27.2.2016 End of my CAS blog + Art

This is presumably my last blog entry on the behalf of CAS updates and I have nothing special to celebrate this milestone. This entry is nothing different from all the other entries I have written since it tells about the process of painting I did today. To celebrate the starting of our winter holiday, I decided to update one of my mediocre acrylic paintings from the year 2011. This was a way to test how much I had developed my painting skills during these 5 years and as one can preferably can see from the pictures below, I have clearly developed my skills in the field of painting. I must admit that the forest in the earlier version (left one) is visually better, but otherwise the new version (right side) is better, more detailed and more realistic than the first one. I have definitely gotten better at painting, thanks to time and practice. Some credit for my improvement can also be given to IB Visual arts, which made me more confident of my own skills.

17.2.2016 Penkkari preparation

Today our class decorated our home classroom to celebrate the Penkkari-day we would have the following day. We were given four hours after school (until 18.00 PM) to decorate the whole class with an optional theme, which for us was related The Hunger Games -movie series. I actually did not take part in the actual decoration process, but painted the sheets that would later be hung onto our truck in which we would drive around the town. First I thought I would finish painting the sheets in two hours max. but it took me a total of three and half hours to paint two sheets. The factors that significantly slowed down my painting progress were numerous: lack of space (I had to continuously give way to other students), the bad quality of my supplies (the paint was scarce and too elastic to operate with and my brush was really small), the fact that the paint went straight through the canvas sheet to the floor if I did not keep a piece of cardboard underneath it (this was problematic because we only had small pieces of cardboard) and the sheets dried up extremely slow and consequently were hard to handle.

Despite these difficulties I finished painting before time ran out, although the third and last sheet was left blank (my classmate Sylvia painted it later on). From this I learned that this could have been avoided by planning the process beforehand and by choosing another place to paint in. Well, I did SOME planning before starting to paint by sketching the texts and pictures with a pencil. Below you can see pictures of me painting the second sheet and of my classmates making the decorations.

22.1.2016 Subject info for first graders

Us third graders were asked to give a brief introduction to each IB subject in order to make it easier for the first graders to choose their  6 IB subjects for the upcoming two years. Me and Suvi decided to introduce Environmental Systems and Societies (ESS) in a way that would best reflect what it is actually like to study the subject. We made a short PowerPoint presentation with funny but informative comics about environmental issues and listed the main subjects they would come across while studying ESS (e.g. characteristics of different systems and pollution management strategies). The goal was to make the pre-students to think twice before choosing ESS because it is so hard and frustrating.

The presentation itself was not exactly difficult to make or present, but since I have an antisocial personality I was a bit nervous about talking to a group of other people that looked up to me as a senior IB student. I knew that two years ago as a pre-IB student I would have outright refused to do this kind of presentation, but I also realized that my boundaries and skills had improved since that time. Therefore, in collaboration with Suvi and the audience, I was able to keep a fairly consistent and entertaining presentation about the dangers of ESS. Hopefully it helped the pre-IB to choose!

In the picture above my friends Fanny and Suvi presenting IB psychology to the pre-IB. (We forgot to ask for a picture of me and Suvi having the ESS presentation and so Fanny gave a permission to use this picture.)