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30 July 2017

Pioneering and Foot Drills Training, 14th July

Hello Guides!

We did pioneering for 集合 on the 14th of July, with the objectives of improving the standards of our lashes, promoting greater patrol bonding and encouraging creative thinking and effective communication.

Here is the overall storyline: A hurricane has destroyed your house and all the furniture in it. Now that you have relocated to the D Area, as a 团, you need to rebuild the furniture with whatever logistics you have to ensure a place for living. P1, you are to build a sofa, P2, a table, P3, a bed, P4, a 2-tiered bookshelf, P5, a wardrobe without doors and P6, a kitchen dresser. However, due to wet weather conditions, the location was changed to the area outside the Multi-Resource Library (MRL).

Reflection from a Year 2 of Patrol 1:
During Friday’s 集合 on the 14th of July, our patrol did creative pioneering and we built a sofa. All of us were very happy with the final product as our lashes were tighter than usual and we did not overrun. The sofa did not turn out to be very appealing but it was sturdy. I feel that we did a great job at pioneering and it was certainly one of the better structures we built compared to all the others. We also remembered to ask for a time extension before the time was up which I think was an improvement from the previous 集合, during which we forgot to ask for a time extension at all. However I felt that we could have cheered more as we were rather quiet throughout the activity. Cheering would have lifted our spirits and boosted our morales but we still needed our seniors to prompt us to cheer. Hence, I think we can work on that issue. Overall, Friday’s 集合 was good and I feel that we outperformed ourselves on the pioneering part. There is, of course, more room for improvement and I think that we should strive towards being the best that we can be.








Suggested solution for Sofa:
Reflection from a Year 2 of Patrol 2:
On Friday, we had creative pioneering. Our patrol was required to build a creative table out of 红木, 黄木, 青木 and a table board. During the given time, my patrol managed to finish before the time was up and we also 起ed the structure quickly. Through Friday's 集合, we managed to improve on communication among the patrol and it really allowed us to step up and to guide the Year 1s. It also allowed us to test our pioneering skills and our time management. All in all, it was a meaningful activity and it helped my peers and I improve on both our hard skills and our leadership skills.







Suggested solution for Kitchen Table:
Reflection from a Year 2 of Patrol 3:
We did creative pioneering on Friday. We were supposed to build furniture for a house and my patrol was assigned to build a bed. Our idea was to tie a cuboid and raft 白木 across the rectangle to make a bed. We actually got this idea from Monday’s PA as we built a cube during PA and we thought it would be a good idea to use the same concept. We improved on tying the two frames from Monday's PA as our frames were more identical and that made the structure slightly more stable. However, even though our lashes improved, it was still not tight enough. We had to add many diagonals to make the structure more stable. Additionally, we built the bed too high and thus we had to spend time building steps to climb onto the bed. I think we took too long to tie our lashes and that we should improve on our speed when tying lashes. I think we could have 报时-ed and cheered more while building our structure. We definitely need to improve the stability of our structure as when we were done and when we tried to go on the bed, it was still very unstable. We also did not manage our time as well because we 过时-ed and had to ask for a time extension. I felt that this 集合 was really fun and interesting. It was more fun as it was differed from the usual things we do in 集合 like simply building traditional structures, whereas this time we could choose what to build. It was also very fun to explore the structures of the other patrols to see how they built their own furniture such as a sofa or a wardrobe. I hope we will have more 集合s like this where we can do creative pioneering.







Suggested solution for Bed:


Reflection from a Year 2 of Patrol 4:
When we were doing pioneering, the situation was chaotic throughout. I think that this is because we failed to maximise the planning we could do during the 10 minutes given to us. This led to most of us being unclear of what to do during the activity because we had to make up instructions as we progressed. I felt quite frustrated back then as I had lost my voice and could not voice my opinion out loudly. Since we all did not know what to do, we had no initiative which resulted in a lot of people slacking who had to be guided, one by one. The patrol also had very low morale as we rarely cheered and did not cheer as a patrol, which caused our sense of urgency to be quite low at the start. In my opinion, the communications also suffered a breakdown at some point as there were some discrepancies in the design, between the patrol leader and patrol second, which led to mild arguments and time wastage. The constant change in the design and shifting of structure made it extremely unstable, which caused slight panic later on. Overall, I think that many areas still need improvement, such as morale, sense of urgency, planning and communications.




Suggested solution for 2-tiered bookshelf:


Reflection from a Year 2 of Patrol 5:
My patrol had to build a wardrobe for pioneering. We were given 11 红木 and 8 青木 to build the wardrobe. We were given time to discuss our plan on how to build the structure. After that, we had to go and retrieve the logistics. Due to our lack of manpower, we had to ask for time extension to take the 木. After that, we were given 1 hour and 40 minutes to complete our structures. I was assigned to be the Patrol Leader (PL) and I felt very stressed. I wasn't sure of what to do initially but with some help from my patrol mates, I was able to assign a task for everyone to do. However, because we were lacking in our sense of urgency, we were the only patrol that had not 起-ed our frame by the 45 minute mark and I was starting to feel pressurised. The timing was shortened to 1 hour and 20 minutes because we were too slow and we had to work a lot faster. Towards the end, we realised that our structures was very slanted as we only looked at the big picture from one angle and did not consider other angles. It was too late to re-build the structure so we had no choice but to continue tying it. In the end, our structure was very tilted. After everyone had built their structures, we had 2 minutes to visit the structures of each patrol. The other structures were fascinating and we took a lot of pictures with the structures. Even though our structure was tilted, we were proud that our structure was close to the suggested structure on the proposal. Through this activity, I also gained much experience on being a PL.








Suggested solution for Wardrobe:


Reflection from a Year 2 of Patrol 6:
For Friday's 集合, all of the patrols did pioneering and our patrol was assigned to build the kitchen dresser. We had a rough idea of how it looked like, having built it for our patrol activity on Monday. However, the logistics given were different as instead of 木, we were provided with spars. Thus, it took our patrol some time to discuss how we could use these different logistics to build the structure. During the discussion, I was also happy to see that the Year 1s also contributed their ideas. Despite the constant reminders from our seniors to 抽 the lashes tighter and to hold the tension of our lashes, our structure was still quite sub-standard as the tripod was very shaky and even our 顶脚 could be easily removed. Not only that, I felt guilty that our PL had to plank for us in order to ask for a time extension. Thus, I feel that all of us could have worked faster so that our PL would not need to be punished because of us. Other than tying my lashes tighter as well as working faster, one other area of improvement for myself is that I could have 报时-ed more as this allows us to be aware of how much time we are left with and ensures that we will be able to build our structure on time. Despite all these setbacks, I am still quite proud that we were able to finish our structure on time.








Suggested solution for Kitchen Dresser:


After finishing the structures, the Guides were given time to enjoy the structures of every patrol. Debriefs from the seniors were also given, on how the Year 1s and 2s could improve during future 集合s and good points displayed.






After the Year 1s and 2s had dismantled their structures and put all logistics back in their respective locations, we then proceeded to have a foot drills training session.

Here are some reflections from Year 2s,,

I did not expect us to be doing foot drills as we rarely did foot drills except for when there were special events, such as World Thinking Day. This activity helped to refresh my memory for some of the commands as I had not done foot drills in a long time. I think that we do not have to do foot drills every 集合 but doing it once in a while is indeed helpful. This would also make us more prepared when events such as World Thinking Day and UG Day are coming. The Year 1s would also be more prepared as it would not be their first time learning the drills.

The foot drills we did after pioneering was really not up to standard as we did not march in sync and we did not do the drills correctly. I felt that there could be a lot of room for improvement and that foot drills should be emphasised on more as it is important to a Uniformed Group like Guides. I feel that as a batch, we could work towards more standard foot drills and being more organised.





Hope that everyone found this 集合 enjoyable and fulfilling!

Published By:
Arielle
49th Batch Secretary


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