DAY FOUR

RECEIVING A LETTER OF COMMISSION (from Sophie’s classroom teacher - 'Further Adventures of sophie' by Dick King Smith).

Today began with receiving a letter of commission – a job for us to do as school camp organisers!

Evie Reads Aloud the Letter of Commission to the Team:


28th of February 2011
Dear Lake Adventure Challenge Confidence Camp,
I am writing to see if your team would be able to provide a programme for my primary aged class. I have a diverse class of twenty four 7 -8 year olds. In this class there is a big range of abilities and skills, ranging from some very timid and shy students to a couple of very determined and confident students. Some of the children struggle to get on together and we hope that having an experience at your camp would help them develop new friendships and to help them learn how to work together as a team.

Do you think your team would be able to develop and provide an appropriate camp programme for my class? I would appreciate it if you were able to send us an outline of an appropriate camp programme that you would suggest we undertook.

Yours Sincerely,
Sarah Davies,
Cloverlea School.

We went into role as the adult team who works at ‘Lake Adventure Challenge Confidence Camp’ and discussed whether we could design a suitable programme for this class.

As we went into role here are some of things that were discussed. You will see that we have begun to absorb the language and values of school camp organisers – we really sound like we know what we are doing now!

“if we are going to be in role as camp organisers we need to be sensible and reliable”
“we need to do our best to make it happen”
“we are going to be teachers and good confident leaders”
“we would have to be quick thinking and resourceful”
“we would have to be well trained medical people with outdoor first aid to the highest level”
“all leaders would have to have first aid training”
“if someone got really hurt we would call a rescue helipcopter”
“we would be in a sort of staffroom”
“there would be a view over the lake over there….and the mountains”.

And then we were in role….

We decided ‘in role’ to accept the commission. We then divided into smaller groups, in different areas of expertise to discuss the job in more detail – still ‘in role’. Each group decided what aspect of the job they wanted to discuss.

Helena, Lucy, Zoe, and Macey took the role of discussing how to best encourage and support the shy and timid students.

Orla, Charlotte, and Evie took the role of discussing what to do with the already confident children that may come to the camp.

Pablo, Alice, and Alexander took the role of team building activity specialists.

Hugo, Noah, and Luca took the role of the building and property maintenance team.

CIRCULAR DRAMA

We then tried a technique called ‘Circular Drama’. For this we stayed in our small groups and were all frozen until Ms Gain indicated for one group at a time to unfreeze and go into role. This way we were all able to hear a little of what each group was talking about. This activity was a lot of fun and showed how good we are becoming at working ‘in role’.

Circular Drama: The Lake Adventure Challenge Team 'In Role':









BROCHURE MAKING

The last part of our day today was spent writing and designing brochures for our camp. We are all working in pairs to create a brochure for ‘Lake Adventure Challenge Confidence Camp’.

We looked at models of real camp organizations including brochures and information from Staglands, Green Pastures Camp, and Forest Lakes. We developed a shared criteria for our brochures, i.e. what each brochure would include and then worked in our smaller groups to create the brochures.

Our Shared Criteria:
6 pages (A4 paper folded up)
1. A front page with title of camp and an image/logo
2. A written description of the camp encouraging people to come
3. A list of activities offered
4. Cooking, Dining, and Accommodation information – including the different indoor/outdoor options and options for parents/teachers accommodation
5. Images – photos of ‘freeze frames’ or drawings of people enjoying the camp
6. A good copy of our collective map and contact information.

A Team Working on their Brochure:


Brochure Making - Creating photos for brochures:

DAY THREE

ROLE ON THE WALL FOR SIR EDMUND HILLARY



Today we began with some reading about Sir Edmund Hillary. We read some articles that had been written about him and we also read some of his well known quotes to try and get an idea of what made Sir Edmund Hillary such a famous role model for Outdoor Education in New Zealand. We made a ‘Role on the Wall’ to record our ideas. Lucy drew an outline of Sir Edmund Hillary and around the outside of this we recorded his numerous achievements and things people had said about him. On the inside of the outline we recorded his skills and attributes that lead to his successes. These included things like “very determined”, “good at problem solving”, “quick thinking”, “very focused”, “set goals and challenged himself (self motivated)”, “kept going”, “sensible and practical”, “humble – thought of himself as an ordinary person”, and “generous”. We learnt that Sir Edmund Hillary was also a philanthropist, which means he spent a lot of his life making money to give to others in need. We reflected that last week we thought that being generous and thinking of others was an important part of being a happy successful adult.

After our think tanks last week and our reflections today, we are starting to get a good idea about what skills and attributes our camp should be encouraging young people to develop in order to grow up into successful happy adults. These ideas are starting to help us further develop and refine our mission statement and values of our camp organisation. We are also starting to absorb and use more sophisticated language in our writing and role work, we are starting to sound like school camp organisers!

COLLECTIVE MAP MAKING

Next we made a collective map of our camp. Using the lists of activities that we had brainstormed last week we identified the different areas and facilities our camp would need. We worked in small groups first and then came together to create a big collective map of our camp. We also brainstormed names for our camp and decided on ‘Lake Adventure Challenge Confidence Camp’.

Creating our collective map together:






DESCRIPTIVE AND PERSUASIVE WRITING
Once we had drawn our map we did some writing to describe our camp. We will use this writing later when we make brochures to encourage people to come and stay at our camp. Here are some examples of our writing.

Lake Adventure Challenge it is a great camp lake that feeds into the nice little rivers that go to the sea. It has big mountains with waterfalls. Charlotte

Come to Lake Adventure Challenge. This beautiful camp has a beautiful blue lake. The cabins have a wonderful view of the lake, beach, mountains and forest. It has a walking and bike riding track around this beautiful place. You can also go and see a beautiful waterfall. Zoe

This beautiful area has a great view of the great lake…Lake Dolphin. A little river runs through the lake surrounded by lots of native trees. Up in the hills you can go for bush walks and bike rides […] We do raft building, making bonfires and toasting marshmallows, learning how to kayak, treasure hunts and more. On the great lake you can go fishing off the wharf, swimming, kayaking, sailing and so on. […] You can either choose to sleep in a cabin or a tent. Macey

Learn how to challenge yourself with exciting experiences. Push your limits until you find you can do something you never thought possible. Improve your confidence. Alexander

There’s a secondary camp on a little island with amazing views and there’s an awesome flying fox into the lake and there are awesome mountains that you can climb. Noah

Lake Adventure Challenge is a wonderful place to come to with its beautiful lake. The cabins have a great view of the lake, beach, mountains, and forest. Evie

Come to our camp you will step out of your comfort zone. It will let you experience new things that you have never done before. Orla

Try new challenges in a chip of paradise overlooking the beautiful beach leading to Cook Strait. Come to Lake Adventure Challenge, to a cabin with a view over the sparkling lake where an island lies over the waves […] When you come to Lake Adventure Challenge you can see beautiful water falls, mountains, and forests. Also watch native birds, cruise along the lake and the boats rock gently on the waves. Pablo

THE ADVENTURES OF SOPHIE BY DICK KING SMITH

We ended the day with Ms Gain reading us some excerpts from a book called ‘The Further Adventures of Sophie’ by Dick King Smith. We read enough to get a good idea of Sophie’s determined confident character and some of the different characters in Sophie’s class at school. Sophie is in a class of 7 – 8 year olds and there is a range of characters from some who are very determined and confident to others who are timid and shy. Sophie is somewhat unkind about some of her classmates for example describing Dawn as ‘ignorant’ and ‘a wimp’. We returned to our discussions from week one about what makes a good leader and decided that Sophie needed some guidance to make the most of her determination and confident approach to life and to help her develop into a positive leader.