UWS BA ePDPs – Page 15 – Personal Development Plans of BA(Hons) students of education

Post Task – Reflective questions about communicating in other environments.

• Group and leadership
o Was there a group leader? Yes.
o How was this chosen? Happened naturally due to previous experience.
o If informal, how did you know? What were the actions that marked them as a leader? They were able to give guidance.
o How did this impact on the rest of the group e.g. was there some underlying resentment/ did anyone feel excluded? I feel everyone felt included, and everyone was hands-on.
o What was most challenging for you about working in this group? (personal reflection) Lack of resources, due to other teams getting there before us. This meant I had to use my imagination and initiative more.
• Explaining
o How clearly did you think the group explained to you? Very well.
o What made this clear or unclear? They didn’t talk too fast and repeated things if we did not understand/hear.
o What stage of the 5Ps might have been missed out? Our Presentation stage wasn’t as well done as others, as we spent more time listening to other groups.
• Environment
o What was the impact of the environment on your communication? I don’t feel communication was affected much by being outside, as we still had to speak at an audible level and cleary.
o What changes did you make when explaining to others that you might not have considered in a typical classroom? Where to place them so they could understand what I was meaning by showing them because it was a very practical and not as obvious where to look as the focus was not on the front of the class like indoors.
o How challenging was it so speak above the sounds in the environment? How can we make this communication easier on both speaker and listener? It was quite peaceful outside today, so it wasn’t very difficult at all. However, I can see how it could cause an issue, and not trying to compete with the noise and communicating in close vicinity and using lots of non-verbal techniques will help against the challenge of the noise.
o When listening, did the environment distract you? How can we overcome this? No, I felt more relaxed in the environment which meant I could concentrate efficiently. If it was more distracting, giving a focus can help to stop me from being distracted.
• Negotiation
o Were your negotiations successful? Why/Why not? Yes, we swapped an item we no longer needed to something we could use more effectively.
o What was most challenging about these? How late they came in the activity when more of the materials had already been used, and people did not want to give up essential parts of their dens.

Reflective Questions

Group and Leadership There was no clear group leader as it was a strong team effort. Everyone was included and most tasks in building our den required partner work. For example, two people holding a section while someone was taping something down. Personally i don’t think we encountered any challenges when working with this group. … Continue reading Reflective Questions →

Group and Leadership

There was no clear group leader as it was a strong team effort. Everyone was included and most tasks in building our den required partner work. For example, two people holding a section while someone was taping something down. Personally i don’t think we encountered any challenges when working with this group. It was my first experience working with two members and this was a great ice breaker.

Explaining

Often explaining was hard, both for myself to explain and to understand others. This was because we had clear ideas in our heads as to how we should achieve our den, however trying to articulate it was tricky. This meant we had to explain slowly and answer any questions.
I do think we lacked the Planning aspect. We gained ideas along the way and never had a set goal. We were happy to let the den be created as we completed sections bit by bit.

Environment

The environment played a factor in that we could talk at a comfortable register as there was no battle to be heard.
In a classroom, we could have drawn on the board to help aid an explanation.
The environment wasn’t particularly hard to speak/listen in, however distraction definitely was a factor. Whether that be watching other groups or shouting because someone has spotted a squirrel.

Negotiation

Our negotiation was successful as we did manage to borrow a team member, however the team we borrowed from was not too happy. We negotiated a large stick for a team member. Luckily, both us and them were nearly finished so it didn’t make a huge impact either way. However it is challenging because we both have different visions for dens and the new team member had to quickly adjust.

Communication in Other Environments

Group and Leadership Within our group, there was no distinct leader. We all co-operated to ensure everyone was participating by collecting materials . The only challenge we faced as a group was making sure everyone had something to do and did not feel excluded. In some cases people assigned themselves more work than was necessary …

Continue reading “Communication in Other Environments”

Group and Leadership

Within our group, there was no distinct leader.
We all co-operated to ensure everyone was participating by collecting materials .
The only challenge we faced as a group was making sure everyone had something to do and did not feel excluded. In some cases people assigned themselves more work than was necessary leaving others with nothing to do.

Explaining

The group the explained to us were very clear and concise in their explanation.
It was made clear through descriptive words and pointing to the areas they spoke about.

Environment

Because we were outside, our communication was changed. To ensure we could be heard by the whole group we spoke closer together and used gesture to show the areas we were discussing.
In a classroom environment communication would be much more formal compared to todays experience. When communicating with pupils the register used would also be different compared to that used with our peers.
I did not find it especially challenging to speak above the sounds in the environment because the whole group stayed close together.
When communicating distraction was more likely because other groups were moving around the area and asking questions. This could be overcome by bringing the group closer or moving to a quieter area

Negotiation

Our negotiations were unsuccessful because other groups did not want the materials we were offering.
This was challenging because there is not much we could do to change what the groups needed.

Den building

Group and leadership – Within our group we all worked as a team, and everyone had good ideas to contribute. This was decided as we all put forward ideas and we worked together to come to decisions. No one was left out as everyone was collecting resources (sticks) and helped build the den. The most difficult part … Continue reading Den building →

Group and leadership – Within our group we all worked as a team, and everyone had good ideas to contribute. This was decided as we all put forward ideas and we worked together to come to decisions. No one was left out as everyone was collecting resources (sticks) and helped build the den.
The most difficult part about working with this group was that I was out of my comfort zone communicating with people I don’t know.

Explaining – The group explained very well the instructions. One person got the piece of paper with the instructions on them and read them out clearly to the rest of the group. It was clear as they explained step by step in summary of what we have to do and spoke loud so we could hear. The stage of the 5p’s that I think the group left out was …

Environment – The environment was quiet isolated from the rest of the groups so this made it easy to hear each other when we where talking and limited distractions. When explaining to other people how we built our den we used a lot of pointing to the different resources and showing how where everything was placed however in a classroom this would not be possible. If we did not isolate our group to a different part of the grass it would have been difficult to communicate and listen however to overcome this we could arrange more ground to spread out the groups and pick a sunny day to make sure the weather doesn’t make it difficult to hear also.

Negotiation – Our negotiations where successful this was because we planned and picked two people from the team who could be persuasive and try get something. The most challenging was trying find out what strategy we would use and what we where wanting to take from the other group.

Story telling

Practicing story telling today! We had a great session in the performance studio where we had to tell a story with different accents and intonation. Such fun!