CAS goals for Grade 12

My setting up goals for CAS of the final year of IB has been a bit delayed, (I admit,) but there were a few obstacles with settling back, getting in contact with my instructor (piano mainly) and understanding where we are in terms of Service, as the sign up sheets were completely finalized for us today. But, more time also gave me an opportunity to read and reflect on my performances in the past and come up with a more concrete plan for this year! ^^

Creativity:
Focusing on piano gave me an opportunity to realize and appreciate even more how amazing and fruitful playing piano can be. With thorough studying of the music and its background (including composers, historical background), analysis and consistent practice, I was able to develop my skills and understanding of the music. While looking back at some of the recorded performances, I was able to observe that my expressions were more varied and improved and that the quality of the sound improved as well and I was able to control much more effecitvely and use pedals with greater impact.

This year, I plan to show more ommitment to learning more and different genres of music as well to explore new concepts and understand more abstract/various ideas that piano can express. Instead of focusing on classical music completely, I plan to shift some of my attention to contemporary, modern and new age music and explore the concepts and develop my skills to listen to, understand, analyze and express these genres of music more effectively. Since I was not able to practice much for a few months, it is challenging for me to start 'proper' training now and it seems it is going to take some time to get rid of some of the 'stiffness'. So my temporary/primary goal is to get my hands back on the piano on a regular basis without torturing myself in order to prevent injuries (so that what happened to me in Grade 10 for PP does not occur anymore...).
I plan to master at least 8 full movements/pieces of music this year following the same pattern I have set last year and learn to enjoy the 'aesthetic beauty' of playing piano!


Action
My plan for Action this year is to continue learning and playing tennis, working on the techniques me and my partner Charity learned before and continuing to learn new techniques. Also, I plan to play some proper games with my partner, Harini and perhaps others who play tennis (which will be risk-taking!) :)

Also, this year I decided to continue swimming in order to improve my fitness and develop more patience as well as improve my swimming. I am going to challenge myself each time, by increasing the number of laps on a regular basis. I am going to do this with Annie.


Service
For SL Alzheimer's, we, Harini and I are now in a full and fresh lead of the project! This year, we plan to start fresh and plan and initiate more active service so that it becomes more meaningful, enjoyble and fruitful which are our main goals of doing this project. These are our main objectives and goals:

- Participate in the Annual Walk for Alzheimer's Disease.
This will help us to raise awareness on the global issue (statistics that we have previously studied showed massive increase in no. of the patients with disease, along the trend of the ageing society) and welcoming people to take action with us. Also, it requires much planning and initiation on our behalf as well, to work collaboratively with the Founder and co-Founder of the Foundation in the Central Branch and getting the members in our school to join and take active role in it.

- Selling Raffle Tickets
This is one of the main methods of the Foundation to raise funds to help finance different material needs in the new centre.

- Setting up and maintaing the Account for the Lanka Alzheimer's in the school
As this project advances and gets more active, we need to open up a new bank account for this service project to ensure accurate recorded data of our financial performances, smooth flow and circulation of our money/funds and receiving some support from the CAS account to keep the project going well.

- MONTHLY VISIT TO THE CENTRE!!
This is one of the most exciting events we have planned and plan to initiate this year! As brought out in previous reflections, we made the visit to the new center that was built and now opened recently to look after the patients with Alzheirmer's disease. Instead of just meeting every Thursday in our classrooms and talking about what we are going to do, me and Harini, my co-leader decided that it is much more meaningful and enjoyable for us as well to make a regular visit to the centre and interact and help them practically. This will not only display our commitment and awareness but also will allow us to increase awareness of our own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to dealing with the disease and patients who suffer from it.

 This is one of the biggest prvileges, and yet one of the bigest challenges that we plan to undertake but we are taking the risk and ready to work collaboratively and effectively with the patients as well as the people who take care of them. This also requires thorough planning before and afterhand whilst staying balanced to make appointments with the center and overseeing our performances.

Moreover, we plan to share some of our talents and abilities more this year, instead of just donating money/funds. This could be done by helping the patients with more creative and active components, such as playing boardgames, cooking, and getting involved in musical activities.

- Learning more about the disease
While carrying out the service work, I realized that is also important for us to learn and understand the disease much better in order to understand what the patients are going through and what we can ACTUALLY DO to help them effectively. Thus, we plan to have 2~3 sessions each month where we will study the disease with the group members whilst communicating our knowledge, opinions and ideas to make this project even more meaningful and active.