Tag: communication

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Games to promote teamwork, co-ordination, co-operation and concentration

The game was called 'Finding Nemo'. Basically everyone had to wonder around with their eyes closed calling 'Nemo' until they bumped into someone who wasn't calling out. They then had to stop and be quiet - they have found Nemo. Eventually everyone is still and quiet.

Yesterday I gave you some icebreakers to use with your school council, today I’ve got a group of team-building games for you to try. There are competitive games here: competitive games for team-building.

Remember to get the most out of all of these activities …

Before the activity

  • Explain the rules as simply as possible.
  • Don’t give tips on how to complete the task.
  • Don’t explain what you want them to get out of it.

During the activity

  • Unless a judge is needed, you should take full part in the activity.
  • If everyone is struggling, pause the game and ask people what is going wrong; ask them what they could do to change it.
  • Stop the games while people are still excited, don’t wait for them to start dragging.

After the activity

  • Don’t make a big deal out of winners and losers – a quick cheer or round of applause is enough.
  • Draw out the learning through asking them to reflect on the activity, don’t tell them what you think the learning should be.
    • Ask those who succeeded: What worked well in your team? What did you do that allowed you to succeed?
    • Ask those who struggled: What would you differently next time?
    • Ask those who struggled but managed in the end: What do you change? Why? Did that work?
    • Finally, ask them what they learned through the activity – they may well come up with far more than you intended!

Group juggling

Useful for

Learning names; Concentration; Focus on your task; Let people know what you’re doing; Stick to the agreed format.

Method

  1. Keep all balls hidden until needed.
  2. Throw a green ball round the circle, each person only getting it once.
  3. Remember the order and repeat in that order, adding in extra green balls as confidence grows, until all three are going round
    the circle.
  4. Explain that red balls go along the same route, but in the opposite direction.
  5. Discuss what needs to happen to make this work well.
  6. See if you can get 3 green balls and 3 red balls all going at once. When it’s working reasonably well, throw in some extra balls
    in a random order.
  7. Discuss what happened.

Resources

  • Space for everyone to stand in a circle.
  • In a bag:
    • 3 x Green balls
    • 3 x Red balls
    • Some other coloured balls

Group counting

Useful for

  • We all know where we’re going, but if we’re not careful we can’t get there.
  • Taking it in turns can help.
  • Did everyone get a chance to take part? Did some people dominate?
  • Using body language and non-verbal signals.
  • Having a chair person, especially one who directs rather than speaking.

Method

  1. Explain the rules to everyone:
    • As a group we need to count to 10.
    • No one person can say 2 numbers in a row (e.g. 2 and 3).
    • No one can say anything other than the numbers.
    • If 2 people speak at once we start again.
  2. As people find they can’t do it ask people to suggest rules.
  3. Try these out one by one and see which work.

Resources

  • None

Helium stick / lower the stick

Useful for

Co-ordination; all working at the same pace; talking to one another; lateral thinking.

Method

  1. Split the group into two. Get each group to stand in a line facing the other group.
  2. Get everyone to point out a finger.
  3. Place the stick so that it is resting on everyone’s fingers at about shoulder height.
  4. Explain that they have to lower the stick to the ground without any of them losing contact with it.
  5. Each time someone loses contact get them to start again.
  6. To extend or vary the game you can get them to raise the stick as well.

Resources

  • A long lightweight stick (bamboo cane, garden stick, tent pole or similar)

Turning the sheet

Useful for

Co-ordination; using your strengths; talking to one another; lateral thinking.

Method

  1. The whole group has to stand on the sheet.
  2. The aim is for them to completely flip the sheet over without any of them stepping off it.

Resources

  • A sheet or picnic blanket

Sharing crisps

Useful for

Compromise; the value of talking in small groups; when under pressure we can make decisions easily about unimportant things.

Method

  1. Ask each person to repeat and complete the sentence: my favourite flavour of crisps is …
  2. Put everyone in pairs.
  3. Give them five seconds to decide what crisps they would share.
  4. Go round to each pair and ask them to announce together: Our favourite flavour of crisps is …
  5. Add pairs together to make fours and repeat.
  6. Keep going until it’s one big group deciding all together.

Resources

  • None
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involver blog Resources

Icebreaker games for school councils

The aim of the game was to get people from being in age order to alphabetical order without any of them stepping outside the lines.

On Friday I was in Weymouth training local teaching assistants (TAs) in how to use games to encourage positive relationships between young people. Naturally I did this through a long and detailed PowerPoint presentation that I read out word for word from the slides.

I kid, I kid, of course I did the whole thing through a series of games, which was a lot of fun for me and the TAs seemed to enjoy it too. I looked at three different types of games:

  1. Games to help you get to know one another and start talking (icebreakers)
  2. Games to encourage teamwork, co-operation and collaboration
  3. Games that encourage teamwork through competition

Below are the icebreakers I used. There are collaborative and competitive team building games here: Collaborative – Competitive

Remember to get the most out of all of these activities …

Before the activity

  • Explain the rules as simply as possible.
  • Don’t give tips on how to complete the task.
  • Don’t explain what you want them to get out of it.

During the activity

  • Unless a judge is needed, you should take full part in the activity.
  • If everyone is struggling, pause the game and ask people what is going wrong; ask them what they could do to change it.
  • Stop the games while people are still excited, don’t wait for them to start dragging.

After the activity

  • Don’t make a big deal out of winners and losers – a quick cheer or round of applause is enough.
  • Draw out the learning through asking them to reflect on the activity, don’t tell them what you think the learning should be.
    • Ask those who succeeded: What worked well in your team? What did you do that allowed you to succeed?
    • Ask those who struggled: What would you differently next time?
    • Ask those who struggled but managed in the end: What do you change? Why? Did that work?
    • Finally, ask them what they learned through the activity – they may well come up with far more than you intended!

Human bingo

Useful for

Getting to know one another, seeing one another as more than just a, say Y3 pupil.

Method

  1. Before the game: Create a bingo sheet by having a grid with a statement in each box (e.g. Supports Arsenal; Plays a team sport; Has been to the Houses of Parliament). Each of the statements should encourage them to ask some questions of other participants that will help them get to know them. Print one for each participant.
  2. Give each participant a sheet and a pen.
  3. Explain that they find one person in the room about whom each statement is true and write their name in the box.
  4. They have to fill in all the boxes, so will have to talk to everyone in the room.
  5. It’s good to include yourself in the game.

Resources

  • Human bingo sheet for each participant. Here are some you can just use:
    [download id=”252″ format=”1″]
    [download id=”253″ format=”1″]
    [download id=”254″ format=”1″]
    and some you can edit:
    [download id=”256″ format=”1″]
    [download id=”258″ format=”1″]
    [download id=”257″ format=”1″]
  • Pen for each participant

Talking in circles

Useful for

Listening skills; difference between discussion and listening; getting to know one another.

Method

  1. Get everyone to sit down, make sure all chairs are filled and that everyone is opposite someone.
  2. Ask everyone to introduce themselves to the person opposite.
  3. Pick a topic and ask the people on the inside to talk about it to the people on the outside.
  4. Then pick another topic and ask the people on the outside to tell the people on the inside about it.
  5. Get one circle to stand up and move around a few places; get them to sit down and repeat with different topics as many times as you like.
  6. You can ask them to make a decision together (e.g. if we had to watch one TV programme together all weekend, what would it be?)
  7. Get them to reflect on good listening and what the difference is between when you’re just telling someone something and when you have to make a decision together.

Resources

  • Two circles of chairs, one inside the other. Each chair should be facing another chair.

Envelope game

Useful for

Getting to know one another, speaking out loud; being a bit silly.

Method

  1. Before the session, write a series of questions to put in each of the envelopes. These should be amusing, vaguely revealing and quick to answer. E.g.:
  2. If you were a superhero, what power would you have?
  3. Where’s the best place to eat?
  4. If you had to watch only one TV show for ever, what would it be?
  5. Split people into groups of 4 or 5. Ask them to pull their chairs into small circles, so they can see everyone else in their group.
  6. Hand each group an envelope and get one person to read it out to the rest.
  7. Each group follows the instructions on the envelope, which read:
    • Take a piece of paper out of the envelope.
    • Read it and tell everyone else in the group your answer.
    • Put the paper back and pass the envelope on.
    • Keep going round the circle.

Resources

  • Chairs
  • Envelopes with instructions on: [download id=”259″ format=”1″]
  • Slips of paper with questions on in each envelope: [download id=”260″ format=”1″]

Throwing an alien

Useful for

Concentration; eye contact; using names; being silly.

Method

  1. Everyone stands or sits in a circle.
  2. Explain the scenario: there is an invisible, face-eating alien loose.
  3. Put your hands to the sides of your head and wiggle them about (this is you trying to wrestle the alien off your face).
  4. The person on your right has to put her left hand to her head and wiggle it about.
  5. The person to your left has to put his right hand to his head and wiggle it about.
  6. Make eye contact with someone else across the circle and throw them the alien.
  7. That person has to ‘catch’ the alien by wiggling their hands next to their head and the people on either side each have to wiggle one hand.
  8. Get the alien thrown around quickly.
  9. You can get people to concentrate more by:
    • having more than one alien;
    • getting people to shout names of other people in the circle (does the alien follow the names or the eyes?)

Resources

  • None

Splat/Compliment Splat/Fact Splat

Useful for

Getting to know names; being silly.

Method

  1. Get everyone in a circle and ask them to imagine they have some horrible goo in their hands.
  2. Go round the circle and ask everyone to say their names nice and loud.
  3. When you shout someone’s name they have to duck and the person on either side of them has to pretend to throw the goo over their head and
    shout ‘Splat!’.
  4. The slowest person gets splatted and is out. If the person whose name is called doesn’t duck s/he is out.
  5. Get the person who is out to call the next name.
  6. When just two are left, stand them back to back and get them to have a duel. The last person out counts. The final two have to step apart each time a number is counted. When a number is called out of order they have to spin round and splat each other.

Variations

  • Rather than splatting you have to say a compliment about the person ducking. The quickest one wins.
  • Rather than splatting you have to say a fact about the subject you’ve been studying. Incorrect or repeated facts mean you lose. Otherwise, the quickest wins.

Resources

  • None

Bombs and shields

Useful for

Getting people moving around. Works with any size group (if you have enough room).

Method

  1. Ask everyone to think of one other person in the room. They shouldn’t let that other person know that they have chosen them.
  2. Then get everyone to choose a second person, also without letting them know.
  3. Explain:
  4. The first person they chose is a bomb.
  5. The second person they chose is a shield and is the only thing that will save them from the bomb.
  6. When the bomb explodes their shield is in between them and the bomb.
  7. Start running around. Count down and make a boom.
  8. Afterwards you can get everyone to shake the hands of their bombs and shields.

Resources

  • None
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involver blog

3 tips to get staff on side with your school council

Last week I got an email from a teacher at a school I’d run training at recently (which shall remain nameless). We’d had a great day, the school council had come up with a real range of projects and great ways to communicate with the rest of the school. Unfortunately the email was not to tell me how well the students were getting on, but about the negative reactions from school staff. When minutes from the meeting were sent our staff comments ranged from sarcastic to deeply concerned. The posters the school council had put up explaining what they were working on were even taken down.

The school council co-ordinator asked me for advice. I’m sure she’s not the only one facing these problems, so I thought I would share what I told her with you. There isn’t a quick fix of course, but here are three things I suggest:

1. Explain the role of the school council

Make it clear to staff that the minutes are not what is going to happen, but what the students are taking on. In many cases they share the concerns of the staff and want to work with them to sort them out, that’s why their first step is often to meet with the relevant staff member. It’s not for staff members to give a straight ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but to ask the students what the students will do to make this happen. For example, if students want more trips they should be told they need to organise them. They will need help with this and they won’t have access to the money, but it’s not for the staff member to do all the running, the whole point is getting students to make happen those things they are keen on. Students need to be clear in their own minds and especially in anything they commit to paper on the difference between what they are DOING and what they are ASKING FOR. What they are DOING will happen (with their effort) what they are ASKING FOR may not.

2. Minutes detail students’ plans of action

Recycling plan notes
Project planning notes made by pupils at a recent primary training day.

Ensure that what goes into the minutes is what actions the students will take. This way staff (and others) can see that these are issues of concern to students and that they are doing something about it. It helps where the minutes say more than ‘Meet with Ms X’, but also record what students are intending on suggesting, i.e. how they will help. The ‘school council ideas form‘ should help with this – the last section asks what the person filling it out will do to help – make sure no ideas come to the meeting without something here. Ensure those actions are clearly recorded in the minutes.

3. Attach prep work to the minutes

Something else to consider is the detail of the minutes. If either of the staff members mentioned above had seen the whole discussion they would know that the issues they raised were discussed. I suggest these very brief minutes as I think in general most people don’t read long minutes and it’s difficult for the secretary to take part if they are trying to record everything. However they don’t cover the detail of the discussion. Maybe if the ideas forms or project plans were attached to the minutes it would help those not at the meeting to see the thought that had gone into it without increasing the burden on the secretary.

Do you think these ideas might help in your school? Have you done anything else that has worked?

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News

Ofsted and student voice

This morning I read an interesting story about how the school council at a Kent school are publicly disagreeing with a recent Ofsted judgement on their school.

School defends low Ofsted grade – www.thisiskent.co.uk

It’s fantastic to see students having pride in their school and defending it in this way and it demonstrates some of the benefits of student voice: it develops a sense of ownership and responsibility for the school and provides a very important perspective on how the school is working.

I’d be very interested to know though whether they would have received the same support in publicising their views if the situation had been reversed. If the school had received a positive report, but the students’ experience is negative, what would have happened?

This article raises a couple of questions:

  • What weight is put on each of these two views: that of Ofsted and of the students?
  • Do you use student voice to support and challenge what is going on in your school?
Categories
involver blog

Student voice in your SOLE

In 1999 a group of educational researchers put an internet connected PC in the wall of a New Delhi slum. Then they left it alone. Children from the slum gathered around this ‘hole in the wall’ and, with no direction, taught themselves how to use the computer and browse the internet simply through their own curiosity.

When Dr. Sugata Mitra presented these findings online it was so compelling that his lectures went viral and Mitra was propelled to the status of a minor internet celebrity.

Now, after a decade of follow up research into the effectiveness of child led learning, Sugata is inviting educators from all backgrounds to take part in a wider experiment. By providing groups of children with a Self-Organised Learning Environment (SOLE), the experiment aims to find effective ways of encouraging students to embrace their innate curiosity and use this as their incentive to learn in a broad range of environments, be it in the classroom or the home. This works by posing stimulating, profound or weird questions and letting the children approach the subject in their own way, with minimal outside interference.

At involver we are very excited about the ideas behind this experiment and we think it could potentially have far reaching implications for student voice. By allowing children to take charge of their learning it promotes a culture where they are not only encouraged but expected to contribute and be listened to. A SOLE might, for example, be a great way to get students to prepare a proposal to the school council: students would be responsible for the questions asked, and they would be free to answer them in innovative and exploratory ways.

Imagine the feedback you could receive by posing questions like, ‘why do people from all over the world come to our school?’, ‘who is school for?’, or even ‘what is learning?’, to a group of children, and then leaving them to discuss, explore and discover their own answers. We strongly encourage educators to participate in this experiment so education systems all over the world can benefit from the insights we may find in the results.

If you would be interested in learning more about Sugata’s research you can find his profile at TED.com, or to get involved with the SOLE experiment you can download the toolkit available with directions and advice on how to set one up.

Categories
involver blog Resources

Tips for chairing meetings

A tipped chair
A different kind of chair and a different kind of tip, but you see what I’m getting at.

I’m currently mentoring the co-chairs of Haringey Youth Council and I came up with this list of tips for them, which I thought others might find useful.

What are your tips for making meetings run smoothly and involving everyone? Add them in the comments below.

Before the meeting

If at all possible make sure information goes out before the meeting, so you can spend the meeting discussing and making decisions, not listening to presentations.

Have timings for each item on the agenda. This will mean you can get through the whole thing as everyone knows when they need to draw the discussion to a close (or when you’re going to force them to).

Set up the room so that everyone can see one another and you can see everyone. There’s nothing more annoying than wanting to speak in a meeting but not being seen.

When any new people or visitors come to the meeting introduce yourself and welcome them.

In the meeting

Sit next to the person taking the minutes so you can check that you’re both keeping up.

When you want people to move to a decision, summarise what the decision is: don’t try to summarise the whole discussion.

Write up options and decisions so that everyone can see them. This helps avoid confusion and repetition.

When people put their hand up to speak, give them a nod and write their name on a list. This way they can put their hand down and concentrate on the discussion knowing they won’t be forgotten.

Add your name to the list when you want to speak, this will stop you jumping in.

If it’s important to the discussion that you hear from everyone, make sure you go round the whole group and specifically ask everyone for an opinion.

When people give opinions, ask them to explain their reasoning. This will move the debate forward.

Meetings should be about action – what you are going to do – so try to move the discussion into the future tense. Discussions in the past tense tend to be about blame, present tense tends to be about opinions, but future tense tends to be about action. It’s easier to find consensus over the what to do in the future than who to blame for what happened in the past.

If you think everyone agrees with an idea, check by asking if anyone wants to speak against it. If no one does, then you are safe to assume everyone agrees.

Be aware of jargon or ideas that people new to the meeting might not understand. You can either explain them or ask the person speaking to briefly explain the term for new members, guests, etc.