Energizers and Icebreakers

 

If You Build it…

This team-building game is flexible. Simply divide students into teams and give them equal amounts of a certain material, like pipe cleaners, blocks, or even dried spaghetti and marshmallows. Then, give them something to construct. The challenge can be variable (think: Which team can build the tallest, structurally-sound castle? Which team can build a castle the fastest?).You can recycle this activity throughout the year by adapting the challenge or materials to specific content areas.  Skills: Communication; problem-solving

 

Zoom

Zoom is a classic classroom cooperative game that never seems to go out of style. Simply form students into a circle and give each a unique picture of an object, animal or whatever else suits your fancy. You begin a story that incorporates whatever happens to be on your assigned photo. The next student continues the story, incorporating their photo, and so on.  Skills: Communication; creative collaboration

 

The Worst-Case Scenario

Fabricate a scenario in which students would need to work together and solve problems to succeed, like being stranded on a deserted island or getting lost at sea. Ask them to work together to concoct a solution that ensures everyone arrives safely. You might ask them to come up with a list of 10 must-have items that would help them most, or a creative passage to safety. Encourage them to vote — everyone must agree to the final solution. Skills: Communication, problem-solving

 

 It’s a Mystery

Many children (and grown-ups) enjoy a good mystery, so why not design one that must be solved cooperatively? Give each student a numbered clue. In order to solve the mystery — say, the case of the missing mascot — children must work together to solve the clues in order. The “case” might require them to move from one area of the room to the next, uncovering more clues. Skills: Problem-solving, communication

 

Keep it Real

This open-ended concept is simple and serves as an excellent segue into problem-based learning. Challenge students to identify and cooperatively solve a real problem in their schools or communities. You may set the parameters, including a time limit, materials and physical boundaries. Skills: Problem-solving; communication

 

 Am I Napoleon?

Each student is given a 3x5 index card and tape. Each students is asked to print on the card the name of some famous person, living or dead. Each student will then tape this card onto the back of another student, without letting that studnet know the name on the card. Students then mill about the classroom asking other students "yes or no" questions to find out who "they are". 

 

Brainstorming

Ask each group to appoint a recorder to jot down all the ideas on paper, chalkboard, or newsprint as fast as ideas are called out. Instruct the tribes on the “DOVE” rules that they need to follow in order to “brainstorm.”

D defer judgment

O off beat, original

V vast number

E expand, elaborate 

Each group will have five minutes to call out and write down as many ideas as possible on a subject. Examples: “How could we design a better bathtub—one for more enjoyment, efficiency, and comfort than ordinary tubs?” (better bicycle, bedroom, car, school cafeteria, school). Stop the brainstorming after five minutes. Ask each recorder to read his or her tribe’s list.

 

Bumper Stickers

Give each student a long strip of paper and a marker or crayon with which to create a “bumper sticker” that he or she would enjoy displaying on his or her automobile bumper. Have each student in turn share his or her bumper sticker with the community. Remind everyone to give their full attention to the speaker. Tell the students they may ask questions, and express mutual feelings and concerns after everyone has shared.

 

Chain Reaction

Remind the students of their right to pass and to honor the other agreements. Remindgroups members to give full, caring attention. Have one group member begin by asking a question of a second group member. Have the second

group member answer the question and then ask another question of a third group member. Instruct the groups to continue the chain until each tribe member has answered and then asked a question. Explain that questions may be autobiographical or deal with curriculum or a number of issues (politics, hobbies, education, friendship, family interests). 

 

Client-Consultant

Tell the students that each will have a turn expressing a concern or a problem that he or she may be experiencing at school. Each person will have a turn at being a “client” while the other tribe members are listening as “consultants.” Explain that the consultants:

✦ are to be non-judgmental

✦ are not to tell the client what to do

✦ are to offer alternative suggestions to the client for solving the problem

✦ and may ask for additional information if it seems helpful or necessary.

Review or remind the students about their caring listening skills (especially paraphrasing). Allow approximately 10 minutes for each client’s turn.

 

Community Circle Metaphor

Begin with everyone in a community circle. Explain that the students will be completing the following sentence:

“When I am working on [name a subject, such as math, writing, reading, art, music] I am most like a [name an animal] because I [name a behavior or quality].” After brief thinking time, have the students form pairs. Ask the partners to face each other and discuss their answers to the question. Give the partners two to five minutes to share. Ask several pairs to share their answers with the community.

 

Consensus-Building

Have the students meet in tribes, and distribute 5 x 7-inch cards to each person. Discuss the importance of groups having a way to make decisions together so that every member can contribute his or her ideas. State a question that students will try to come to an agreement on through discussion. Example: What field trip sites would be most interesting for our class? Ask each student to write down five answers to the question. Have two tribe members get together, compare lists and agree on four ideas eliminating all others. Have two pairs get together, compare lists, agree on 4 out of their 8 combined ideas and eliminate the others. Have the tribes report their four final ideas to the class. Keep a list on the chalkboard of all ideas. Have the class discuss all of the ideas and eliminate those that seem unworkable or less possible. Then use “sticker voting” to give each student an opportunity to choose his or her three preferred ideas. (See “Group Problem Solving.”).  Add up the value of the stickers to determine the final choice of the class. The value of the stickers are: Blue=15 points, Red=10 points and Yellow=5 points.

 

Creative Storytelling

Give instructions as follows: “The leader will start by saying a few sentences, then we’ll choose someone to continue the story where the first person left off. That person will do the same until the story goes around the circle two or three times.” Choose a setting for the story that involves the students themselves yet leaves lots of room for fantasizing. Example: “Once there was a group of kids named [name], [name], [name] and [name] who wanted to find a place to go swimming together. They came upon a big water hole that looked very inviting. But as soon as one person jumped in, a funny animal reared its head out of the water and...”. Encourage the students to listen to each other, and have them continue the story however they want to. Review the “right to pass” and other agreements.

 

Current Events Debate

Arrange six chairs in a circle. Tell the community that you would like to have five volunteers sit in the circle to express their views on [topic]. Explain that the extra chair is for anyone who wants to come in briefly and add information to the debate (facts, dates, etc.), after which he or she must go back to his or her seat. Examples:

✦ Should skateboards be allowed at school?

✦ How important is it for people to learn to use computers?

✦ How can people resist peer pressure to use cigarettes, alcohol, or other drugs?

Say that the remaining community members are to be silent until all the students in the circle have been heard. After the circle members have debated the topic, invite the community to direct questions to the circle members.

 

Dear Abby

Have the community meet in tribes, and give each tribe a pile of cards on which you have previously written a concern or problem (real issues) appropriate to your students’ age level. Ask tribe members to each take a turn at reading a problem out loud from a card to rest of the tribe. Then have them say, “If I were Dear Abby I would suggest this person [advice].” Later (that day or a different one), distribute blank cards to the tribes and ask each tribe member to write one real concern or problem on the card, addressing it to the fictitious news columnist, “Dear Abby.”Collect the cards and redistribute the cards back to tribe members to suggest what they, as “Dear Abby,” would advise the person to do.

 

Dream Quilt

Have the community sit in a circle. Ask each student to think of a goal for the year, something he or she wants to accomplish. Ask students to choose a partner and take turns sharing their goals. Now pass out squares of paper to the students and ask them to write or illustrate their goals. In a community circle, ask the students to share their goals with the class. After all the students have shared their goals, have them decorate their square, sign their

name, and post all the squares together on a bulletin board in the form of a quilt.

 

Extended Name Tags

Distribute 5 x 8-inch cards. Ask each student to print his or her first name or nickname in the center of the card, and

directly under it the quality he or she most values in people. Then have each student write the following in the corners:

✦ upper left—a place where he or she spent his or her happiest summer

option: his or her favorite place on earth

✦ lower left—the name of a person who taught him or her something important

option: the name of his or her best friend

✦ lower right—the year he or she last spent three great days in a row

option: the year he or she went on a big trip

✦ upper right—three things he or she does well

option: a goal that he or she has for the future

Have the students meet in triads. Explain that the triad will talk about the upper left corner of their cards for three minutes, which means each person has one minute to talk. Ask them to keep track of their time and to share equally. After three minutes, have the triads give statements of appreciation. Allow two minutes for the statements. Examples:

✦ “I liked it when...”

✦ “You’re a lot like me when...”

Have the students form new triads three more times, sharing the other three corners and giving statements of appreciation after each round. Use the same time periods as suggested in steps four and five above. Form a community circle and invite each student to share some-thing special he or she learned about a class member.

 

What We Have in Common

State that we are a unique group about to start an exciting journey together, and that, like any people coming together, we need to learn about each other. Have each student find a partner he or she does not know at all or does not know very well. Say “In the next five minutes find out all the things that you have in common with your partner (likes, dislikes, qualities, skills, goals or whatever).” Have the community sit in a circle. Have each partner introduce himself or herself and tell what he or she discovered.

 

Flies on the Wall

After students have been working together on a task, have them set aside their books and papers. Ask the students to close their eyes and pretend they had been flies on the ceiling watching their group work together during the last few minutes or hours. Tell them to “run the movie backwards now” and think what the flies saw happening.

✦ Who did what to get you started?

✦ What did you do while your tribe was working together?

✦ What did other tribe members do?

✦ What helpful things happened?

✦ Who did them?

✦ Did everyone participate?

✦ How did you help each other?

After a few minutes, have the group members share what they as flies saw happening. It is helpful to have each group choose a recorder to make a list of behaviors, positions, acts, interactions, etc. Groups will then report to the community. Each group will then make a list of “things what we could do to have our group work better next time.”

 

Group Inquiry

INCLUSION: Build inclusion within the tribes by using the structure, write/pair/share. Ask people to take 5–10 minutes to write down the skills, talents and abilities that they bring to the group. You may want to list and discuss the various collaborative skills. Have people share their lists first in pairs. Then share with the tribe.

CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES: Discuss the general subject content and sub-content areas to be researched by the tribes. It is optional whether the class or teacher defines the sub-content areas. List the objectives to be learned from the experience. Have the tribes choose or randomly draw slips of content areas. 

RESOURCES: Detail resources they can use for their inquiry or research (books, articles, computer info, library, interviews, films, etc.)

TASK: Detail the task to be accomplished (group report, presentation, role play, article, etc.) within a specific time; inquiry projects can run from one hour to several weeks or months.

ROLES: You may want to use roles within elementary tribes (facilitator, encourager, materials manager, recorder, etc.) If so, have people those their roles according to the skills and resources they believe they bring to the group.

ACCOUNTABILITY:

✦ For presentations to the whole class, a peer evaluation sheet may be used.

✦ Your own observations of individual performance can be made by taking notes.

✦ Group and individual reports can be made and graded.

 

Group Problem Solving

Have the class community meet in groups. Give each tribe five minutes to come up with three typical problems that a student might have with another student—or that a student might have with someone else at the school. Have each tribe read their problem to the class. Make sure that the problems are welldefined. Explain that each tribe will have ten minutes to brainstorm and list possible solutions. Review the “Brainstorming” strategy and post the brainstorming rules. Give each tribe a large sheet of paper, a felt pen and three colored stickers (red, blue and yellow).  Write the “Group-Problem Solving” process on the board. Brainstorm for ten minutes. Have one person record all ideas. Each person selects three top choices with colored stickers (1st choice blue=25 points; 2nd

choice red=15 points; 3rd choice yellow=5 points).

✦ Add up the total points for each idea.

✦ Present your top solutions to the community.

 

I Used to Be: We Used to Be

Ask each student to (silently) compare the following things about himself or herself today, and his or her old self in the past: physical appearance, favorite things to do, behavior, hobbies, beliefs, fears, friends, etc.Have each tribe member write a poem, using the following format:

I used to be... But now I am...

I used to be... But now I am...

Ask the tribe members to share their finished poems. While students are still in their tribes ask each tribe member to create a poem about his or her tribe, using the following format:

We used to be... But now we are...

We used to be... But now we are...

Ask the tribe members to share their finished poems. Ask each tribe to share one or two of its “we” poems with the community.

 

Interview Circle

Ask the community to sit in a large circle. Explain that we will interview one student who will sit in the center of the circle and answer three questions. The person will choose the questions from people who raise their hands. He or she has the right to “pass” on any questions that she or he chooses not to answer. Model the activity first by being in the center and responding to three questions yourself. Suggest that questions may be autobiographical or may relate to issues, curriculum, politics, hobbies, friendship, sports, etc. Have the community interview a few students each day until every-one has had a turn.

 

Joy

Ask each student to think of three things that he or she would like to share. Use the letters of the word “joy” to structure what is to be shared:

J: something in your life that just happened

O: one thing you would like to do for yourself

Y: a part of you that makes you a very special person

Point out that the key words say, “just one you!” Urge the students to listen attentively as each student takes a turn sharing.

 

Kitchen Kapers

Prepare packets containing two 3 x 5-inch cards, two paper clips, four toothpicks, and one pencil in a sealed business-sized envelope. Have the community meet in tribes or form subgroups. Review the agreements. Give each tribe a packet. State that they will have twelve minutes to invent and build “one kitchen utensil every household simply must have.” Encourage bizarre, zany, and unique ideas. State that all tribe members need to participate.

Stop the “inventors” at twelve minutes. Ask each tribe to then prepare a short, three minute commercial advertising its product. All members need to take part in the commercial. Have each tribe present their commercial to the community.

 

The Above Activities are From: Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities