China (Pictures)

Bi Yu Qi (2)

Beijing National Stadium, officially the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest (鸟巢).The building’s dynamic form creates a new icon for China and the city of Beijing. Design ensures that all spectators are as close as possible to the action and have clear sight lines. The Chinese National Stadium was the 2008 Olympic Games’ most striking structure, recognised all over the world, it was designed for use throughout the 2008 summer Olympics and Paralympics. The building’s dynamic form and vast scale create a new icon for China and the city Beijing. I have went to the bird nest a few times before, for me, the structure and design is really one of the kind!

The 2008 Summer Olympic Games were held for two weeks, starting on August 8th. This marks the first time that China has hosted the Games. China won 51 gold medals for the 2008 Olympic Games, the most of any nation at these Olympics, becoming the first nation. I have learnt that in order to achieve success, we must put in effort and work hard for it, these achievements of China and the athletes are impossible without the efforts put in and the hard works done, I Believe that these Games is actually a platform for China to showcase its growing economy and development as a nation.  

Lastly, there are five mascots called the Fuwa, it's a way of spreading Traditional Chinese blessings wherever they go. In the ancient culture of China, there is a grand tradition of spreading blessings through signs and symbols. Each of Fuwa symbolizes a different blessing- and will honor this tradition by carrying their blessings to the children of the world. Prosperity, happiness, passion, health and good luck will be spread to every continent as Fuwa carry their invitation from Beijing, China to every part of the world.

Tee Hui Shi (17)

The picture depicts the Great Wall of China. The building of Great Wall of China lasted for centuries adn was built for many different reasons. The one who turned the Great Wall to protecting the vast northern boundary is the first emperor of the Ch'in dynasty, Shih Huang-ti. The Great Wall now serves as a famous tourist attraction of China for the people to see how the Chinese in the past built up their man-made defences wherever nature itself had created a barrier against invaders. However, the Great Wall took on its present form at Mind Dynasty. The Mings emperor recognised the potential of Great Wall in repulsing the threat of another invasion by the Mongols and improvement was made. The Great Wall taught us the history if China as it had gone through dynasties of glory and fall.

Tee Sze Min (18)

The Great Wall of China is a enormous structure and was key to protecting agriculture and resisting cavalry of the Huns and other warrior tribes from the north. It reflects collision and exchanges between agricultural civilizations and nomadic civilizations in ancient China. The Great Wall of China is now a tourist attraction and people admire the world's largest military structure. It shows the far-sighted political strategic thinking and mighty defence forces of central empires in ancient China, and is an outstanding example of the superb military architecture, technology and art of ancient China. It embodies unparalleled significance as the national symbol for safeguarding the security of the country and its people. We can learn to be quick-witted to be able to create a defence in times of crisis quickly.

Chai Yi Meng (21)

The Great Wall of China is built to protect China against incursions by nomads from Inner Asia. Millions of people and many years are used to build the Great Wall of China and it is very precious and should be appreciated by us, even if we do not live in China. The Great Wall of China has many histories and the efforts to make the wall should not be wasted. Many people have died during the construction of the wall too. We should learn to appreciate things that we have like the Great Wall of China with many histories and should not just take them for granted. 

Law Ming Han (26)

   Tiananmen (天安门), or Gate of Heavenly Peace,it is a famous monument in Beijing, the capital of the People's Republic of China built during the Ming Dynasty in 1420. 

  The picture is showing Tiananmen Square self-immolation incident on 21st October 2011. A Chinese man set himself on fire in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in what is thought to be the first act of self-immolation at the scene of the 1989 pro-democracy protests for more than a decade. The picture shows several hundred people who must have also witnessed what happened after Mr Wang, a 42-year-old man from Huanggang in Hubei, set himself on fire. The Chinese authorities later confirmed the event, attributing the man’s actions to “discontent over the outcome of a civil litigation in a local court.” This incident reflects the frustration of people in China as they seek justice by self-immolation to protest against a system of courts and government that offers little help to the weak. I can learn from this that there are citizens that are unhappy about China and some people are doing extreme things to express their discontent about it.

March Holidays

During the march holidays, we organized a dance orientation for the year one juniors, hoping that we can know each other better. We went to the west coast park and played many interesting games such as Running Man and Amazing race. At night, we had barbecue too, everyone enjoyed the orientation very much. Before having the barbecue, we had fun together by blackening everyone's face, arms and legs with the charcoal. So you could have imagined, all of us became "black".

During the games, dancers of different levels are grouped together and each group will have two year two group leaders, while the rest of the year twos will be the game masters. The games are planned so that through the fun activities, we can know each other better, bond and work hard together to win the games. And these worked out well, the we made more friends with our CCA mates and knew each other better. 

Some examples of the games are : 

1) Find all the marbles in 2minutes (If you are unable to find all, forfeits will be waiting for you! Not only so, the group has to proceed to stage two)

Picture(2)

Can you spot them? Well some group had done well by dividing the job and find within a area allocated by the group leaders. Some groups have to do the forfeit too.

2) Newspaper--everybody's feet must fit into a specific size of newspapers.

After this orientation, I've realized the importance of group work, the group members need to contribute the ideas so that they can finish the tast as quickly as possible. During this CID module, we also need to work in a group, for example, the Chingay presentation. We had to work in a group for that task and when every group member is able to cooperate, we are able to finish the task quickly with good quality of work.

By, 

Yu Qi (2)

Sze Min (18)

Chingay Presentation

Reflections:

Bi Yu Qi (2)

     I think that the presentation was not bad overall. After which, Mr Chua and our classmates gave us useful advises and many suggestions of places to improve on base on our performance.

    We were the first group to present, although I had memorised the scripts, but I was rather nervous during the presentation that I had to refer to my scripts more. Although my friends said that I was confident enough, but I could feel my legs shaking while presenting! 

    The effect of the PowerPoint slides turned out well and the colour contrast was good, the texts and pictures could be seen clearly which was easy to refer to during our presentation. However, the slide on "improvements" was a bit wordy and the audience can read what we were going to say.

    I think the practices with my group mates were very useful as we were sure of the sequence and flow of the presentation which made the transition smooth. Also, the jokes that we added in had actually contributed to the engaging the audience which made the presentation more enjoyable.

     Through this presentation, I have learnt many presentation skills and and is more certain of what to notice about during a presentation such as eye contact, volume and tone of the speaker. Also, I have realized the importance of preparation before hands including practicing and rehearsing because they can help you to be more confident during the presentation!

Tee Hui Shi (17)

In the past two weeks, most of the groups in our class had presented a presentation about the learning journey to the chingay parade. We were the first group to be selected and had the least time to prepared. I think our group had done quite well for the presentation and the comments made by teacher is not bad. Throughout the presentation, I learnt that we must be confident during the presentation and also establish eye contact with the audience. Moreover, we must be loud and clear so that the audience would be able to hear every word we had spoken. Although the presentation this time was not really well but I will want to make the next one a success.

Tee Sze Min (18)

Throughout the whole chingay presentation, I have gained a lot of knowledge and important skills and requirements necessary for public speaking. I have learnt that in order to exhibit a good presentation, we must have sincere eye contact, intonation, good body posture, loud and clear voice any more more. As my group was the first to present, I was a little surprised and anxious because it was unexpected. When I was speaking, I was quite nervous to speak in front of the whole class as it is a large audience and made a few mistakes like stumbling on words. When we were done with our presentation, my teacher commented on my performance and said that I was a little soft. Now that I know my mistake, I will be able to improve the next time I need to speak in front of a large audience. Also, I am glad that the slides turned out well as it is a proportionally combination of words and pictures. This will result in slides that are not too wordy and our classmates are able to pay attentions and focus on what we present verbally. Overall, I think that the skills I've learnt will bring benefits in the future.

Chai Yi Meng (21)

After the trip to Chingay Parade, we were told to make a presentation regarding the trip there. The trip was certainly fun and enjoyable for me and I felt really happy that we could reflect back and share with our classmates about the trip! Before we presented in class, we had spent a lot of time preparing for the presentation which resulted in me eating McDonald late. However, after the presentation, I feel that all the effort we had put in are very worth it as our presentation was not bad. Although we are the first to present, I think we are really lucky as there are some advantages too! Throughout the presentation, I did not present perfectly due to inappropriate pauses while presenting. This is because I relied too much on the script and has to maintain eye contact, which made it difficult for me as I did not memorise the script. We also add some humour into the presentation to engage the audience and our teacher say they are not bad. However, there is one humour that is projected on the projector and this made it not really good to capture the audience attention. After the presentation, our teacher said that our group did not bad and told us about our mistakes. I think our teacher's feedbacks about us are true and I will try to amend my mistakes before it become worse. Although the teacher said that I did not bad overall, I still doubt it as I had made a lot of mistakes. Throughout this presentation, I have learnt a lot skills about presentation like being fluent and well-prepared and more that will help us more in our future. This presentation is a meaningful one that will make me understand more about skills of presenting. 

Law Ming Han (26)

It was a wonderful trip to Chingay and we had a presentation of Chingay by each group which made it a even memorable event. The presentation was fun and engaging as it was very funny. I have also learnt about presentation skills. My teacher taught the class presentation skills before the presentation of the the Chingay Parade but I still messed up during the presentation. My teacher commented that I had little eye contact as I kept reading off the script. I was quite nervous presenting there and having a script in hand, it was hard not to read off it. I also learnt that the facial expressions like smiling, body language, volume and variation of tone is very important. For example, if I say I am excited but my voice is totally monotonous like a robot, with no face expressions or body language, it would seem quite fake or insincere and it would cause the audience to lose interest, which would mean we had failed to engage them. On the other hand, if I variate my tone and volume, also with a smile while saying that I'm excited, it gives people a different feel, a feel of sincerity. I learnt much from this presentation and I hope I would be able to improve on my presentation skills. :D

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