Teambuilding activities
Pre-program team contract. Before working with students, ask them to write a ‘team contract’ highlighting rules that will bind everyone including the instructor. Write this on a big piece of paper and have everyone sign it.
Introduce your partner (paired activity). Have students interview each other in pairs according to a set of questions you prepare. Have them then ‘introduce’ the students to you and to the rest of the group. This helps when programs are getting started. File:Questions for interviews.docx
Animal noises. To help learn names. Put one student in the center of a circle of the other students. Have them close their eyes and spin around and stop at some random time. Have them point at the person in front of them. Student in the center names an animal (e.g. ‘lion’) and the student being pointed at has to make that animal’s noise. If the center student can guess who is the student on the outside of the circle, they switch; otherwise repeat. Rest of the students need to work on their not-laughing skills for this to work, which is half the fun.
Human knot. All students make a circle and put hands in the middle, joining each hand with a different person. The challenge is then to un-knot the group without releasing hands. The final possible outcomes are 1) one large circle, 2) two small circles, disjunct or 3) two circles chained to each other; all are successes. Be careful with rowdy groups as wrist injuries are possible. If the group is good, time them and challenge them to beat their previous time.
Blindfolded walk / find. Choose one student to blindfold. Throw a stick into some part of the field site. The blindfolded student’s task is to find the stick. The rest of the team is allowed to talk to the student but not themselves move. The challenge is getting the larger group to cooperate effectively and trust the blindfolded student to move.
Chocolate river. Have several square sections of foam sit-pads available. Define an area in the field site (maybe 5m wide) that is a river full of hot chocolate the students have to cross. If anyone falls in they drown in chocolate and everyone has to start over. Fortunately the sit-pads are marshmallows and can be used to cross the river. But if there is ever a marshmallow with no one on it then it floats down the river and is lost forever. Give the group some pads and challenge them to work together to get across. Lots of students will have to balance on a small number of pads as they snake across the river and pass pads from back to front. As they succeed, invent marshmallow-loving birds that steal pads and see if they can still cross the river.
Scream race. Line up students on a flat section of ground. Challenge them to run as far as they can… with only one breath of air… while screaming as loud as possible. Make sure there are no easily scared tourists nearby.
Rope shape-making. Have a loop of rope, about 1 meter of rope per student. Give it to the students, each holding part. Have them all close their eyes. Challenge them as a group to make a geometric shape (e.g. equilateral triangle). They are not allowed to open their eyes or take both hands off the rope, but can move. Builds good communication skills.
Trust fall and pass-around. Make a tight circle with one person in the middle. All students in the circle are in a brace position with hands up. The person in the middle closes their eyes and fall over, keeping their body rigid. As they fall, people on the side gently push them back to the center, and they ‘float’ in the air. Takes a lot of trust and introduction of safe/acceptable ways to push another person, but is a magical experience for the center person.Thicket. One person is a predator in the center of an area, standing over a pile of ‘food’ (sticks/pinecones). All other students are prey trying to get some of the food in the center. At start of game, all prey students scatter and hide behind some objects. The predator has eyes closed and counts down from 10. At zero, they shout ‘freeze’ and look around. If they see any prey, they can call up to two by name or description and the prey is ‘out’. Incorrect guesses have no effect. Next round, repeat the countdown, but all prey students need to come closer to the predator. They get points if they can steal a food item, and are ‘out’ if they are tagged by the predator (who still has eyes closed but may hear a prey running in). Repeat a fixed number of rounds. Winners are those students who survive longest and are closest to the predator, and have the most food (instructor can choose the victory condition). This game is very popular and will probably get played multiple rounds.
Floating stick. Take a meter stick or a long straight stick. It is an anti-gravity stick that wants to fly up to the sky if no one is holding on to it. Challenge the students to lower it to the ground. While holding the stick, have all students put a single finger under the stick somewhere along its length. They are not allowed to let go of the stick or grab on with multiple fingers (if they do, the game restarts). Because of force imbalances, the first natural action is for the stick to rise. The challenge is for the group to communicate to move their fingers in a coordinated fashion slowly to the ground. Don’t tell them this. Some younger students will really believe the stick is an anti-gravity stick. If they succeed, challenge them to do it faster.
Lava lake. Find a tree stump or other small platform (maybe a rock). Tell students that the field site is filling with lava and they will catch fire unless they can all stand on the platform above the lava level. They have to be able to balance without falling on the platform for at least ten seconds. Once they succeed, tell them that the lava is rising and the platform is getting smaller. Find a smaller object and repeat. Note that it is possible to fit eight sixth-graders on a 1 square-foot platform (with a lot of giggling) - don’t make the game too easy.
No talking game. Repeat any of the above games but the students are not allowed to talk at all.
Back-to-back drawing Divide your group into pairs, and have each pair sit on the floor/ground back to back. Have one person in each pair select something in their line of sight that they can describe well (can be near or far), and have the other person open to a blank page in their field notebook. Ask the students not drawing to give verbal instructions to their partners on how to draw the object – without actually telling the partners what the object is. After they've finished, ask each pair to compare their original object with the actual drawing, and consider the following questions: How well did the first person describe the object? How well did the second person interpret the instructions? What were the successes and problems with both the sending and receiving parts of the communication process?
Survival Scenario This exercise forces your group to communicate and agree to ensure their 'survival.' Tell your group that their airplane has just crashed in the ocean. There's a desert island nearby, and there's room on the lifeboat for every person – plus 12 items they'll need to survive on the island. Instruct the team to choose which items they want to take. How do they decide? How do they rank or rate each item?
