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Bored? Looking for a new challenge?
You can watch basketball, baseball, track, gymnastics, tennis, aerobics, volleyball, and weight lifting on ESPN, or you can get out and enjoy them by joining your school team. Not into team sports? There's French club, the debating team, chess club, student government, radio, newspaper, yearbook, environmental club, computer club, and more.
So many choices can seem overwhelming, but getting involved in new activities with new people is a fun way to challenge yourself. Here are some basics and benefits of getting involved.
Benefits of Extracurricular Activities
So what's in it for you? You get to explore your physical, creative, social, political, and career interests with like-minded people. You'll find friends: Trying something different may bring you in contact with people you didn't know who share your interests and curiosity. A club or group also can be a great way to meet people who are different from you. Lots of youth programs bring people together with those who are different as a way to break down the barriers between people.
Participating in extracurricular activities helps you in other ways, too: It looks good on college and job applications and shows admissions officers and employers you're well-rounded and responsible. Specific activities help with specific goals — if you want to teach language or get a bilingual job, being the president of the Spanish club shows the depth of your commitment.
The most basic reason for joining a club or team is that it gives you something better to do than staring at the wall, wandering the hall, or napping all afternoon. People who are involved and engaged are less likely to become addicted to bad habits, like smoking or drinking.
Finding the Right Activity for You
Review the activities your school offers and listen to other students' experiences to find an activity that meets your needs. Do you wish you had more computer time? Are you tired of shooting hoops alone? Are you looking to meet friends or get support? Don't limit yourself to the familiar — try something new.
Think about different roles within groups that you might want to try — president, captain, participant, leader, support person. Each role is important. Being president teaches you leadership and management skills, but involves more responsibility; being a member gives you structure and is less stressful. You can also lend your skills in areas that are needed, such as using your financial skills to be a group's treasurer.
How to Get Involved
Ask questions of the activity advisor before you join. Some things to ask include:
Age. You may have to be a certain age or in a certain grade to join an activity.
Fees. Do you have to pay to join? How much? Are there fees for outings, uniforms, costumes, or other expenses? You may be required to help raise money.
Physical. If you're joining a team, you may need to take a physical. Talking with your family doctor may help you decide whether a team is a good choice for you.
Grades. Many groups require a minimum GPA to join.
Time. If you're involved in competitive sports, you need to have the time to practice and compete. There's also the time it takes to get ready emotionally for a game, and the time you spend getting pizza with the team after games. Too Much of a Good Thing?
It's easy to join one too many exciting activities. Ask as many questions as possible before you join. Sit down with your school schedule, work schedule, and other activities and try to map out what's realistic. Are you taking a class this semester that requires extra studying time? Do you need to focus on grades? Does your bus only come once an hour by the time practice is over instead of every 15 minutes? Will you have time to eat, sleep, and relax? Everyone needs downtime. If an activity adds lots of stress to your life, it's not for you.
Once you've joined an activity, if you feel stressed out, reconsider। It's important to keep a balance between schoolwork, extracurricular activities, a job, social life, and your health. If you join a club and need to quit for any reason, talk with the advisor or coach. Be direct and polite and explain your situation and feelings. Sometimes it's just not the right match for you or it's too time-consuming. Perhaps you can participate in a less time-consuming way or rejoin later. You won't be helping yourself or the group if you frantically do homework during a competition or fall asleep during practice. Saying "no" can be the most mature and responsible thing to do.

book review

This book provides students a very systematic procedure which they could follow along while writing without further confusing questions. And it is a good book for students who learn about composition writing. When they have any questions about writing, it seems that they can use this book very conveniently. Teachers who teach composition could profit by this book, too. Instructors can even learn something from this book. They could instruct their students along with the book so that they can both gain something valuable. And it is actually quite different from other writing books because it contains many details that students may have in writing. And since it illustrate its contents clearly, teachers may skip some simple parts that student read by themselves and explain more difficult chapters. And it fuses many aspects of writing, too. For instance, it contains the forms of writing of movies, paintings, etc. This book contains all sorts of genres of writing and different materials we may write about, from literature, visual arts and film.

We can follow the tips which have been given to us in the book. And the professional writers’ articles (as examples harmonizing with each chapter’s theme) enlarge readers and students’ scope of horizons, which inspire them to work harder by maybe imitating them in the first place. After being familiar with professional articles, students may use them to begin their own original work since they are really masterpieces. It provides students essays, which encourage students to write as good as them and sympathize them since they make similar mistakes. We also think there is another key point the book teach us from the basic theory. For example, it mentions how to summarize an article. As a matter of fact, this is the first step to learn how to write a good composition.

From these student essays, we can know how to revise our problems, just like our discussion in class before, we compare two articles and then we can notice which one is better. And when this book talks about paintings, it would give us many paintings for students to practice. It provides students with essays, which encourage students to write as good as them and sympathize with them since they make similar mistakes. What’s more, this book is endowed with vivid illustrations helping readers understand its words. Its wording and typesetting are impeccable with different colors and sizes of words. We think in the book, it provides many question to think after reading the article. And it is very important because we can realize some points which we ignore before. We find that the questions the book provides after the article are the key point.
Questions make/force us to think, and to reflect. They would also sharpen our interpretative skills. There is also another good point. In the book, it has a "remember column.” It can remind us of some writing tips. Also, sharing is quite important in the writing pedagogy. Students' own thoughts and teachers' are interacting if they share thoughts with each other. In conclusion, we think that this book is very good in general.

The second teacher-student conference

In my second teacher-student conference, I found that I have some problems in my composition.
First of all, I would like to discuss about the problems in my midterm composition. I have to pay attention to the transitional words. Use transitional words to make my composition more fluently. Because if I do not use transitional words, my readers can not seize my opinions easily. Then, easy and baby words can not be used in papers, I have to check my words after I finished my compositions. I am writing about the formal paper, so I have to think twice before I use words.
And I still have two annotations waiting for me to finish them, not only annotations, I still have to give my group members some suggestions of their annotation. This
Friday(12/26), I have to print out my four annotations, peers’ suggestions and revised annotations.
Through this semester, I think I have learned much. For example, I would write my composition according to my opinions, and do not know how do my readers feel. But in this class, peers would come to my blog to read my compositions and give me some useful pinions. Like Ko would suggest me to put some more my own experience in my compositions to convince my readers, I think it is right. Because writer’s own experience can convince readers to believe in what I want to say. It also can give my readers that I take my own opinions seriously so I practice it. This reminds me of my topic- Community of Practice. And Dimitri would give me very useful materials to help me make my compositions more solid. For example: when I am writing about NAAE, a website where people can post their questions and other people who know about this would help them to solve those questions. Because of this reason Dimitri gave me so many websites connected to this kind platform. I feel shocked, because I never know there are so many this kind website in the computer, he really give me some special material which I need. Joyce would tell me to pay attention to my coherence, because if my compositions do not coherent together, my readers can not get what I want to say easily.
And how to make good use of the material in the Internet. This help me in many classes, because we students in English department always have many papers and presentations. Meanwhile, we need much material to help understand the topic we have to prepare, so if we know how to use the Internet well, we can get what we want. When we use those material, we can quote the experts’ opinions to support my composition, because most people believe in experts opinions, I have to use their opinions to support me.
I have noticed that when we finished our composition, we have to polish our language. For example, I would like to change some of the words that I always use. And I have checked the grammar problems of my composition, if there are still some problems in my composition, I hope professor can help me to point out.

COP definition

http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/definitions.shtml

From this article, we can get some definition of community of practice. When we first know a topic, we have to know what the definition of this topic is, we can start our research. Because of this reason, I search some materials about the definitions of community of practice.
First, Bonding by exposure to common problems.
There are many shades of definition of this concept, but the author define it as "a group of professionals, informally bound to one another through exposure to a common class of problems, common pursuit of solutions, and thereby themselves embodying a store of knowledge."
Secondly, Common practices and language
"Communities of Practice" is a phrase coined by researchers who studied the ways in which people naturally work and play together. In essence, communities of practice are groups of people who share similar goals and interests. In pursuit of these goals and interests, they employ common practices, work with the same tools and express themselves in a common language. Through such common activity, they come to hold similar beliefs and value systems.
Thirdly, Commons sense of purpose
There are many communities of practice within a single company, and most people belong to more than one of them. Most of us belong to more than one, and not just on the job: the management team; the engineers, some in your company and some not.
Fourthly, Members evolve more creative practice
A community of practice is "a diverse group of people engaged in real work over a significant period of time during which they build things, solve problems, learn and invent...in short, they evolve a practice that is highly skilled and highly creative."
Last but not least, from water coolers to commitment. More than a "community of learners," a community of practice is also a "community that learns." Not merely peers exchanging ideas around the water cooler, sharing and benefitting from each other's expertise, but colleagues committed to jointly develop better practices.

Revised Exam Essays

The article was “From tripod to Comes: A new metaphor for the language arts”, which had published in English Journal and was written by Baines, L. A.
Those years, some projects of writing have changed their focus on writing instructions from finished products to the processes of planning, composing, revising, and publishing. By doing this students can have the chance to meet different readers. Sometimes when students wrote articles they would forget that they have to satisfy different readers. Even though not all people would accept your ideas, students still have to do their best to convey what they want to tell their readers.
Teachers also can let students to write some different aims for different students. Those students would understand what they focus on.
Most advocates of writing would seem this as an individual conference and students can share what they have found in the classroom to their classmates. Through discussing, students can get other people’s ideas, and they can know that how to modify their own articles. Maybe students also can get inspirations through brainstorming. And because many students didn't read many literary forms, then teachers would like to show their materials in many different ways to help students better understand. By reading more and extensively, students can get what they have to get.
And we can not deny that the computers have become one of our teaching materials. Most newly teachers would teach their students with the help of the computers and students can also do writings in the computers. The teachers of composition may provide environment and media such as film, television, Internet, and CD-ROM. By the way, teachers also have to guide students how to use computers in the right way. And teach them how to use those resources. Because not all the resources in the computer are suitable for students, then teachers have to help them strain.
I think I agree some of the topics in this article. When we write articles we have to know what we want to tell our readers, and how to make our articles in organizations. We also need to know how to support our ideas, using some convincing evidence. During our process of writing, we have to know how to progress our articles gradually. And we can not only write, sometimes we can make some different forms to present our compositions. For example, we can try to write some poems or the life experience that we want to share with our readers. Very free, and we do not have to care much.
As Baines said, Computers do already become one of our important resources of learning. We do a lot of learning by computers. But we also have to have instructors to teach us, because there are so many resources in the Internet, not only excellent ones but some bad information. We have to learn how to choose those materials we can get. That’s why we need instructors, because not every student can differentiate what they have got from computers.
In my opinions, computers do help me during the journey of my English learning. For example I would use the Internet to listen to the English radios, such as Advanced and ICRT. As a student in English department, we always have to collect materials for my homework. And now I can not only go to the library but also search by the Internet. It is more convenient now.

Midterm

Those years, some projects of writing have changed their focus on writing instruction from finished products to the processes of planning, composing, revising, and publishing. Teacher can let students to write some different aims for different students. Those students would understand what they focus on.
Most advocates of writing would seen this as a individual conference and students can share what they have found in the classroom to their classmates .Because many students didn't read much literary forms, then teachers would like to show their materials in many different ways to help students better understand.
And we can not deny that the computer has become one of our teaching materials. Most newly teachers would teach their students with the help of the computers and students can also do writings in the computers. By the way ,teachers also have to guide students how to use computers. And teach them how to use those resources.
I think I agree some of the topics in this article, because computers do already become one of our important resources of learning. We do a lot of learns by the computer. But we also have to have an instructor to teach us, because there are so many resources in the Internet, not only excellent help but some bad information. We have to learn how to choose those materials we can get.
Beside the Internet, we can also use computers to see film, television. By those videos, we can get some inspiration. We can use computers to see a movie, than maybe this movie would change our life. Or we can get the chance to see a perfect article that may change our thinking, and we can also learn how the writer wrote this article. Later days, when we write articles or compositions, we can quote some of their thinking to make our article more beautiful. But remember do not copy.

Reflections

After the conference, I think that my topic communties of practice is something like participation. And COP can not only practiced in the companies bu also schools. But there a little difference between them.

First,when we discuss something in school, it is more like chatting. And we would not care how much time we spend. But in firms, we did care about efficiency. We have to carry out a profitable case for the firms.

Second,during the discussion. Sometimes, some people can not find their position then they may think they are not in the nucleus. Because of this, some people would think they are not important, they may give up what they have to do, or do this carelessly. From this, we can know that when we held a discussion we have to tell everybody what they have to do definitely and let them know that everyone of them are important to this disscussion!

In fact,no matter what we do,we have to participate with our all heart, even though we are not in the nucleus.