Hello! This is probably my most important/intriguing reflections throughout this year. For my first time ever I went on a field study! Now, what’s a field study you may ask. In short answer, It’s is a trip where learners go out of the school environment and build on different skills in unique places. Which leads me to say where I went on a this particular field study. I went to a retreat/advance place called Loon Lake, which is basically a lodge centre, on a lake, with amazing utilities that can help enhance group’s team working skills. To display all of the activities throughout the advance on every day we were tasked with creating a book creator book that gives a detailed briefing of each day (spoiler alert: Laser Tag was involved). I really think this post is important because I will be able to reflect on my growth as a leaner and how that happen throughout this advance. Also, as always, I will give evidencet on how I improved my use and understanding of the curricular competencies throughout this learning event.

To start of this learning advance I obviously hadn’t done one before, so I was excited and ready to learn new things. So off we went on our journey, which started by creating our first page in our eBook that was all about engaging us on what we think the experience would be like. After that was done I was more than ready to hop on the school bus and go on a journey. Once we had the short, 40 minute, bus ride (which felt like forever by the way) I toke a step off the bus into the wilderness and went to meet all the people in our class and took my first glance at the beautiful Loon Lake.

To keep all the learners engaged we did our first activity of the advance which was a photo walk where we took photos around the whole site and marked hem of on a chart. To get around the lake there was actually a rope ferry, which is a mode of transportation where everyone has to pull the rope to keep the raft moving. I wanted to briefly mention this because I think it was the first time I started to build my collaborating and communication skills. This happened because each person had to pull the rope at a certain time to make it move effectively. This is just one of the activities that built my team working skills. 

There are two learning activities/sessions where we continued working on concepts that we were already working on in school. These two concepts both fall under the subject Maker subject. These two projects are “Believe In Good” and “Destination Imagination”. Since we were given lots of time and advice on both these topics I think I was very productive and was able to understand and use the curricular competencies them a lot more purposefully and efficiently. 

Throughout our time on the Learning advance we generally followed a schedule to make sure all of our time was evenly spread out. With this my schedule stated that I had Maker so, of course, I went to it in the basement of the Arbutus cabin (It actually was a huge multi-purpose room so it didn’t feel like a basement at all). To start working on the 7 habits I continued to read the second habit “Begin With The End In Mind”. I also worked on the workbook and I really think that productive time at Loon Lake truly helped me understand what I was learning. Now that I reflect I understand that I used and improved my creative thinking curricular competency, which actually gets me closer to obtaining a full understanding of the core competency ‘Thinking’. The way I improved on my critical thinking was by interpreting the content within the 7 Habits Book and integrating this knowledge throughout the workbook. Also, throughout this time in Loon Lake I was able to have a conference with my teacher, which I think gave me a boost currently because I’m able to reflect about how I’m on the right track throughout this aspect of Maker 9.

Regarding this subject I was also able to complete an activity called Personal Bank account. This activity was about recording the ‘deposits’/ or ‘withdraws’ in your actions as a person throughout the course of this advance. Doing this learning activity I am now able to reflect on my choices to become a better person. This Personal Bank account also shows how I actually improved on another curricular competency called “Positive Personal and Cultural Identity”. This was possible because I was cautious of my actions no matter how big because I do make an impact on the world around me, and that directly connects to me reflecting on my actions. I really think learning in different environments can help me constantly grow in new ways instead of just being the same person who knows the same things and I actually have been able to be proactive!

The next Maker 9 activity I worked on during my time at Loon Lake was “DI sweatbox”. I feel this was a really important and successful time for my team because we were able to communicate effectively and productively finish tasks. We were suddenly on a time crunch to finish the script, so we began working in the right path and assigning different people to finish this matter. After communicating with the team and getting ideas and writing styles I was able to collaboratively write the script. I think this was a very impressive and important task completed in loon lake because I learnt that my DI team can finish multiple long tasks with sophistication and purpose. We also discussed our challenge with our team manager (AKA our teacher) and we were able to define the different aspects we needed to still complete. From the overall time spent working on DI I feel I was able to continue to enhance and use my communicating competency, because this calming time in loon lake made all of our team members participate in decisions by talking to one another.

The next activities were probably one of the most exciting events that we did, guess what it was… Laser tag and battle archery! Yes, you would think this is a topic that wouldn’t be very important to learning, but honesty it was. I really think I was able to focus on my critical thinking skills as well as communicating. I specifically continued to learn on ways I could improve on my critical thinking skills in both these activities because I was able to intertwine  quick thinking into strategies to achieve a wining outcome. I think this is important because this shows that it’s possible to incorporate this skill into anything that I do, and it can enhance my performance. Throughout Laser tag and Battle archery I also used the curricular competency known as communicating. I know this is probably an obvious curricular competency that I would use in these activities, but as I reflect I think this is proof that communicating is important to use and develop because it is a skill that you’ll use throughout multiple events you do. I think my time using this competency now makes me aware of it’s importance and I will continue to try to fully understand it to the profile I want to be at. Throughout these activities I think I’ve definitely used curricular competencies, causing me to improve my learning, but it was also the hands on team building experience that I really enjoyed. Which leads me to share some of photos of me in action:

 

 

I also did multiple other learning activities throughout the course of this Loon Lake learning advance. These activities were ‘Wild and Immersive”, where we built a fort following safety guidelines. As well as “Evening Fun” where we did different entertain activities, such as collaborating through playing games and watching the Olympic Games. These and other events, such as ‘Advisory’ are all incorporated in my eBook. So, I bet you are on the edge of your seat waiting (or at least I hope you are) so here’s the one, the only, drum roll please… Alicia’s Loon Lake eBook:

In conclusion, this learning advance has helped me become an effective learner. I was able to become a learner by, firstly, doing new activities and learning different aspects from these activities. Yet, I most importantly learnt, and am still learning, the importance of the skills applied to these activities. This means that I’m closer to understanding my curricular competencies, but from this learning experience I’m now able to realize that I’m actually able to use these competencies to continue to learn new concepts, even if they are not obviously connected. I also think this learning advance has helped me become more aware of my actions as a learner, and how much I could improve or implement them into different aspects of my life, I’ve also recognized that I can continue learning instead of being held back with thinking “I’ve learnt everything” because it’s not about knowing everything it’s about how you constant learn it. Which, is the main aspect I can take away from this learning advance (as well as the awesome team building exercises we did!). Even I’m on the edge of my seat waiting for my next field study, I can’t wait for what we’ll learn about next!

Have you ever been on an advance to push your learning skills? If so where and how did it effect you as a learner?

• Alicia 😀

Credits:

Loon Lake credits – The teachers! (Thanks for organizing this amazing advance) 

• The wonderful staff and Loon Lake! (P.S. the food was outstanding)
• My peers for making me enjoy and learn from this advance even more! 

Photo credits – Fraser* and Sabrina*!