understanding of the way the French language works at IGCSE level. We also ought to give them some sort of tests occasionally in order to determine their progress and identify areas which may require greater attention; once they complete the worksheet on simple future, we may give them a small assessment on the two tenses which we have covered in the past month for it will be very relevant to our current studies. 

Swimming day 1

Today I was finally able to attend my gym for a swimming session, which had been previously mentioned on my CAS plan for this term. I should've managed my time better in order to involve myself more actively in this sport for it is not only a very good way of exercising, but is also an area in which I could improve greatly to achieve worthier results. After all, I would love to develop my skills in swimming since I really enjoy this sport, and find it more of a refreshing recreational activity rather than an obligatory workout. 

This time around, I decided to revert to my most comfortable style which is breaststroke; I did 1.25 kilometres in about 42 minutes, which was slightly disappointing since I was expecting to complete that distance in at most 40 minutes, since that is the average time I tend to require. The fact that in this session it look slightly longer shows that my stamina has reduced due to very flimsy visits to the gym; consequently, this is definitely something I will have to improve upon if I wish to continue evolving my swimming abilities. Although I was surprised at how I could quite freely maintain a constant speed without having to pause for more than one rest sometime in the middle of the course; I guess that, after all, not all hope is lost. 

The pool just as I was leaving

Next time that I will attend the gym, which I plan to do this weekend, I will continue working on my breaststroke by decreasing the time it takes for the same distance back down to 40 minutes, and from there onward I will attempt to lower it even further. Additionally, I shall try to arrange sessions with a professional trainer who will hopefully aid me in developing my swimming skills by learning new techniques correctly, considering that I do not wish to memorise styles inexactly, which may happen if I train without the help of a tutor. 

International Day bulletin

Since Cveta and I had arranged to run a school newspaper, we positioned ourselves as people who are greatly interested in writing and reporting to a greater audience than just our English teacher; for that very reason, I presume, we have been approached by the IBDP coordinator who asked us to produce a bulletin based upon the events of this year's International Day. The idea was to attach this bulletin to a letter which would be given out to all of the students, so that it would act as a pleasant reminder of the grandiose celebration and possibly an invitation to those students and parents who hadn't been able to attend this time to participate in the event the following year. 

In order to complete the task laid upon us, we divided our responsibilities: both of us contributed to writing the actual text of the document, however Cveta took over the layout of the future bulletin, whilst I provided her with some of the images I took on the occasion. We tried to balance the material that we had gathered by including interviews of different people (i.e. teachers, students and parents) to convey a more personal perspective, and also to make the information more reliable instead of everything just coming from our own experience. Ultimately, I think that we've managed to create a very colourful and appealing bulletin which is not only informative, but also entertaining to read.

The bulletin itself

In spite of the first draft looking great, we may be asked to amend a few aspects of it to increase its quality even further. We also realised that if we were to do something of this sort again, we should be more careful with our style of language: being able to compose in a very complex manner through the use of a wide range of vocabulary is neat, albeit we must consider our audience which does include relative young children as well as parents who may not be very familiar with the English language, therefore it is our duty to make the wording understandable enough for people of all levels, at the same time making it a pleasant and enjoyable read.  

International Day

I would like to apologise for this being such a late update, after all the event has happened over a week ago. Judging by the high spirits of all those who participated in the various activities and in the talent show, the population of the school as well as the parents seemed to have enjoyed the occasion, which is very important for the seniors of the school (ourselves and the year 13s) for we have put massive effort into organising everything. We wanted to make this day a success as it is the most important celebration of the whole year, seeing that we have such a wide diversity of nationalities present in the institution.

Part of talent show audience

As for our game of Mafia, it turned out very well for we received tons of positive feedback; we organised a system of asking people to leave a short comment based upon their impression of the activity just as they were leaving. Doing so, we were able to collect a lot of observations, some of which included suggestions, and we tried to act upon those in order to improve the quality of our enterprise; for example, one pupil suggested playing music when it was nighttime in the game, and we listened to their helpful advice. This shows that not only were we able to carry out the task successfully according to plan, but we were also open-minded since we considered the contribution of others, and were flexible enough to change some aspects of the activity throughout the day without causing any confusion. 

Feedback we received

I would also like to point out how my personal communication skills have actually come in handy for mostly it was I who explained the rules of the game to the students and also the teachers who participated in our activity. Despite the rules of Mafia being rather complicated, especially when they have to be described to a large audience, I managed to convey the meaning accurately for the game flowed smoothly, and the few questions that were asked I answered confidently as I knew the rules very well myself. Personally, I was expecting it to be slightly more challenging to illustrate the point of the game, and I believe that this exercise has made me a better communicator because at first I was a little shy to present in front of many people, however I became accustomed to it very quickly, which is very important for me since I would like to become a journalist, and in that profession I would need commendable communication skills. Below I will include a video of me explaining the rules to a group of students:

                                                

Publishing ambitions

As the title may suggest, I have decided to unleash my creative appetite in the form of publishing a book: the initial idea was to collect a fair few descriptive and argumentative pieces to form something which would be both easy and interesting to read. I have already asked my English tutor for approval, and began to work on gathering the required writing.

I decided to include descriptive essays because these are by far my favourite type of writing for not only do I enjoy composing them, but I also tend to be rather good at producing very vivid and inspiring descriptions which don't only convey the mood and atmosphere of a given place, but also indulge the reader in a more deeper sense, making them ponder upon the words written on the pages. Seeing that I have been writing in this style for quite some years now, I figured that it would be a good idea to include older writing as well as what I will be writing throughout the course of the following two years; for this reason, the part of my collection designated for descriptive writing will be split into two. However, I also chose not to just write random descriptions of what may come to mind, but rather create different clusters of pieces which would pertain to a similar subject: for example, I chose to write a few pieces which would fall under a category that I named 'The Colour Collection'; consequently, those descriptions would relate to certain colours, and to make it slightly more stirring, I will only write about colours not present within the rainbow, but those that are more rare, to an extent. In order to make my potential readers feel eager to read onwards, I shall differentiate these descriptive groups greatly to cover a wide range of aspects which will be both ordinary and uncommon.

The second half of my publication will be based upon relatively short argumentative essays which will comment on specific quotes that I will pick out; this may seem like a strange type of writing to include in a book, although I can explain my choice by saying that I am able to create very reliable arguments to contribute to virtually any kind of debate, provided I have the needed information. With these quotes, I will aim to reveal the way in which I think about certain issues and topics, which will hopefully be absorbing for the reader to discover as they can then relate their own interpretations to mine. Once again I will be splitting this section into two so that the evolution of my opinions and views may be tracked and I will aim to severalise the discussions which will be included to make it more fetching to read.

In terms of a title for the book, I am currently unsure of what exactly it will be, albeit it will certainly carry the meaning of either revealing or understanding one's mind; I was thinking along the lines of either 'Mind Maps' or 'Discerning a Mind', for I want this book to give my readers an insight into who I am, as that would enable them to feel more familiar with the author which would make their reading experience more entertaining as it would appear to be like a conversation with me, yet through written words. 

Screenshot of currently gathered material

Promoting the school newspaper

As some of you may remember, Cveta and I have decided to create a school newspaper; having come up with a few initial ideas, we decided to attract the students' attention to this grand project. Even though we ourselves will be writing various bits and pieces for every issue, we concluded that it would be great if the pupils could also participate in the creation of the paper; there are a fair few students who truly enjoy writing, which led us to the decision of offering them to write different articles and entries which we could later edit if need be. Since not many people actually knew about us planning to publish a newspaper, I set about creating an advertisement which would hopefully attract people who would be interested in aiding us; we also talked to the English teachers, asking them to direct us towards pupils who would potentially enjoy writing for us. 

Newspaper advertisement

Personally, I think that my ad turned out to be quite appealing as I managed to relate it to the subject through the use of a newspaper background and the imitation of a newspaper-style font. The lack of colour also pertains to a paper, as most papers tend to be black and white due to the vast amount of text. The little writing that I included was directly to the point, giving the most relevant information to any who may be reading it.

Although when I look at these printouts hanging around the school noticeboards, I feel as if though something is missing from them: I try to put myself into the shoes of those who may be interested in skimming through the leaflets, and I realise that not enough information has been given on the actual nature of the work, for example how often one should write and what one should write about. If I were to do another advertisement of some sort to attract people into an activity, I should briefly include details on what would be expected of them; that would not only make the flyer more informative, but it would also exclude inapt people showing up to talk to us. I should also ensure that all of the teachers involved in the enterprise are well aware of who I am, since the younger key stage English tutor was at first unaware of what I look like. 

International Day preparations

In view of the upcoming celebration of International Day, myself, Ira, and Ilya found time last week to thoroughly prepare for the activity we were going to initiate. Primarily, we wanted to create a sombre atmosphere in the room to make the game which we were going to play, Mafia, more engaging for the students: we spent quite a while sticking up large sheets of sugar paper onto the windows to block out all of the external light; that way the room could be submerged into total darkness by switching off the electrical lights. The fact that the sheets were stuck together in a disorderly manner contributed further to the mood of the game since it was meant to reflect something secret and sinister. We also arranged the stools in a circle to make it easier for the participants to communicate to each other whilst playing:

The renovated room

In order to decorate the room, we chose to create A3-sized flags of the two countries we represented, Russia and Ukraine; we figured that hand-painted flags were going to be a more interesting addition to the interior of the room as opposed to ordinary flags made out of fabric. We kindly asked the art teacher to allow us to use the room and the materials available, and ultimately I was able to paint a rather attractive Russian banner:

The Russian flag

To fill in the remaining space, we chose a fair few images of our countries' leaders and various historical sites, which we then printed out and placed upon the walls of the classroom; that did indeed brighten up the place, and it also enabled the students to get a better feel of the two cultures since wherever they looked, their eyes found bits and pieces of the two nations, which graciously coincided:

Picturesque representations of our countries

Once we were done with all the preparations, the room turned from an ordinary school classroom into a rather dusky, malefic hideout. Although it may seem as if though we had abused the concept of a relevant, dark atmosphere, the rich images that covered the walls added a sense of joy to the surroundings, therefore making one feel both motivated to play and the game as well as interested in the  setting of the two terrains which we presented.

Art club experiment

Yesterday I attended the art club organised my fellow classmates Cveta, Ira and Katarina; it had indeed been an experiment, for I am by far not a visual artist, as I had mentioned in a previous post. The theme of that session was drawing landscapes, however I decided to get away with just producing an image of a lonely tree which I found standing against the grey skies just outside of the school building. After I had sketched a simple base whilst observing my object outside in the cold, I retreated into the warmth of the college in order to go over the messy lines with a black ink pen: that way I hope to make the image stand out more explicitly against the colours which I was going to employ. In the end I chose in favour of watercolours as opposed to ordinary paint since I figured that by blending in the different tones I could deliver the brightness of autumn in contrast with the gloomy skies much more successfully. Ultimately, I came up with the following, and I can't entirely say that I'm satisfied with my work: 

My version of a landscape

I was quite pleased with how the leaves turned out since I managed to amalgam the red, yellow and orange to form a fiery representation of the autumn colours. The muted silver of the sky also came out quite good, all thanks to the dirty water that I used. Otherwise, I messed up a little with the purple since in real life the plants were actually of a whitish tone, whilst the idea of making both the fence and the shrubs the exact same colour wasn't the brightest one ever. If I were to do this again, I should definitely improve my time management since at the end I rushed in order to finish my piece by a certain hour, and that had significantly altered the quality of my performance. I should also consider paying greater attention to the way I combine the colours so that the scenery would look more realistic. Besides, I could include more entities within my work to reduce running the risk of the final piece looking rather empty, just like the one I had produced. 

Overall, I have really enjoyed attending the club since I was able to undertake a new challenge and also develop some skills to an extent, as I have never really used watercolours before (since I hardly ever involve myself with visual arts), and I've received a few tips from my classmates on how to apply them correctly. I may consider participating more often in this activity as it has been very interesting for me as I was able to observe the amazing work of the artistic students, as well as to produce a humble addition of my own to their incredible collection. 

Decorating the English classroom

Today at lunchtime I, along with Cveta and Adam, have finally finished 'furnishing' the English classroom: a while ago we had volunteered to help out our English tutor by putting up the wall displays and necessary information, such as the IB learner profile and the various literary terms; not only did we want to enrich the room, but we also wanted to aid our teacher with a task which could easily be completed sans them having to devote their time to it. We were given full freedom to decide where and how to place the array of colourful sheets, hence we tried to make the best use of the space available to us. In the end, the class ended up looking a little brighter than its usual black and white colour palette:

The beautifully presented literary expressions

Primarily, we struggled to coordinate our actions since two or even all three of us would just be doing the cutting, for example, which left nobody to take care of actually putting up the sheets. After a while though, we were able to organise ourselves much more efficiently so that I was in charge of the trimming, Adam would apply the white-tack to the papers, and Cveta placed everything up on the walls. We also had some issues with the printing of the material as we misunderstood the intentions of our teacher for us to bring in the pieces ourselves, and later that day we were unable to use the printing facilities in the school; all of this had slowed us down, which eventually led to us taking two lunchtimes to complete this easy task.

The captivating IB learner profile

If we were to perform a similar task again, we should definitely clarify everything with our pundits prior to commencing, and we must ensure that we have all the required information. Furthermore, we will have to assign roles to each member of the group in order to terminate the task quicker; this would be especially relevant if we had only been given limited time to complete the activity. We could also take care to plan the positioning of the material so that everyone would know exactly what to do without having to consult neither each other nor the educator, consequently not disrupting them from their work. 

Language and literature references 

Andantino in C by Matteo Carcassi

I shall finally present to you my first guitar piece; it has taken me so long since I spent too little time practicing, and I greatly regret that. Let me tell you a little bit about the writer: Carcassi was an Italian composer and guitarist who gained the reputation of a virtuoso player soon after his career commenced; his music is still popular nowadays among many classic-style guitarists, which partially explains why I was given one of his works. Another reason as to why I received this andantino is that it is relatively easy to play, and is intended for me to recap the techniques that I've learnt a few years ago as it requires the usage of legato and has a distinct melody that should be emphasised by the player.

As you can easily tell from watching the video, I was concentrating far too much on the technical aspect of the piece to pay any attention to the melody which I was supposed to highlight. I had a few slips here and there as I was unable to prolong the legato for long enough to achieve a clean transition from one interval to another; at times I also took longer than I should have preparing to play the following interval, as for example in the very end, when I ended up waiting for much longer than was signified in the notes. The tempo in itself was also a bit dodgy as at times I spontaneously either increased it or slowed it down. I had a few strings vibrate as I didn't apply enough pressure on my left hand to produce the desired sound.

My main aim in general is going to be to improve my technical abilities by, for example, playing scales much more often, since then I would be able to concentrate more on the music itself as opposed to which finger I should use and how I should place it; I could also achieve that by repeatedly playing   the piece in a slow tempo, paying great attention to every single note. Furthermore, I will try to develop my legato skill so that I could create an undisrupted, flowing melody. This andantino in particular required a few quite uncomfortable changeovers, which is why next time I will practice them separately so that I would no longer worry about them once I'll be performing the piece fully. 

International Day ideas

A while ago I helped out a few of my other classmates in dividing the year into groups for International Day; I, being ethnically Russian, ended up in a group with another Russian, Ira, and a Ukrainian, Ilya: we formed the Russo-Ukrainean group for the event. During the CAS sessions we discussed what sorts of activities we could offer to the school in order to make the celebration not only educational, but also very fun. We came up with a moderate list of ideas which I wrote down so that we could have something to refer back to:

Planning sheet

Ultimately, we decided to create two powerpoint presentations based on Russia and the Ukraine, giving our participants some interesting and educational information about our nations; we chose to make this last for at most 15 minutes so that the students wouldn't get tired of listening to us, and to make it more exciting, we will certainly include some fun facts and statistics pertaining to our countries. Afterwards, we will dedicate the rest of the 50-minute session to playing a game called Mafia: having originated in Russia, this role-play is very popular amongst both children and teenagers in Russia, as well as worldwide (currently there are online sites dedicated to this amusement). It is clear to see that we concluded to step away from traditional activities, since throughout most of the years the students chose to portray the more cultural side of Russia; we figured that the pupils mostly know quite a bit about the country as it is since they live in it, which is why a more modern take on the event might actually engage them even further. 

To create a more friendly atmosphere, we will be bringing in some sweet snacks originating from Russia and Ukraine so that the people could not only have a bite or two to quench their hunger, but so that they could also experience a taste of traditional foods. In order to create the relevant atmosphere for the game of Mafia, we will try to find suitable material to cover the windows with, so that it would be dark in the room, making everything feel much more secretive, as it should be with that game. Finally, decorating the room with various images of politicians and historical sites from our countries will generate a feel for the two countries being represented; we selected some rather interesting images which wouldn't usually be seen in the formal media world, as for example the Russian President holding a puppy in his arms. To top it all of, we will be showing some amusing videos from our two countries to, hopefully, make the students laugh and enjoy our activity more. 

Throughout the day itself, we may have to end up making various amendments, however we will try to ensure that everything will run as smoothly as possible by, for example, buying the correct amount of food and trying to explain the complex rules of Mafia in an understandable manner to our participants. Positively, the students will enjoy what we have in store for them since we truly do want to contribute to the overall success of International Day, which is a very important celebration in our school, and we want to maintain a good image of the institution since there will be parents and relatives coming in to take part in the event as well. 

French club: learning to express an opinion

The latest session of the club ran very smoothly since we were finally able to find a permanent room that we could use every Wednesday lunchtime: the German teacher has kindly given us her classroom which sorts out the issue of having a proper venue to run the club. Once our student had settled into the new atmosphere, we began with asking them to show us the sheet on the imperfect tense which I had prepared about a week ago and had asked them to complete at home; after marking the exercises, it was evident that our student has grasped the formation of that tense since they made no grammatical errors apart from a few slips which, however, are insignificant since they quickly corrected themselves when I pointed the mistakes out to them:

The exercises

For the lesson itself, we chose to step away from grammar for a while as it is quite a difficult aspect of any language and it is tiring both to teach and to apprehend, although we will be giving our student a sheet similar to the one above but on the simple future tense to test their knowledge of it; this time we focused on the many ways of expressing opinions. I remember that my previous teacher at IGCSE had always stressed the importance of a wide range of vocabulary and the ability to say something of one meaning in many different ways, which is exactly why we had given our student a short yet useful list of phrases used in speaking and writing to portray one's thoughts. Some of the expressions that we had explained to our student were indeed above the require level for IGCSE, however we agreed that they would have a great advantage over the other people if they could use structures which hadn't been taught in class. We asked our pupil to learn this information for next time so that we could yet again test them to ensure their understanding of the material. Finally, I have given our student a link to a very useful website (languagesonline.org.uk) which they could use in their own free time to check any rules or just simply practice using any tenses.

List of opinions

Next week we will be having the final session before mid-term break, so we might give our student a little task to complete (for example, writing an essay) so that we could help them implement the skills that they've learnt in practice, and also to just have a general overview of their level in French. It had indeed been our mistake to not give them a sort of test earlier in order to determine their progress in French sot that we could come up with relevant aspects to cover, instead of asking them every lesson about what they may wish to have explained to them. We must also learn to prepare for each lesson more thoroughly so that we don't end up wasting time and giving our student tasks to complete long after we have discussed the given topic, as for example with the simple future tense: we should have prepared an exercise sheet for this week's lesson, however we failed to do so which led to us having to postpone it, which ends up shifting the whole process as next time we will be talking about opinions and vocabulary instead of tenses. 

School newspaper: initial ideas

I have always had a passion for writing, which pushed me towards my current greatest ambition of becoming a journalist. Despite the uncertainty I still have concerning what sort of mass media will I be involving myself in, I have always enjoyed producing, reading and editing articles. This very interest has given me the idea of creating a school newspaper; I approached a fellow writer in my class, Cveta, who gladly agreed to help me with this project. Together we came up with a list of ideas which could be implemented in the future paper:

List of ideas

We will certainly be reporting on school news in order to keep the students updated on all sorts of activities that are going on. Considering all of the departments present within our school, we concluded that we could ask the English and art teachers to present to us a few select pieces of work which could then be displayed in a report. We also decided to take into account the interest that most pupils have in various sports, hence the different clubs that are currently open: we figured that having news on the progression of both football and basketball club would attract greater attention to our work. Finally, we agreed to write about anything attractive going on in Moscow so that our students would be informed on any events that they could attend and entertainments they could take part in.

Albeit we don't even have a newspaper yet, we already began thinking ahead to any other possible aspects that we could include in it: we might add something interactive to the experience of reading by introducing either a raffle or a contest of some sort, where people would get prized for taking the first three places. We could add voting polls on questions concerning the arrangement of the school and the extra-curricular activities that it offers so that students could have a greater part to play in the life of the institution. Apart from just reporting local news, we could go international by publicising events of global importance: that would also allow us to be more open-minded and caring as we would be spreading awareness of news not just from one country, and we could bring up issues of great importance throughout our planet.

In conclusion, I would like to say that we have produced what seems to be a promising plan, and hopefully we will be able to implement it into action successfully. For the time being, we will focus on the initial ideas so that they will be in order before we'll move onto the other possible additions to the paper; we will be aiming to produce our first issue by the end of October break, on the 28th. Currently we are unsure of how often we will be distributing the newspaper, however we will most likely adopt the idea of delivering one every other week, in order to allow more potentially engaging material to accumulate and to give ourselves more time to organise everything in an orderly and appealing manner. Despite the great planning, we failed to ask the teachers who might be interested in this project (for example the English department educators), if they would like to help us out, therefore next time we should ensure that all parties would be willing to participate in a given activity prior to actually drawing up a plan of it. 

Walking my dog: last days of summer

Yesterday I finally found the time to embark on a wonderful trip to the forest with my lovely Akita, Chico. I have stated in my CAS plan for this term that I will be doing regular walks with my dog, that is why I currently feel guilty for not acting according to plan, and most importantly, for depriving my dog of the sensation of running through the forest as well as keeping himself in shape. This time we did about 7 kilometres at a relatively relaxed pace with Chico constantly on a leash, although at some point in time I may begin letting him roam free in order to teach him to follow me sans the help of any equipment, as leash training is by far not the peak of a dog's ability.

My Chico

Whilst out on the promenade, we met a group of sled dog owners who kindly offered a place for Chico in their sledge since Akitas are related to Huskies and Malamutes, which are the main breeds involved in sled dog racing. This opened up a grand opportunity to develop a new skill by engaging in an actual dog sport and potentially competing in various races; such a prospect also enabled me to be more open-minded since before I never even considered seriously training my dog in a certain sport. Although this does mean that we will have to intensify our training (aka the walks or maybe runs in the forest), however I'm more than certain that Chico would gladly welcome this new arrangement.

The forest we went to

As previously mentioned, I will certainly have to increase the time I will spend with my dog outside exercising, therefore next week I shall try to increase our pace from a casual stroll to a more intense walk, which I will try to maintain throughout the whole trip, ensuring, however, that my dog won't be tired by it. Albeit sled racing would require endurance as well as speed, we may end up taking longer walks of about 10 kilometres in order to improve my dog's stamina, which is quite low since he's not used to intense exercise of any sort. In the introduction above, I also said that I may begin to let Chico loose at some parts of the forest so that he could get used to accompanying me without a leash and a collar, however I will have to be careful to assure that he will not run away upon being let off the leash.

French club: le futur simple

For the third session we were able to find a free classroom where we conducted the teaching, which was a major improvement from last time when we wasted time in search of a venue and ended up in the library, that was certainly not fit for our purposes. As the title of the entry suggests, this time we decided to focus on the future tense as our student told us that they are uncertain of its formation and uses. We chose to begin with outlining the rules concerning this tense, followed by a few examples of both regular and irregular verbs, which we asked our participant to conjugate; they did a good job of it which made us realise that our explanations must've been relatively clear and understandable.

Us explaining the simple future

After that, we agreed to return briefly to the imperfect tense that was studied during the previous session, and we made use of grammar books from the French classroom in order to assess our student's knowledge and memory of the material. I also found a sheet based upon that tense (courtesy to languagesonline), which included both rules of when to use it, as well as short exercises; I asked our pupil to complete it for next time so that we could finally be sure that they have mastered that tense and will no longer require any help with it. The sheet would also allow the student(s) to quickly revise the imperfect tense whenever needed.

The sheet on the imperfect tense

Prior to next week's lesson, we will try to negotiate with a teacher in order to be able to use their classroom every Wednesday lunchtime to carry out our activity, as that would ensure that we would have no issues with finding available space. We will continue giving out worksheets to our student(s) so that they could make better use of the information we give them during the lesson: for next week we will provide them with sheets based on the simple future tense. Even though we are experiencing some difficulty in finding more participants, we will continue attracting people's attention and we may even ask our current student to see if any of their friends or classmates may be willing to join our club. 

French club: steady progression

Or should I say: steady degradation? Last Wednesday, the second meeting of our club took place, and we discovered that we were down to just one participant, which was, in a way, beneficial for that person as they received greater attention from us, the mentors. Unfortunately, we were unable to find proper venue for the activity, which caused us to move to the small library where it was difficult to conduct the tutoring as we had to keep our voices down and the desks were occupied by other pupils; we also wasted a lot of valuable time whilst tried to find an appropriate free space. Regardless of that, we had actually thought of a lesson plan, and that enabled us to use the short time we had much more fruitfully than during the last session; we decided to help the student with the imperfect tense, and we began by testing their knowledge of it, and then proceeded onto some practices exercises which we invented on the spot. Overall, I think that our participant has left with greater knowledge of that subject and seemed eager to return next week for further aid.

Our student completing an exercise 

For next week, we certainly have to find an available site which we could occupy for the club, as the fact that we had to remain huddled in the library as these conditions made it troublesome for us to carry out the activity, and it was uncomfortable for our pupil to work there. In order to improve the quality of our mentoring, we figured that we should prepare more thoroughly for each session by providing the student(s) with worksheets which would contain both explanations and exercises, so that our student(s) could keep them permanently and refer to them in the future during exam preparation, for example. We also decided to extend the parameters of our club by inviting students from younger years (7-9), as we wish to advise as many people as possible in order to help them improve their level of French, which would in turn increase the amount of participants in the club and potentially make it a more appealing and fun experience. 

Me guiding our student