During the week starting 12th March 2012, the 3 DBI students from Team 4 & 5 received a project from Mr. Sudesh to organize an orientation on 30th March 2012 from 1.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m. for the new batch of 14 EMRS students. Chi You and Hafiz was appointed the Overall-in-Charge while Maggie helped out as a member. The aim of this event was for the 14 new EMRS students to learn to work together while enjoying themselves playing the activities and games.
Pre-Event:
A few days after receiving the assignment, the 3 of us began to brainstorm for team building games that would be interesting to play and at the same time be able to meet our objectives. There were several different ideas that surfaced during discussions. At last, we settled on 4 main activities and games: Remember My Name, Tangled Up, Helium Stick and Earth Ball, with 2 other games: Dog & Bones and Captain’s Ball as back-ups. Afterwards, we began to source for the equipments such as a ball, chairs, vanguard sheets etc.
We were allowed to call on people from our EMRS group to help us out. Thus, during the allocation of manpower, we decided to involve Edison (Team 3) and Wan Ting (Team 2) as we wanted the 5 DBI students to work together. Together, the 5 of us went on to trial test the games to gauge the time allocated and the playability of each game.
On the Event Day:
The day started off sunny but dark clouds soon crowded the sky. Since the initial venue that we had selected was the Dome, it was now inaccessible due to the rain. However, the show must go on! Our team has a back-up plan in mind and the 3 DBI students that were tasked to do the games preparations hurriedly began the necessary set-ups of the games open space at Blk B, Level 4.
At approximately 1.25 p.m., the remaining 2 members of the team went to fetch the 14 EMRS students. Once everyone is assembled at the open space, we briefed them on what to expect and got to sit in a circle and the games began!
The first game everyone, including us, the game masters, had to play was an introductory game where everyone introduced their names and course of study to the group. Then, we had to write their names and what they were good at on a piece of card. After that, the cards were collected and placed in the middle. Each student had to pick a card and give hints to group for them to guess the name written on the card.
After getting to know everyone’s name, we moved on to play the second game: Tangled Up! In this game, the 14 EMRS students were split into their respective teams: Team 1 and Team 2 for the first 2 rounds. The third round was played with both teams’ members being mixed around. 2 grids with numbers had already been set on the floor and each team completed both sets. Without letting go of each other’s hands, they had work together to navigate their way from number 1 to 16 and pass though a hula hoop upon reaching the last number, shouting “UNTANGLED” once everyone in the team has gotten out of the grid in the shortest time possible.
After a short water break, we moved on to our 3rd game which was Helium Stick. For the first round, each team of students had to balance a hula-hoop on top of their index finger. Working together, what they have to do was to lower the hula hoop to the ground. The challenge was that their index fingers must remain in contact with the hula-hoop at any point in time. Although it may seem like a piece of cake, this game’s certainty lived up to its name! The students were struggling to keep their fingers to remain in contact with the hoop! It was a funny sight as we watched them stagger around and shout their frustrations with the hoop. After passing the first round, they had to use two jointed straws instead for the second round. If they found the first round tough, this could almost be Mission Impossible for the two teams. In this round, they really had to communicate with one another to achieve their goal. Perseverance could also be seen from both teams as they tried over and over again to complete the game.
The last game we had planned for the day is named Earth-Ball. For this game, the 2 teams had to keep a balloon afloat within an enclosed space. Their goal is to hit the balloon for 20, 30, 50 and finally 70 times. The twist to this game was that each member in the team is not allowed to touch the balloon consecutively more than one time and another person in the team had to touch the balloon before he or she can touch it again.
Due to excellent team work shown by the students, we still have some time left. It seemed like the weather agrees with us too because the sun was shining brightly again in this point in time. Hence, we decided to go to the Dome near North Canteen to play one of our back-up games: Captain’s Ball. In our modified version of Captain’s Ball, the students had to call out the name of the person whom he or she is passing to before they pass it to them.
At the end of the day, we held a short debriefing session for the 14 EMRS students. We got their feedback on what they had learnt throughout all the activities/games they had played. We thanked them for their active participation in the games and handed out some mini prizes. It was admirable that the teams were able to work so well together despite only being in EMRS for only 2 days and we would like to thank them for being sporty and their enthusiasm! The overall winner for the games was Team 2. We certainly had fun organizing and executing the event although it was our first time doing it together. Also, we would like to thank Mr. Sudesh for giving us this opportunity to plan this event because we were able to make new friends and we had gained much valuable experience in organizing this!
