I’ve been able to be a part of this service for a few weeks now, and I’m slowly seeing my role and skills within the service develop. I’ve begun participating more in activities rather than just contributing during brainstorming conversations. In one of the sessions, I acted as the main character in ‘The Gruffalo”, which was really fun and I enjoyed entertaining the kids online very much.

One of the learning objectives that I’ve seen relate to my experience in this service is planning and initiating (LO3). Every session we end with a plan of what to do next week, and I’ve been contributing to these planning sessions more with each week. After about 3 weeks of trial and error with different activities and feedback from the teachers at Lighthouse school, we’ve come up with several things that the students enjoy the most :

• dancing
• singing 1-2 songs with sign language
• reading books out loud and then again but with acting out (for both the hearing impaired and visually impaired students)

I’ve been able to use my planning skills that I learned in my other services, such as creating an outline/framework for a period of time, or beginning the planning with a set of objectives to help direct suggestions, to contribute to ideas in the group when we decide what songs/stories we should do. It’s been really helpful building on the planning skills I’ve had before with the new aspects from this service.

Collaboration is always a big part of this local service, especially since we’re a group that has goals to meet on a weekly basis. Compared to my other services, we don’t have specific roles to play as members. This can be quite helpful since we can choose our responsibilities based on the situation, and what we are better at. This service has helped me appreciate the value of collaboration, especially when it is between a group of people who have no particular roles but a common interest (LO5)