Tuesday, April 3, 2012

EMRS Leadership Discovery & Fun Activities Event

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!


Wednesday, March 28, 2012

LANIEGE BEAUTY & SKIN CARE WORKSHOP

LANEIGE BEAUTY WORKSHOP

The Laneige Beauty workshop was another successful event organized by EMRS Team 2. It was held on 23rd March 2012 at LTD 5, from 2pm to 4:30pm.  The signed up rate for the event was over 90 people. The objectives for the event were to create further awareness of the brand, to teach students about the importance of skin care, to equip students with event planning and management skills and lastly to expose students to plan and run a workshop.


Our Posters

Before the event, we had to make sure that all the logistics items were brought and set up. Furthermore the logistics IC need to prepare the registration booth and ensure that the microphones are working. A&P IC has to ensure that all the decorations needed for the LTD is set up. We also have to pack about 100 door gifts that were given by Laneige.



Packaging the door gifts



During the event, we had two team mates in charge of the registration counter making sure that the students are registered before entering. The four ushers ushered the audience in and made sure that the front seats were filled up first. 

Ushering the participants
Registration booth handled by Edwin and Wan Ting.

Our guest speaker Mr Larry Yeo


Tiffany, our volunteer for the make up session.
During the make-up session
Overall the event was a total success as we have met our objectives.  Responses from our participants were positive and they enjoyed the Beauty workshop and felt that they have learnt the techniques of make-up skills. Our team also enjoyed working in partnership workshop.  It was a fruitful experience in organizing this event.
During Question and Answer session.

Jacq another volunteer for the make- up session.

Participants collecting the door gifts


Ms Khoo giving the token of appreciation to our speaker Mr Larry Yeo


The day we saved the beach

Hi everyone, do you remember? On the 21st March 2012, the whole EMRS team went for a community service event at East Coast Park as planned by team 2.



We saved the beach by cleaning it up and played team bonding games to strengthen the bond between everyone! 

In the morning, Zhang Yu, Wahidah and Jia Min from the organizing team meet up first at East Coast Park to prepare and mark out areas for the games. At around 9.45am, the bus reached school and we were on our way to East Coast Park :)

We were given a short briefing by Wahidah and Roshini as to what will happen for the rest of the day. We were then divided into our 4 groups and started the game of charades.


Followed by freeze and then turnover.


These were the warm up games where they would have to communicate with each other to complete the games.


At around 11.45am, we went to have our lunch break. We worked in shifts during the lunch break to hide the signs and name tags for the following games after lunch.

Lunch ended at 1.15pm and we started to save the beach which is our community service. 



We went back to our teams and started clearing the area for around 45 minutes. We brought the rubbish back to the meeting point to see who collected more litter. The amounts of litters that we found were unexpected, as we all believe that the beach is clean.

We continued the games. The first game after the lunch break was dog and bone.


Next, the 3 legged race. 


Last, finding of the name tags.

 After each of these mini games, the teams have to choose two numbers from one to nine for an equation that they have to form at the end. This equation will have to be equivalent to seven, using the hidden signs and numbers chosen per team.  Further instructions for the last game were given when all the teams found the name tags that were buried in the sand. 


The teams were supposed to go around and start finding the missing signs hidden in by the organizing team around the park. Also, when they were finding the signs,


 they could disqualify other teams’ members by pulling off the name tags that were tied to their hands.


The final winner of the games is: 


Although it was a very tiring day, everyone enjoyed and had a lot of fun bonding with each other.



Everyone agreed that this community event was a very fun and interesting event. 


Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Fixtures Mission

It is Team 3’s privilege to present to everyone on our recent Fixtures Event, which was held on the 19th March – 22nd March at NYP’s very own Fixtures Room.  The objectives of this event were to organize all the fixtures in an orderly manner and revamp the entire floor plan of the room.

With the arrival of the new added fixtures, the pathway in the room became narrower and it became a challenge for anyone who wanted to find his/her item. The team realized that there was a clear need to reorganize the room in order to make it more accessible and convenient for others to move about. In addition, we also identified the problem where stocks went missing from its location. With this issue at hand, our team decided that it was best to design a Fixtures Loan Form that would prevent such incidents from happening in the future.


As soon as the day’s agenda was communicated to us, we promptly began our work. We started with moving and organizing the fixtures in the room. This part of the job demanded us to be physically ready and cautious as most of these items were heavy and fragile. Fortunately for us, we had strong guys in our team who did most of the carrying while the girls took the liberty of doing the administrative work such as recording the dimensions of each stock. The team also values the importance of workplace safety, constantly reminding each other to be careful and taking the initiative to provide assistance to those who seem to be in need of it.


With the supervision of Ms Choo and the leadership of Glann, our OIC, everything was carried out smoothly. Within a day, we cleared 70% of our objectives for the event. What were left of the event were the minor details such as preparing a stock list of all the fixtures in the room and labeling the shelves. All these duties were carried out in the next few days.


Overall, the team felt accomplished that we did a decent job on revamping the whole fixtures room. Though labeled as a small event, we put in the same amount of excitement and enthusiasm into reorganizing the room. While Team 3 is one that always “Chiong” (as Glann loves to say), we also take pride in having fun in whatever we do, no matter how mundane or dull an event might seem to be. We hope that our efforts would be beneficial for the future batches of EMRS students and supervisors as they continue to use the fixtures for their events and roadshows J

Friday, March 23, 2012

NATIONAL SPELLING CHAMPIONSHIP PRELIMINARIES

The National Spelling Championship (NSC) Preliminary Round, which was Team 3’s maiden external event, was held on 10th March 2012 at Fairmont Ballroom. In the biggest event The Straits Times has hosted for school students to date, over 1200 students (consisting of upper primary students from 135 schools) competed in the first round of the contest.
The students had to take a pen-and-paper test of about 60 minutes. They will have to spell a total of 50 pre-recorded words that will be read out to them. Each word is contextualised with an example so that the meaning and form of the word are clearly understood. Afterwhich, the top students from each zone will then be invited to take part in the Zonal Championships.

Preparation stage
The role of the OICs for this huge event was given to Alex and Evie. A few weeks before the event day, the two of them had to attend meetings with the SPH organizers and their various partners to obtain details of the competition. These details are significant with regards on how the event would be run and the crowd size as well as the logistics needed. After the first meeting, roles were administered to the other team members – manpower, ushering, registration and logistics. Though some might deem the work tedious due to a few last minute preparations, the organizing team continued to maintain a cool spirited and cohesive teamwork. create the registration lists, shuffling the participants’ seats, setting up the seating arrangement in the Fairmont Ballroom and deciding on the types of fixtures required. 
 Day of event
All EMRS personnel reported to the Fairmont Ballroom at 7.30am. Overall, the setup of the venue and manpower briefing went smoothly. It did not take long for the crowd to start flowing in. At around 8.30am, the queue for each registration booth started to pile. Students and teachers from various schools anxiously waited for their turn to register as well as to collect their seat stickers. With the patience and quick resoluteness of the ushers, registrants and staff of SPH, every participant was accounted for and was seated by 9.30am.


In the competition hall, every personnel had the responsibility of being an invigilator. This gave us the opportunity to be in the teacher’s shoes during examination. Communication was a big factor during invigilation. The invigilator ICs had to coordinate not only with her/her fellow peers but also with the emcee and other organizers as well. The collection of the test papers also posed to be a challenge as the number of papers we collected had to tally with the total headcount.



  Overall, the event was a success even though we experienced some obstacles along the way. It was indeed a privilege to work with huge organizations such as Singapore Press Holdings, Ministry of Education, RHB Bank and National Library Board. Even though the preliminary round is over, our team has to prepare for the upcoming zonals and finals which will be held on the 14th April and 28th April respectively. We are all excited and look forward to continue working with SPH on these events.