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.

Day Two

Today we began with a team building problem solving activity. We worked in teams to try and build as many bridges as we could between a row of cans/cup that were 20inches apart in 5 minutes. To build the bridges each team had 1 pipe cleaner, 3 sticky mail labels, 5 paper clips, 1 rubber band, and 10 drinking straws.
We then reflected on each team’s success talking about communication, cooperation, and creativity.

Some teams were more successful than others…









Some comments made were:

“there were too many people trying to lead”
“there was a lot of talking and not much listening”
“everyone wanted to be the leader”
“they all had good ideas but they didn’t bring them together”

“there was a lot of listening and getting on with it quickly”
“everyone shared their ideas” (shared leadership).


Next we considered “what if we were to imagine we were a group of adults who organised school camps”. We thought about what our camp would be like, what our company would value, and had a go at writing some mission statements. Here are some of the catchphrases and statements we came up with:

“trying new challenges”

“jumping out of your comfort zone”

“challenging yourself with exciting experiences”

“improve your confidence”

“be the best that you can be”

“push your limits”

“adapt to new situations”

“learn to be confident”

“making friendships”

“we believe that you may be shy but you will come back home more confident”

“be safe but challenge yourself”

“work with a team”

“you get to work by yourself and you get to work with a team”

“have fun”

“trust others”

“lead others and be led”

“be brave”


THINK TANK: WHAT MAKES A HAPPY SUCCESSFUL ADULT?

As we thought about the values and wrote catch phrases for a possible school camp business we reflected on why it was important to give children and young adults experiences like these. We had a think tank discussion followed by some writing about what makes a successful happy adult. Here are some things we said and wrote about successful happy adults that we know.

“My grandma used to be a nurse in India. She did it because India is a very poor country and it has lots of diseases. I admire her because she is a caring and successful person, also because she is very unselfish and understanding. Her skills were to learn a different language, understand a different culture and live in a different lifestyle – stepping out of her comfort zone. She challenged herself by living and working in a different country”. Macey

Chevron talked about his dad and how he has lots of friends and enjoys playing rugby and being part of a team.

Alexander talked about his dad and how he helps people in poorer countries, he described him as ‘unselfish’. “I admire my dad because he thinks about other people, not just his family.”

Pablo talked about how his grandad knows all about native NZ species. He described his grandad as passionate about nature “because he loves being with it”. He also described him as quick thinking, being able to do lots of things really quickly, and witty because he always has an answer ready. He described his grandad as “very very resourceful because he knows everything to do if you are lost in a forest”.

Hugo talked about his Mum and Dad who own a catering business called Blue Carrot.
“Having your own business means you need to be smart, work on computers, share ideas, manage and look after staff, and be creative” Hugo.

Charlotte talked about her mum who is fit and enjoys sports. “my mum challenges herself by going on bigger runs that she’s never gone on before. She is very sporty and that is what she thinks is fun […] she’s a nurse so she’s very good with cuts like when my brother Albert cut his finger with a knife she knew just what to do.”

Noah talked about his dad: “when I cut my toe my dad, me, and Mila went straight to the cabin and my dad bandaged me up. He is a quick thinker. If someone ever needs help he helps them. My dad is resourceful”.

“I admire my mum because she helps children with things they struggle with, things like reading and writing, and also teaches them new things. She is kind and patient and is very creative. She makes the children more confident with their reading and writing. She is good at listening to the children’s ideas. She is happy because she can see the children do something that they couldn’t do before.”

Orla talked about how her dad enjoyed travelling to different countries all around the world. “My dad is generous because he goes to different countries and helps people”.

Alice talked about her mum and how she looks after other people’s children. She talked about how her mum needed to be responsible and reliable. “You also need to be arty and creative and you need to educate the kids. You need to be kind and caring to look after children”.

Helena talked about her mum: “my mum is a translater […] I admire my mum because she knows so many languages, she challenges herself with nobody telling her what to do. She is helpful to others. If there was a letter someone did not know what it meant she would translate it very well.”

After talking and writing about a successful happy adult that we knew we interviewed some of these adults on a panel (by getting into role) to find out even more information about what made these people happy and successful. In role as interviewers some of the questions we asked were: “what do you like about your job?”, “is your job challenging?”, and “what skills do you need to do your job well”. We had to listen carefully to the answers so we could think of more questions to find out more specific information, for example “how did you learn so many languages”, “how do you work and look after your family?”.

OUR PANEL OF HAPPY SUCCESSFUL ADULTS BEING INTERVIEWED



In role as her mum, Helena talked about having studied hard at university, having to be a good listener and enjoy talking with people, and how she enjoyed translating.

In role as his dad, Hugo talked about how he had to be responsible and reliable and had to go to sleep early and get up early for deliveries. He also talked about enjoying his work and being creative.

Day One of Our New Mantle

Today this group of year 3 and 4 students at Muritai School came together to start work in an enrichment programme that will be taught using Mantle of the Expert.

For this Mantle of the Expert work we will be in role as an enterprise that organises school camps. Through this fictional context we will consider whether belonging to groups is important for people, look at the different ways people establish and manage relationships, consider the different impacts of co-operative versus competitive activities, and consider what skills and attitudes are important for establishing group belonging and what kind of activities would best support groups of children to acquire these skills.

These ideas will be explored as we, as part of our work in this fictional role, plan school camp style programmes for a range of different groups. In order to put together these plans we will research real existing outdoor education centres and school camp businesses, trial different activities, and create and design our own activities and tasks.

Today we began our work by looking at some 'You Tube' videos where adults and teenagers reflected on their ‘Outward Bound’ experiences (see link on right hand side tool bar if you would like to view these, we watched the first two videos on this page). We listened carefully to what people said about the programme and had a great discussion around the 2 questions:

‘what do you think the point of a camp/enterprise like this is?’
‘what did people seem to get out of going to a camp like this?’

Here are some of our ideas:

“to meet new people”
“to make friends”
“to be part of a group”
“to be more confident”
“encourages you to try new things”
“to have fun”
“pushing limits which means pushing themselves to do bigger things, things they haven’t done before”
“to go from saying ‘I can’t do this’ to saying ‘I can’”
“to challenge themselves”

We talked about some of the slogans for Outward Bound and what they meant: 'find your true potential - achieve things you never thought possible', 'challenge yourself and push you limits', 'develop your team skills in real situations', and 'step outside your comfort zone'. We learnt what it meant to ‘step out of your comfort zone’ and did some writing about a time when we had stepped out of our comfort zone. Here are some examples of our writing:

‘when I first went kayaking I went out of my comfort zone. But now it is really easy because I have done it before’ Evie

‘when I was lost in the playground I was scared and I was out of my comfort zone’ Daniel

‘when I first went to gym I was so scared. I had completely no idea how to do anything. The hardest thing was doing the splits. And I did not know anyone. But now it is easy. I know lots of people. I like going to gym’ Zoe

‘I went out of my comfort zone when I went to Movie World. Going on the ride called The Wild West really got me out of my comfort zone. I felt good after I did it’. Hugo

‘When I started swimming it was hard to keep afloat. It was hard to kick and stroke. Now I feel comfortable swimming’. Pablo

‘When I first went to gym I was really scared and now I do things really easy. I thought that my coach was going to push me down really far in splits but now I can get down so it isn’t scary and I know I can trust my coach’. Lucy

‘When I started school I was scared because I didn’t know anybody in my class and now I know everybody and the teacher, and it isn’t scary any more’. Luca

‘When I first went wharf jumping I was scared because it was so far […]then I jumped and I felt great and then I kept doing it, it was really fun! It doesn’t seem so far now’ Helena.

Next we looked at a range of images of children involved in outdoor education activities. We brainstormed what we thought each of the activities were about by using post it notes to put our ideas around the outside of the images. Some of the words that were brainstormed were: ‘challenging’, ‘having fun’, ‘trust’, ‘teamwork’, ‘problem solving’, ‘helping others’, and ‘trying hard’.

Brainstorming ideas.







Next we chose some of our favourite images and recreated them as 'freeze frames'. Below are the images followed by the 'freeze frame' that was created. Once we had made a 'freeze frame' the rest of the group acted as the 'voices in the head' of the people in the scene, as they tried to imagine themselves in the scene and what they might be feeling.


Freeze Frames




























To finish up we tried out some team building activities. Here are some photos of us playing some different games. After each game we reflected whether the game was co-operative or competitive and discussed the differences between these different types of games.

Team Building Activities


Paper, Scissors, Rock in Teams


Passing the Hula Hoop: around the circle without letting go of anyone's hands.

A New Mantle

This blog is now going to record the learning journey of a group of fifteen year 3 and 4 students who are about to begin on the first Mantle of the Expert programme at Muritai School for 2011. These students will be coming together one day a week, for the next 8 weeks, to learn through Mantle of the Expert. To read more about Mantle of the Expert see the links on the right hand side tool bar on this blog page. See the blog entry below this one to find out where to go to read about our two previous Mantle of the Expert learning journeys at Muritai School, which were run last year. We hope you enjoy reading about our work and look forward to seeing you as a follower on this blog.

Previous Mantle of the Expert Learning Journeys at Muritai School with Ms Gain

Below is the record of the learning journey of twelve year 5 and 6 students who participated in a Mantle of the Expert programme in Term 4 of 2010. To read from the beginning of this learning journey go back to the first blog entry on this blog page by clicking under 'Blog Archive' on the side tool bar. The learning journey of the group of year 3 and 4 students who participated in a Mantle of the Expert programme in Term 2 of 2010 is recorded under a different blog address: www.muritaimantle.blogspot.com. The link to this learning journey is on the side tool bar under 'Sites Related to Mantle of the Expert'. We hope you enjoy reading about both our current Mantle of the Expert work and our previous learning journeys.

THE FINAL POST

Apologies for not getting these final blog entries up earlier. We have been very busy planning for, and filming, our documentary. We have now come to the end of this Mantle of the Expert unit of work. Read on to find out what we have been up to over these last few weeks and where we ended up.

DAY FIVE

This day began with a discussion about how we could use what we had done over the first 4 weeks to make a documentary about the Tangiwai Disaster. We went in to role as the team who works for NZ Documentary Designs. There were lots of ideas shared and a big discussion about what we wanted to include and ideas about how to best sequence the information/events. There was a lot of brainstorming!

Team Planning


It was decided that the documentary would be roughly in 3 sections:

Before the disaster (setting the 1950s/1953 Christmas scene),
The disaster itself and,
Post disaster (including community responses and search and rescue efforts and memorials).

Someone then had the idea to use the poem by Jillian Sullivan, ‘Lilian on the Train to Tangiwai’, to structure the documentary around. Everyone thought this was a great idea and the detailed planning started from there. The poem was divided into its six stanzas and everyone decided on an area they wanted to work on. Small teams then set to work designing specific scenes. Keynote and powerpoint programmes were used to collate images and to write scenes and scripts. More research was done to find specific pieces of information such as details on memorials, newspaper headings about the Boxing Day Match in South Africa, specific images that teams wanted to include etc. Excerpts from letters we had written in role were selected and highlighted, as were sections of Sidney Holland’s speech announcing the disaster on Christmas morning, and the Queen’s speech abut the disaster.

It was a challenging and creative day. There was a lot of information and research to pull together as well as the designing of scenes. Soon the ideas were flowing. People were given roles and scripts and lists of props, to bring in for filming. Everyone was taking the lead in some way and the room was buzzing with creativity and organisation.


DAYS SIX, SEVEN, AND EIGHT

The last 3 days of this unit of work were spent preparing scenes and filming. The team managed the whole project and they set themselves high standards. Everyone worked together, at times in small groups and at other times as an entire collective team. There were times for everyone to step up and lead, whether it was directing, filming, or acting. And there were times for everyone to follow, to be a critical audience, set up props for scenes, listen to each other practice lines etc.

Because of time constraints each scene was not able to be practiced to perfection, it was the process that was the most important. Behind every small scene in our documentary was a very high standard of work. In collating the research, designing and planning the scenes, writing the scripts, and organising each set, the teams demonstrated a high level of commitment, creativity, literacy, and self managing skills.

As the teams shared their scenes with each other everyone worked together to think critically about their scenes, adding and changing details as they went so that the scenes best supported their ideas. Feedback was shared and listened to, with everybody actively participating and contributing.


Filming the Scene of Lillian (from the poem) Looking Out the Window Thinking of Christmas


Filming a Model of the Lahar


Filming Xmas Tree Scene: Gathering Around Xmas Tree to Hear Sidney Holland's Announcement of the Disaster






Filming Cyril Ellis Waving Torch


Letters Written in Role Thanking Cyril Ellis for his Heroic Efforts Being Read Aloud as Voice Over


Clarinet Background to Filming of 1950s Images


Bert Sutcliffe Comforting Bob Blair


Banadging Bert Sutcliffe for the Famous Boxing Day Match Scene


Filming a Powerpoint Display of Disaster Images with Guitar Background


Filming the Memorial Wreath Being Dropped in to the Whangaehu River


The Queen's Speech


Filming model of Mt Ruapehu


On our last day together as a group the final scene was shot. Using a list of the 151 victims of the Tangiwai Disaster the team wrote every victim’s name on a small piece of paper in their best writing. Louis then played the guitar while a two people placed the names of each victim on a pile, one at a time. This was filmed as the final scene of our documentary. This small ritual was an idea of one of the working teams and was a powerful and moving end to our work.

We hope that over the next couple of weeks we will be able to share our documentary with our own classes and syndicate.

It has been a wonderful learning journey and everyone has worked very hard on the final product, with passion and professionalism. Well done team!