On Monday 24th of September we explored the outdoors and made ourselves a den in our allocated groups. In my particular group we didn’t have a team leader as we all wanted to have specific roles and help each other rather than one person deciding what everyone was to do. My role in the group was to break apart the boxes with another group member to create a wall, whilst other members of the group created the roof and other walls. As our group decided to work individually on different tasks it meant we could manage our time usefully and then start planning on what to do next as we had extra time. However i do believe the most challenging part of our group was deciding who was going to do what role as we were all new to outdoor learning and none of us really knew what we would be good or bad at but overtime we began to realize who was suited to what role. For example i started off breaking the boxes however i did struggle to do this and swapped with another team member to doing the roof as i found this easier and also made the group task go by more effectively.
Once we all finished our dens we then got partnered up with another group to explain how we built our den and how we decided to work as a team. The team we were with did a great job at explaining how they built their den for example the told us why the used string and cardboard for their door as it made the door swing like a normal door would. However i did feel like they struggled to explain how the group came together and what their roles were during the task. Out of the 5p’s i feel the group covered most of them very well however i feel their preparation could have been slightly better however the group did say that they struggled with time creating their den which effectively shows that they recognise how to change this in the future. For my group out of the 5p’s i feel we struggled with presentation too as we quickly had to figure out what to say and it was dificuilt to explain the den. This is also something i found particularly difficult when it came to explaining the den with my group as we often do things without actually thinking about it especially when making a den is something you don’t do often so this task helped me get a little better at explaining why i dd something. for example my group decided to each explain a part of the den and i explained the location of our den and that we put it in this area as there was ready natural materials nearby.
Working in an unfamiliar environment meant that we had to change the way we spoke. Luckily due to our location choice we had much less wind than the other groups did but even with the slightest wind meant we had to speak slightly louder to ensure everyone could hear me, not only the wind but the distance was different to being indoors as people in my group could be further away than when indoors which also meant raising my voice to be heard. In the outdoors we also had to keep an extra eye open as their are many objects covering people such as trees so when going to communicate you had to go out your way to see the person rather than in an indoor classroom setting where everyone is relatively visible. One of the ways to make communication easier outdoors would be to gather everyone round close by when something needs to be said or go close to the particular person to be heard. When explaining our den to the other group i noticed myself using a lot more hand gestures to direct my audience in what i was saying for example i had to say that in our location we found nearby broken off branches which we used as walls and as i said this i pointed out the broken tree branches original location and then pointed to where we moved them to. When listening to the other group speaking about their den i did find myself losing concentration to the surrounding groups talking around us as we were all particularly close at this point.
For our negotiation stage as a team we decided to send off two of our members to take on this task as they felt most confident to do so. We sent away two materials for use in swap for just one in return, we thought this might help us gain a good material for out den but unfortunately out negotiating did not work out and we had to use our own materials. We believe our negation didn’t work due to the material of our offer being polystyrene meaning they it was a cautious material to swap for. The most challenging part of this was saying no to the other groups offers a i almost felt kind of rude but this is what we had to do for out den.
Overall the outdoor experience helped me understand that it is vital to adapt our communication skills in different environments to ensure we put across all information we give out effectively to keep the children engaged and also for them to enjoy the lessons outdoors.
