For this year’s Year 11s, a three day mountain trip has been planned, where they will participate in activities like ski touring, avalanche training, snowshoeing and other potential mountain activities. Many of the students have wondered why it wouldn’t be possible to have a normal five day ski week like the ones that happened in the other years in the MYP. There have also been questions on why the three days in which the year 11s will be spending in the mountains can’t be dedicated to only skiing or snowboarding. To help answer these questions, we have talked about what we would be doing that week and why with Ms.Gifford, Mr Anderson and Mr Kirby.

They have explained and given many reasons why a full week wouldn’t be possible. The first two and a half days of the week would be dedicated to the personal project, where students would be working on their reports and preparing for the personal project exhibition. While there will obviously be some students who will be able to complete their reports beforehand, it wouldn’t be fair to remove those two days of work time in order to have two extra ski days, as many students would feel pressured to complete their personal projects on time and rush their reports, making their final work not as good as it could be.

Another important bit of information is that up until last year, year 11 students didn’t have any sort of ski week or few days in the mountains. Only recently did the report become shorter and easier to complete. The smaller amount of expectations for the report has allowed those three days to happen.

Things such as pushing those two days back wouldn’t be possible since it would go over the required amount of days of class that need to happen each year.

All three members of staff have said that the week is important for students and that it is good for them to spend time away from home and school and become more independent.

Instead of having a traditional ski week this year, year 11’s will be experiencing 3 days of snow activities. This is the first year, “snow week” will be taking place. It will be from Tuesday afternoon all the way until Friday afternoon. On Tuesday morning, year 11 students will hand in their last papers of personal projects. Every activity year 11’s do during this week, will revolve around snow to create an environment close to ski week. During the three days, there will be three main activities, which are skiing, ski touring, and avalanche training. But the order of activities has yet to be decided.

So, for students to be able to have the opportunity of learning new skills and developing new hobbies throughout the ski week is essential . Some may still argue that students should have the full 5 days to finish their personal project but in reality it is not necessary. Therefore, for students to have the opportunity of being outdoors and independent is more beneficial than spending time completing their personal projects, yet, every student is different and works differently during the time given to complete the project.