This week’s Monday trip was the second to be run the International students and this week it was my group’s turn to plan and run the session. The session we chose to deliver was based around team building. We chose to run this session as a competition and had four stations, these included shrinking island, spider’s web, blind assault course and river crossing. Each task was timed, and a reward was handed out at the end for which team was quickest overall. Further to this we also played rubber chicken rounder’s and the overall winners of this game also won a prize.

The activities that we provided for the rest of the class worked well towards the outcome of the session which was improving teamwork. This was evidenced by the greater levels of communication that were required to complete the tasks, I observed this first hand on my task, which was shrinking island, as I allowed the students 5 minutes planning time before they undertook the game. On this activity the students were allowed 2 attempts, on the second attempt the groups realised that to get the island as small as possible that they needed to communicate constantly about were their feet were on the tarpaulin and also that they required a clear plan before begging as the activity is harder than most people first think, this lead to a much greater level of cooperation and communication during the team’s second attempts.

However the Monday in question was a particular cold one and it had snowed quite heavily the day before, this had quite a major impact on the groups motivation. As the activities did not require much fast movement some of the students became cold and this led to a decrease in their motivation to participate as fully as they may have done if it was warmer. This was particular evident when it came to playing rubber chicken rounders’ as after 2 games we decided to end the session earlier as particularly the Norwegian students wanted to go home.

When delivering this session it was sometimes difficult to gain the attention of the students as they would not pay attention when trying to describe what was going to happen, I believe this was due to the fact that we were just seen as part of the group and not the people running and delivering the session and this became quite annoying at some points as it meant we had to stand around in the cold waiting for some of the students to listen meaning that those who were getting cold did even worse.

Overall I believe we obtained the goals that we had set out for this session as I noted a marked increase in the amount of communication that was occurring between the members of the groups, also I believe that the introduction of a competitive element increased motivation towards trying their hardest during the activities and that this in some way combated the cold. However as it was such a cold day it would have been better if we had an alternative plan to turn to which had more sheltered or moving activities in order to keep the students warm.