Orienteering: By Sean

On the 19th April, the 4th, 5th and 6th classes did orienteering in school and learned everything about it from the symbols to orienteering your map.

To start the day off, we all sat in a circle and played a quick game to warm us up. Then Tamara and Maria who are students from Seamount College, told us all the symbols that would be on a map and described to us what they mean. Then we decided to play another game to help us memorise the symbols. We lined up in two groups of eight. There was a sheet in front of the two groups. It said on the sheet all the names of the symbols. Beside that row, there were two blank spaces. We had to run out of the room and find the right symbol. We could then run back to the group and draw the symbol and what colour it was.

We were then split up into three groups and we went outside. All the groups had different things to do. My group were with Ailish O’Shea. Ailish taught us how to orientate our map. We had a map of the school with all the symbols and different colours in the map. Ailish told us to bring her to different parts of the school.

When we were done with Ailish, we went over to Caoimhe for another game. There were different sections of a map on the side and back wall of the shelter. On the back wall, all the sections had different letters on them and on the side wall, there were the exact same pieces except with numbers on them. We then had to match the pieces for e.g. 1-D.

Now it was time for the real orienteering. This time, two people had to go together. We got score sheets and a map of the school. Maria started the timer and started writing our names on the score cards. On the cards, there was a starting time. Whatever your starting time was, it would be taken off your finishing time. There were six flags around the school. Each flag had a pincher on them to mark your score card. Each pincher has a different design so they know you are not cheating. Everyone finished in good time. Overall, it was a great day. If you ever go orienteering, the key point is to move yourself around the map, not move the map around.