Yes, no, I mean yes. Oh hello there, sorry for the weird intro (as per usual) today I am going to be explaining a project we did right before spring break. Actually that’s inaccurate. We (half) finished the project by spring break, but we had been preparing for much much longer. So have you heard of this thing called Destination Imagination. If not click here. Anyways this was my second year with PLP doing DI, you can read my post from last year here. So that’s enough for this weird paragraph of an opening. DI regionals is what I’m here to talk about and you are here to read about.

THE BEGINNING

So a quick explanation of DI in one sentence. DI is a tournament of sorts where people from all around come to compete in different competitions that they have been preparing for months. Since we already learnt all about what DI is last year and had some experience we got to filter into groups right away. I got put in a group with Izzy, Luciano, Amelia, and Anika. I was happy with my group, but when I heard that we’d be doing improv again I wasn’t too happy. In the end I think doing improv for the second time was great because it gave me an opportunity to improve a skill even more and I was able to show my group members some of the things I learnt last year. The challenge went something like this, we had to choose figure heads on a coin and at the challenge we’d get given a random two. We then had to act in a place they gave us also with a random scenario. Later we had to pick up a flip which had something like the moon disappears and our performance would go from verbal to nonverbal. Those are just some of the simple rules. There are many more, but I’d be here explaining them for way to long. We got researching our figure heads right away and started to practice with different scenarios. Below is our research about our figure heads. We tried giving them a character so that at the provincials we’d know instantly how to act.

THE MIDDLE

By now we had known everything about our figure heads and the key was just practice makes perfect. We sometimes got off task, but were mainly focused on the task at hand, and got waaaayyyy better (because we weren’t that great YET (growth mindset)). We got going with different cards and revised our characters emotions and actions in different scenarios. For example one of the guys I researched was Yi Sun Sin. He was a captain and he always over complicated things and went crazy with strategies. So, one of our examples was going to a coffee shop and Yi goes crazy on how to get in with the least amount of a line. After all this we felt ready, but we still fixed a few things and got our practice up. We were now ready to dominate at regionals

THE END

Now it was time for the regionals which was hosted yet again at Seycove. We showed up nice and early so we could raise our team names up in the opening ceremony. After that we headed into the instant challenge, which I can’t talk about, but I can say that it went well and our team worked together great. Now came the time we all waited for. We walked up on stage, I was stage fright as per usual, but we were ready. We had done all the research and practice needed and we were finally ready. Our improv went really well and Luciano and I got to act as annoying school kids. Below is a video of our performance. Anyways I learnt so much from this DI experience and have practiced many things we have been learning about in PGP. A huge habit of mind I practiced was number four, thinking flexibly. Thinking flexibly is extremely important when it comes to improv as you can’t have a perfect structure of what you will do in the performance. Rather you have to have an idea and broaden out from there and think flexibly to use others ideas. An ISTE standard I worked on throughout DI thus far is definitely Knowledge Constructer. Considering all the research I did on my people on the penny’s. Anyways DI wasn’t so bad this time around now that I knew what I was doing. And yes, that’s how I’m going to end this post.

Until next time… Aedan Loughran