That's What The Water Made Me

This is just a quick update on my drumming. I have learned the raw structure of the song We Weren't Born to Follow, but of course that does not mean that I will stop practising it as you can improve on it all the time. I've been playing the drums in the music room 1-2 times a week, every week. Recently I started playing a new song from Bon Jovi's new album call That's What The Water Made Me. It's great!

Paradiddles, singles and doubles

Finally! I have managed to play singles to doubles, doubles to singles, singles to single paradiddles and doubles to paradiddles at 60 bpm. Furthermore I have also been practicing a new song called 'Good Guys Don't Always Wear White' by Bon Jovi. However, I have also played song such as We Weren't Born to Follow and Thunderstruck. Keeping up with the music is not a huge problem anymore, but I am focusing on timing the fills right and using different fills. Also I have found a great site to teach me some easy grooves and beats, such as some interesting ghost notes grooves and some floor tom ones as well. Therefore my plan for next time is to keep practicing the songs and learn the new rudiments I've found.

The reflection on the second french lesson

In my view it went much better than the first lesson, but this time there was much more focus on learning than last time but there were still some games. I think that they have learned very much vocabulary over the two lessons of French we gave, as we tested them in the first few minutes of the lesson and most of them achieved 80% and above which is very good. The only negative in the planning was most probably that we had to improvise a game of drawing and guessing, because the presentation did not last as long as we expected it to last. However, in the end everybody enjoyed it and we solved this situation well. I think, that my public speech and teaching skills have definitely increased as I was not worried anymore to stand up in front of the class.

Let us once more see the opinions of the students collected in the end of the lesson:

"Great lesson! With funny game & questions!"

"Thank you for teaching us!!! I really liked when we drew the pictures and people had to guess them."

"Thank you for the lesson, I had fun, it was funny and now I remember the fruits and vegetables. Thank you."

As you can see, they really liked the drawing game, which I did and also the vocabulary, which will be really useful to them. In my view this was an excellent experience and I enjoyed it very much too.

The Lesson Plan for the second French Lesson

According to my reflection, we created the plan for the second lesson by us.

First of all, we are going to test them on the vocabulary of the previous lesson as we set that for homework last time.

Then I will introduce them to the vocabulary of this lesson and also do the repetition vocabulary game, which also helps them with their pronounciation.

After that we had a huge presentation which Mark will make an idiomatic presentation and I will conduct the game in which they had to guess how they end, and as they are all to do with fruits and vegetables, they are connected to our previous lesson.

This presentation will approximately take the whole of the lesson so we did not plan more.

Reflection on the first French lesson

I will honestly say that the lesson went much better than I expected and the year sevens enjoyed it without a doubt.  We managed to run the lesson as we planned, but I think that we should have planned somethings in between the main activities. Furthermore, I think that we managed to teach them many words, but we will definitely see in the next lesson. I also think that we should have given out some kind of rewards for completing exercises successfully to students.

The above is my reflection on the lesson, but in the end we have collected the views and ideas of the students as well with small cards given to them in the beginning of the lesson.

Here are some quotes from the students:

"I liked the lesson because you taught us many fruits and many adjectives. I have learned many things today."

'I liked the lesson because it was fun and I learned many new things."

"I really enjoyed this lesson. Next time you might explain more carefully."

According to the students' opinions, I can deduce that they enjoyed the lesson but as I mentioned it above they agree with me that we should plan more for next time.

Lesson Plan for the first French lesson

We spent some time last week to plan the lesson we are going to give to the year sevens this Tuesday.

First up we are going to have an introductory section, where they can introduce themselves and we can too. We are going to tell them to create name cards from the cards we give them.

Secondly I will introduce the vocabulary of fruits. Eg: cherry, apple, pear, orange, grapefruit etc.

Then I will play a vocabulary game with them where they have to pronounce the words and they say the words on the board to which I point and then I erase one at a time and they have to remember the word that was there.

After that, the students will be introduced to more vocabulary by Mark.

Then, I will play a game with them where there are pictures on the board and two students come up and they have to touch the picture of the corresponding food which is said.

Next Mark will teach them phrases such as "Apples are round" or "Grapefruits are sour".

After that I will teach them how to pronounce the phrases and get them to create some with my help if needed.

For homework they will have to learn the vocabulary for next lesson as we will test them on it.

Planning of the French lesson

Before the midterm holidays, me and Mark have decided to give two French lessons to the year seven French group of our school. Since it was their first year of studying French, it was a good idea to expand their vocabulary and possible break away from the habit of their normal lessons just for entertainment and more effective learning.

So in order to make this lesson possible we had to take several things in account:

• the lessons could not be when we have French so we had to communicate with the teachers whose lessons we will miss.
• we had to gather the materials for the lesson
• we had to plan the lesson itself
• we had to devise a technique for getting the reflection (ours' and the students')
• we had to learn some vocabulary and research the web for teaching French
• We also had to plan some games in order to keep them entertained and make sure that they were learning

When we were planning this, our aim was to make the year seven student benefit from our lessons and improve their pronounciation and their vocabulary by much. Furthermore, we also wanted to make sure that they enjoyed it too.

Private Tutoring

Since a few months ago, when my sister had more time due to her recent injury which enabled her to spend more time in school, I decided to help her with her studies and provide the knowledge she missed during the time she was unable to come to school. I help her study mostly during the weekends, but I also helped her during this holiday. I mostly help my sister in Maths and French, since those are her weakest areas. Furthermore, this teaching has been very helpful to me as well, as I could revise some chapters myself too. I plan to keep helping her until the end of the school year as after that I am leaving. And of course this is a great way to train oneself to convey ideas and thoughts effectively, especially if one wants to pursue a career in lecturing.

Update on drumming

I have been practicing single paradiddles and also the switching from doubles to singles. It is quite tough as it requires a lot of wrist work and also sometimes you need to rely on the bounce back of the drumsticks. To say what I am currently good at are: I am capable of playing paradiddles at 60 bpm and switching from doubles to singles and back as well. However to improve for the next time I have to learn how to switch from doubles to paradiddle. Furthermore I have been also practicing songs such as Summer of '69 (Bryan Adams) and Sweet Child O' Mine (Guns & Roses) and also many more which I cannot list as there are many of them. I will try to upload films of me playing them soon.

Valentine's Disco

A few days ago, on Thursday the Valentine's Disco was held in our school hall, with a great success. There were not any noticeable organisational issues and the day went as planned and we got the school to dance. The room was set up and looked very nice, well suited for St. Valentine's Day. The good feedback was that students were talking all about it afterwards, the next school day. It was fun for all of us and especially for the people on the dance floor. The sandwich stall was a great success and many people decided to buy sandwiches. To evaluate the goods and the bads, I have to say that I don't think that much needs to be improved despite that we almost did not have any cables which we have to plan earlier.

Valentine's Day Planning

In a few days we are going to organise a school disco for Valentine's Day. As a plan we have dealt with issues such as getting the cables sorted as well as getting the room decorated and also supplying food and beverages during the event. We have already organised who is doing what and everything should be going as planned. I personally will be helping to set up the hall where the disco will be, including the movement of the tables and chair from the hall and also its decoration. There was much organisation going into this disco and if it goes well we will organise another one.

Snow Activity Day Planning

Not so long ago I was one of the four people who initiated the snow activity day planning and organisation in early December. We started digging up the snow in the school grounds to make the obstacle course, which was a huge success last year. The snow digging began in the middle of January so that we had enough time to do it until February when the snow day was to be held. In the organisation phase we have gone through the thoughts such as how we should organise the time table and what type of activities should there be.

To warm up my drums I decided to play A little Bon Jovi most probably one of their most famous singles. I practiced for a few weeks as i described before but now I show off. The music is in the background but I made my drums sound louder.

It is still under improvement and I could have done better. It is quite hard to play the drums while being recorded, you mess up something and have to start all over again. But I might upload some of my later tries or other songs.

EBDS

Here is finally the long awaited link for my site for the Elementary Binary Determination System. This project is at least 2 years old and I have even included it in my personal statement as a long term project so here you go, read:

http://www.elbidsy.webs.com

To reflect on what I have done, I am very confident that I have improved my scientific research skills as well as my webpage designing skills. It is important not to forget about my essay writing skills. 

To improve I could include some of my other research as well on similar topics but it is hard to do so with my IB exams coming and all of my research together is at least 4 times an IB Extended Essay. My plan is to try and improve on them.

Drumming Plan

A bit more than one year ago I started playing the drums. Since then my techniques have advanced and I have attempted to learn new grooves and beats. That is my plan for the future too. In the next four weeks I am planning to learn how to do paradiddles and if I have practiced that enough I will move on to switching from singles to doubles. My plans after that are to switch between these techniques with at 80 beats per minute. I am going to comment on my progress every week and reflect on how I could improve. Later I will also apply these skills in playing songs and in using advanced drum fills and showing it to my friends.

Sunday Skating Program

This week I have decided to organise a skating event on Sunday on the Red square. In Hungary I used to go skating every year in winter since it is one of the most fun winter sports, it would be a shame not to enjoy it in one of the coldest countries in the world (no need to keep the ice cold here in Moscow). I posted an announcement on the CAS wall and anybody who wanted to come signed up. We went on Sunday at 10 o'clock, but we could only spend an hour and a half because there was a private event after 12 o'clock. The skating was great fun and my sister was also there who is a professional skater and we could learn a few things from her. For me standing on the ice was the objective as I haven't been skating for at least 4 years since I left Hungary, this is why I enjoyed it very much and so did everyone else. It took me a while to organise it as I checked on the site when it was open and I also went there personally to see how much it cost and whether if it was allowed to borrow skates. After the skating I offered everybody to have a hot chocolate in a nearby cafe.

 I will try to organise more of these events if my time permits it, most probably on weekends.

Shoveling away the snow

When we came back from Hungary after the New Year Holidays there wasn't too much snow in Moscow. We were really happy about it.

However this week there was heavy snowing and now there is a lot of snow everywhere.

We live in a Diplomat Compound building in the center of Moscow and we have open outdoor parking places only. Frankly speaking the housekeeping services provided by the owner are quite poor.

As my mom did not use her car last days, it was even difficult to go to the car, deep snow was surrounding it.

As I knew that she was planning going to do weekend shopping by the car so I decided to clean the car first and provide service and clean the parking place from snow.

It took almost an hour but I did it and she was really happy. It was actually quite nice, cleaning the snow so I decided to clean my father's parking spot too as he is probably going to use his car on Monday.

I don't know whether there will be further snowing as we already have huge mountains of snow in the court of our building.

The Elementary Binary Determination System

In the past two years of IB I have been working on a project which was related to both Maths and Chemistry. I used the binary numerical system from Mathematics and applied it to the periodic table of elements. I have found a pattern which showed me a way to characterise and group elements by only using their proton numbers. It is done by using binary code. It took me two years to perfect this system to where it is now and it is still in progress. The whole idea behind it is to categorise elements without knowing the number of electrons in their outer shells or their electron configuration, basically without using a periodic table. I have done hours and hours of research so I have been perseverant and also developed my skills in binary as well as created something no one other has most probably. Here is a small section from my writeups, from my research. In the  future I am also planning to launch a website dedicated to it which is already in progress.