As part of a requirement of the English Language and Literature course, we were introduced to Language in a cultural context. We were assigned a continent which and we had to explore their various features of that continent.

My group had continent Europe, so we had to choose some famous cities in Europe and describes its culture, lifestyle and celebrated it by sharing knowledge with students and teachers of the school. I choose Belgium as my city and explored this city.

LO 1- Identify own strengths and develop areas for growth

I am very good at working collaboratively in a team, I was part of various events in school and, I identified my strength. It is important to know our strength because we would have more experience in that matter and can help the team more effectively.  

Working collaboratively would have different opinions of ideas, and somewhere I feel that I am not confident to present my idea. I selected my city as Belgium and I thought I started my work very late because there were so many ideas flowing through my mind and I was not feeling confident about it. However, the leader of our team gave me confidence and we researched about the culture, the lifestyle, the eating habits and presented my idea more effectively and with confidence. Working on my weakness gave me more confidence and I could get the task done more effectively.

Knowing my strengths and my weakness gave me a better idea that where I need help, from my teammates. We all performed well on culture day, also we helped each other.

LO 2- Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process

Challenges are present everywhere and I overcame all of the challenges that were present in my group.

One of the biggest challenges for me was that how to represent the culture of the city Belgium, I found various ideas for representing the culture, but my group denied it because they wanted something more creative. I found a good and a creative idea, but before two days of the event. The idea was that I would make Waffle which represents Belgium’s eating lifestyle, but for that, I had to prepare the batter to make the waffle, I then struggled to make the batter for so many people. The other challenge was that the batter is not sweet, and people expect waffle to be sweet because any kind of chocolate sauce bringing to school is against school policy. I then got an idea what to tell people that when waffle was invented they did not expect it to be sweet and now people add various chocolate sauces. However, this is a fact that people in Belgium never added chocolate sauce. I then took this point as a marketing technique for my city.

I never did something like this before. It is very important to overcome any challenges because challenges are problems is progress. By solving the problems I would gain more experience and I would become a problem solver and a leader.

Challenges can have easy solutions, as I opted for the marketing technique, therefore challenges need to look from a different perspective. This is a new skill which I learned. Problems in life could be solved with a different perspective and this could be used in the future. It is important to learn this new skill because this would be applicable even in the future in my career and we become more potential in life.

LO 3-  Demonstrate how to initiate and plan a CAS experience

Planning is the most important aspect of life and I am usually an organized person. I completed my work before the deadline, which included research, making charts, ideas for the group and decoration.

Planning and initiating was difficult for me as the ideas were running late in my mind, also I asked my friends and teachers for more innovative ideas. I chose Belgium as my city, and to represent its culture I explained their culture by charts and also by giving people to taste the original waffle. While initiating the difficult task was to prepare waffle and on the other hand, explain people the culture of Belgium and their lifestyle. I planned this, but until it did not become practical I did not understand the difficulty of this task. So, the skill I learnt was to plan the task with keeping practical aspects in mind, and through this, I would achieve success.

I think planning and initiating would be easier because if I plan well then it would be easy to initiate. Planning is extremely important in life and if I want to succeed in life I have to plan well all the activities I do.

LO 4- Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experiences

The commitment was necessary for the event, but we did not get marks for the event. But there was competition between the best continents. Due to this competition, our team was constantly motivated to perform extraordinarily in the event, so commitment was necessary.

For the event, we had to come early in the morning and plan. We had to give various ideas for our groups and give time for decorations and to prepare a small speech for people who visit my booth. For me, it was easy to commit things, as I manage my time extremely well, and I prioritize my work according to the need. To work in a group we need to help everyone and I helped my group for decorations.

LO 5- Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

Working collaboratively is easy for me, and then we understand each other at a greater level and it is easier for the whole group as people complete tasks as assigned to them.

Working collaboratively sometimes also creates conflict between group members, but as we work together our bond becomes better because of this there is less communication gap. As tasks were assigned to everyone from our group there was very less misunderstanding created. It is important to work collaboratively as we get to know the team members more.

For this activity, teamwork had a lot of importance because my group represents ‘Europe’ and if one member of the group is not working effectively it affects the result of our group. ‘Europe’ was in the second position during the competition, and if we did not work collaboratively then the result of the activity would be something different.

LO 7- Recognize and consider the ethics of choices and actions

I had to research the culture of Belgium and keeping in the ethics and morals in mind.

For research I had to I used the internet as a source of information, and there might be chances that the information present on the internet might be false, and thus ethics and morals would not be considered. In order to win the competition, some information might not be true in the real sense, and this could be against our ethics.

Going against the ethics makes me uncomfortable and I compared various information and took into consideration which was most relevant. Also, I mentioned the links from where I took the information.

This issue was not a major one and everyone can also understand

Learner Profile

Communicators, Knowledgeable and Inquirer – Researching about the information about different cultures of different countries. , Reflective – after the event, we analyzed our performance

ATL Skills:

Organising skills, Collaboration skills, Communication Skills, Information literacy skills, and Creative Thinking skills.