CREATIVITY
PROJECT 2: JOURNAL CLUB
PROJECT 2: JOURNAL CLUB
INTRODUCTION
The Journal Club is a club that all students from the upper school can take part in. The club has writers, translators, photographers and editors. Together, all students will collaborate in making the school’s newsletter that will then be sent out to all parents of the school.
My activity is to collaborate in this Journal Club as a writer and translator, whatever is needed.
MY GOALS
The Journal Club will be run by several students in my class and they will act as supervisors and organizers. Therefore, I will write about what they assign me. However, I still have several goals in the club.
My personal goals in this club would be to:
- Improve the quality of my writing and to write more fluently
In order to do this, I would have Ms Angela as my supervisor to check on my progress. Each time I write an article for the newsletter, she has agreed to read it and advise me on ways to improve or give feedback on specific areas for improvement and growth. Whenever it is necessary, she will be able to give a report on my progress (positive, negative, fast, etc.)
- To be more involved in the school’s important issues and inform the rest of the school about them to create a more close community; taking part in the Journal Club itself, helps me achieve this goal.
ANTICIPATED LEARNING OUTCOMES
1. Increased their awareness of their own strengths and areas of growth.
In the club I will work as a writer and/or a translator. By taking part in this new experience I will learn more about my own strengths and areas of growth. Ms Angela’s help (in advising me and critiquing my articles) will also help me to increase my areas of growth.
2. Undertake new challenges.
Taking part in the Journal Club is a new experience for me and it is definitely a new challenge as I have voluntarily signed up for the club.
4. Worked collaboratively with others.
The Journal Club will me made up of students from all the upper school. Adding to this, in order to get the newsletter done, all the writers, translators, photographers, and editors will have to work together and set a good and effective means of communication.
5. Shown perseverance and commitment in their activities.
I will take part in this activity for the whole year and will collaborate to create each monthly newsletter. By doing this I will show perseverance and commitment in my activity. Furthermore, I will most probably take part in the Journal Club during the next year to.
8. Developed new skills.
Together with new experiences, come new skills. I will work together with the other students to create a complete newsletter, and am hoping to develop new skills in the process. REFLECTIONS
1st semester
I already have been assigned my first article to write in this trimester's newsletter!I have to write about 120 words on Halloween, both in English and then in Spanish. I was lucky enough to have been very involved in this years Halloween party, so I knew everything about it to be able to write about it.
I wrote my articles pretty fast as they didn't have to be very long, and now I am going to give a copy to Ms Angela for her to give me comments on it on how to improve (as I said in my goals). Once I receive her feedback, I will be able to reflect on it and try to use her advice to improve in my next article.
Today I have received my corrected article from Angela, with her suggestions and advice. She has recommended me to use more active language and more specific vocabulary and to use a wider range of vocabulary to avoid repeating some words. Not only has she corrected my article, but she has walked me through her corrections, giving me her opinion. I hope to be able to use her advice to write a better article next time!
2nd semester
I have already been assigned my
article for the 2nd semester in the Journal Club. I have to write 100 to 120
words on Valentine’s Day: both in English and Spanish.
First I had to speak with some
teachers to learn about how they had celebrated Valentine’s Day in their
classes. Once I had recollected the information I needed, I was able to write the
article pretty fast. After, all I had to do was give it to Ms. Angela for her
to give me some advice on how to improve my writing. When she read the first
article I wrote, she advised me to use a wider range of vocabulary to avoid
repetition. Once she read this article (the second article) she said that I had
covered this issue and told me that I could use more linking words to eliminate
the feeling of reading a list instead of a story.
I felt very satisfied to know that
I had improved my vocabulary by following her advice and am looking forward to
following her tips when writing my next Journal Club article!
3rd semester
For this semester I had to write my third and final article, and this time it was about the IB Parent Night that 11th graders had organized for 10th grade students and parents. When my Journal Club supervisor told me the topic I had to write my article on I was very happy as I was a participant in the event and therefore had first-hand information to write my article with. This made the task easier for me, as I didn't have to go through the stage of contacting the people involved in the activity and already knew all about it.
Here I am in the IBDP Night, recollecting info for my article!
As always, I had to write my article both in English and in Spanish, and write between 100 and 200 words for each. When I was writing my article I thought about the advice that Ms Angela had given me when she read my previous article. She had told me to use more linking words, and so I made an effort to follow her advice and therefore improve my writing. Once I had written my article, I sent it to the Journal Club and printed out a copy for Ms Angela to read. I was very excited to read Angela's comments once she had corrected my article. She told me how I had improved and wrote "Good use of linking words". It felt great to have followed her advice and have been able to improve my writing skills with her help.
Did I achieve my goals?
As this has been the last article for this year, it is time to reflect on my progress!
Next year I will continue participating in the Journal Club, and probably I will set myself some new goals to further my growth.
My goals for this activity were to:
- Improve the quality of my writing and to write more fluently
- To be more involved in the school’s important issues and inform the rest of the school about them to create a more close community; taking part in the Journal Club itself, helps me achieve this goal.
Even though at first I thought that achieving this goal would be the most difficult, in the end it turned out just fine. As Gema, Marta and Konstantina are in charge of the Journal Club and I spend a lot of time with them, I end up knowing about all the articles that have gone into the Newsletter, and sometimes accompany them to talk with teachers about subjects that could be included in the Journal. By writing articles for the Journal Club, I also feel that I am contributing to the community and informing them about events that they didn't know about or weren't able to attend (like for example when I wrote about the IBDP night). All in all, I think that I have fully achieved this goal and that I have been succesful in collaborating to create a more close community at ASB.
Here you can find links to the three newsletters that have been published.
First semester: ENGLISH https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B16M8JQ0d_2RcXlPazRNQXZDcEkzeWxHSmh4Y0szV2lBNmx3/edit
SPANISH https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B16M8JQ0d_2RUnRsdE1Xa2ZZcG91Nk9CUjZtbUZGa0ZkVEpN/edit?usp=sharing
Second semester:
SPANISH https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B16M8JQ0d_2RTFRZZ2JzVE0zaEU/edit?usp=sharing
Third semester:
ENGLISH https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B16M8JQ0d_2RcEI1N09PdUdaa00/edit?usp=sharing
SPANISH https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B16M8JQ0d_2RUkJ0S0dORWNYeXc/edit?usp=sharing
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It is a new school year and the Journal Club is back on track. For this school year, I have been upgraded from an article writer to the writer of a whole section of the Journal! Together with Idoia, we will write all about the Hiking Club, where we have gone, where we are planning to go and many other fun facts about the Club! I am very excited for the fact that I have been promoted, and am looking forward to this new chapter in my Journal Club life.
Jone has always been one of our best writers, if not the best. It was time for us to let her more space so she could work to her full potential. I am sure that she will be able to help us in our goal of making the newsletter more complete.
- Gema Sacanell, Journal Club Coordinator
My goals for this activity during this school year are:
- To be more involved in the school’s important issues and inform the rest of the school about them to create a more close community; taking part in the Journal Club itself, helps me achieve this goal.
- To help upgrade the newsletter into a more complete and realistic reflection of life at ASB.
I will keep you updated when I talk more about my new role in the JC with the coordinators and they give me my first task to do.
Talk to you soon!
1st TRIMESTER
Wednesday 8th of October, 2014
Wednesday 8th of October, 2014
Today has been the first day of the year that I have tackled the journal club. As I said before, this year I will be in charge on writing (in combination with Idoia) a full page dedicated to the Hiking Club, and because of this, we have met to talk about how we are going to organize the space we have been given, what we are going to write about, and how we are going to divide the work.
I feel that this journal club school year is one with much more responsibility and power to decide in comparison to last year. We have not received instructions from the Journal Club coordinators, we have simply been told to do a whole page (both in English and Spanish) about our Hiking Club. This feels like much more pressure and responsibility, but with this also comes a much bigger feeling of satisfaction and proudness once we have finished it.
During our meeting we decided that we would talk about the trips we have been doing in our Hiking Club and the upcoming trips. We would also do a brief introduction to what the club is (obviously) and would include some quotes from some of the members and their impressions of the Hiking Club.
We have also decided to create a google docs to work on all of the Hiking Club related material together and then send one single document to the journal club coordinators once we are finished with all the content we want to include.
Now it's time to start working on that! Below you can find the link to the google docs:
Friday 24th of October 2014
Monday 17th of November 2014
A slight change in plans... Today's was Idoia's last day as she is going to another school. This is something really sad, but she felt that it is the right thing for her. What does this mean for my Journal Club activity? I will be doing this by myself now. Not only will I have to manage the Hiking Club by myself, I will also need to write about it in the Journal Club by myself. This is something that I first thought would be very difficult for me, but, if I look at it from a different perspective, this might be a greater challenge for me and therefore a greater learning experience.
At this point in time, I prefer to look at it with a positive attitude, as this is what is, and I can't change it.
I need to have my page on the Hiking Club finished by the 17th of November, so I will update you on that soon as I need to work on that!
I need to write an introduction, about Plentzia, about Artxanda, about future trips and about the new members' opinions on the Hiking Club; I might even mention the future Hiking Club awards!
Reading over my last reflections I can say that everything has gone as planned. I spent a long time writing about everything that has been going on in the Hiking Club and then had to translate everything and add pictures. It was a lot of work but I managed to do it, which makes me very proud as this is more than three times what I used to write for my past articles.
In addition, I feel that I have done a better job with this assignment because I am part of the Hiking Club, I lead it and I feel that I am more connected to it and can therefore write about it better. I am a primary source you could even say! Writing about my experience in the Hiking Club has also helped me appreciate what I have as we have been able to do several trips that have been fun and exciting, and even though I might feel lazy to do them at the time they are truly beneficial for me!
I have sent my work to the journal club (link here) and only have to wait for some other members of the Journal Club to check it and format it appropriately for its publication.
I can't wait to see the final copy as I think that it will look great with the quotes and pictures I sent them.
Below are some behind the scenes pictures of my work!
Talk to you soon!
Friday 18th of December 2014
This trimester's newsletter was published today! Out of 9 pages, one of them was fully dedicated to the Hiking Club and written by me... I feel so proud!
Below are some snapshots of the final results of the Hiking Club page in the first trimester's newsletter. It turned out great thanks to the ICT team!
END OF ACTIVITY
The Journal Club was an activity for which I set myself the following goals to achieve throughout my two-year CAS program: to improve the quality of my writing and to write more fluently and to be more involved in the school’s important issues and inform the rest of the school about them to create a more close community. I have achieved this goal and have improved my skills during the first year, leading to a whole section to myself in the second year! I have also been more involved in school activities in order to then report about them. I feel that I have also managed to achieve most of my anticipated learning outcomes, developing new skills, increasing awareness of my own strengths and areas of growth during the first year as I worked with Ms Angela to improve my writing skills and learned about what I did well and what I could work on. I also showed commitment and perseverance in my activities and worked collaboratively with others: people you had to talk with for information about your article, the Journal Club coordinators giving you instructions, editors... Overall a great experience!
Final reflection and learning outcome assessment is missing
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