Planning Process:

• Who:
  • International outdoor education class 2018
  • Last year high school students
• What:
  • Us international students split up into eight groups, each creating a game for the last year students. The students would come midafternoon in eight teams. They would do half of the games, camp overnight, then do the rest of the games the next day. All the games were scored out of ten by us international students. The scores were based on how well they did in the activity, how well they worked together, and how positive their attitudes were. Points could be deducted at any point for speaking in Norwegian. At the end of the second day we added up the scores for every team to congratulate the winner with a prize.

The games were:

• Jungle swing: The task was to grab a rope swing inside of a boundary line. After getting the rope without falling into the boundary or what we called “lava”, they had to get all the team members to the other side of the lava. If one member were to fall into the lava they had to start over from the beginning.
• Slack line: Groups had to work together to get from one side of the slack line to the other in a set amount of time.
• Orienteering: Hidden items in the forest, the kids had to use their map and compass skills to locate as many items as possible. Bonus points were given for having a good joke when they came back.

• Improvised shelters: The kids were provided with a few objects such as a tarp. They then had to run around to find other items to build a shelter that would keep them dry and warm throughout the night. The shelter had to be big enough for all the group members to fit in.
• Night line: Half of the team members were blind folded. This half had a hold of a rope that was tied to objects. The team members who were not blind folded had to direct the blind through the obstacle course. In other rounds the groups could only use animal noises and had to switch sides of the rope every time they felt a knot.
• Fire building: The students would first get a demonstration on how to build a fire. Then they would be timed on how fast they could find the material, build a fire high enough to burn the string that was above the fire pit and make a cup of coco on the fire.

• Barefoot Path: All team members were blind folded while being bare foot. They were then lead to a path made of different objects such as, bark, moss, grass, pine cones, and water. They group then had to list the objects in the correct order that they were stood on. After listing the items, they would then build a tower with their shoes for extra points.
• River crossing: The aim of this game was to use the given two planks to walk from platform to platform to get across the “river”. They Had to stop at certain platforms to get objects for the final move, which was grabbing a rope and swinging to safety. There were other routes the groups could do for bonus points, such as, stopping at a platform to grab a bucket of water, then getting a clip from another platform to swing the bucket over to safety.

• When: April 23-27^th 2018
• Where: Camp sight out side of the city of Vennesla, Norway

Group Dynamic Process: Each group I came across had a different cohesion than the rest. Some groups cohesion was way stronger than others. The groups with strong cohesion needed little to none support from us international students running the game. They would know how to talk to one other, they would listen and trust what the other group member said, they would be constantly brainstorming how to do the task in front of them and they wouldn’t stop if they failed. There were also a couple groups on the opposite side of the spectrum. These groups needed a lot of encouragement when one or more of the members were scared to try something. They had a hard time working together because they didn’t know how to communicate, there was little trust throughout these groups. Some of these groups even wanted to leave some of their members behind on the jungle swing just to get as many points as they could. I think after some encouragement and compromising some points to make the objective easier, most of the groups did a great job overcoming the challenges they were given.

Challenges: Us international students also went through some challenges. One was rain. The first couple days there was off and on rain. Waking up to cold wet weather isn’t something ideal but we all kept our spirits up because we knew if we were not enjoying the day the kids wouldn’t either. Another challenge we had to deal with was the kids being excelling at an activity, this would make us have extra time. Not wanting to leave them to do nothing we had to come up with on the spot mini games. Another small challenge a few of us had was not bringing enough food. Luckily one of our mates planned to head home one evening and was able to stop at the shop to bring back more.

Reflection: Every trip has it challenges. I think this trip had very few, even with the ones we had we over came them to ending up with a fun filled week. Next time I would bring more food, and extra tarp to stay away from the rain.