The purpose of this week’s trip was to plan and carry out a course for Norwegian college students from Tangen College. This course consisted of planning different stations for the students to come and participate in. The students were split into teams and were given points for how they performed on each task, they were awarded points for teamwork and how well they completed the task so even if they did not finish the set task they could still get points. The group who won were then awarded a prize by their teachers.

We decided as a group that each person would plan a station and then we would rotate to teach another during the week. I feel this was a good idea as it allowed people to experience teaching a varied amount of activities such as climbing, canoeing, fire making and first aid. This also meant that people would not become bored teaching the same activity repeatedly meaning that the student who came would hopefully get the best experience possible.

The station that I was tasked with planning was fire making, this involved teaching the students a very quick and simple method of making a fire using cotton wool, Vaseline and a fire steel. Once the students had been shown this method of how to make a fire they were then tasked with collecting their own wood and building a small fire to burn through five pieces of string that were set at different heights over the fire pit. Each string counted as one point and then points were awarded for teamwork and not giving up if the fire went out. I had used a version of this game in my previous work but not with so many strings, this game seemed to work well as to effectively complete the task the group had to work as a team and effectively communicate, this was due to the fact that some member’s would need to collect wood whilst others fed the fire and this meant that they had to constantly be talking to one another to keep the fire alive, only 3 groups managed to burn through all 5 pieces of string and these groups displayed more communication, teamwork and preparation than the other groups highlighting how important these aspects were to the task and so therefore were awarded the most points. Furthermore I believe this task worked well as the students had a visual marker of how well they were doing in the task, which I believe increased their motivation towards trying as hard as possible and also positively reinforced what they were doing when they managed to burn through the string, this seemed to further increase the students motivation towards completing the task as they gained a sense of achievement. Also on this task the students were given a time limit, this put pressure on the students to complete the task in the 25 minutes they were given, this appeared, in the majority of cases, to increase the effort that the students put into completing the task.

I was on the fire station for the first 2 days, after a while it became tedious teaching the same thing repeatedly, therefore I felt like I was not trying as hard as I could do to deliver the best session possible for the students so I switched onto canoeing. This involved teaching the students the basics of canoeing, such as how to go forward, backwards and how to turn. Once the students had been taught how to do these basics they were then given a chance to practice the course that had been set out on the lake, this course involved paddling forwards to markers and turning around them and also a section that had to be done backwards so as to give the students a chance to practice what they had just learnt. After the students had had a practice they were then given a timed run to see how quickly they could complete the course. The times gained from each group were then compared and the one with the best time was given the most points. This was a good station to work on as we also were on the water in case one of the boats capsized and also to give coaching tips on technique, this was also good as it allowed us to practice coaching to relative novices. One call we had to make during this activity was during the final session, the wind picked up and the water became very choppy, therefore we decided to bring the group off the water and to play the paddle game with them, this meant however that the group did not get their timed run so we gave them an average score, however I feel that we made the correct decision and as they had not done much paddling before one, if not all, of the boats would have tipped.

During this trip one of the students badly sprained their ankle and would be unable to walk out from the site where they were staying back to the cars. As me and Kyle were working on Canoeing at this point Len came to ask us what we think should be done with the student, we decided that the best thing to do was to paddle him across the lake back to the cars, this was interesting as the boat was very unstable with me, Kyle and the student with all his kit in the canoe.

During this trip we stayed in Garpahooks, these are open faced wooden shelters, these were very good to stay in as they were try and warm and we had lots of room for all of our kit, this was also good as I had never stayed in anything like this before as we do not have them in the UK.

Overall this was a good trip offering a lot of experience in leading sessions, however one thing that surprised me was the lack of knowledge displayed by the students about the outdoors as I believed that outdoor education and friluftsliv were a major part of their education, however few had knowledge about making a fire and about other outdoor activities such as canoeing and climbing.