20 Questions” Get-Acquainted Team Building Activity
Icebreaker
Objective: Students will learn each others names and get to know each other at a deeper level in a short period of time.
Materials: List of Questions
Steps:
1. Have participants seated or standing in a circle, so that everyone is facing everyone else.
2. Use the 20 questions listed below to begin the activity, or use other questions of your own.
3. Ask the first question, and ask for a volunteer to answer first. The first volunteer should say his/her full name, and then respond to the question. After the first person gives his/her response, the next person in the circle says his/her name and responds to the same question. After the second person has responded, the third person responds, and so forth until all participants have said their names and responded to the question.
4. Repeat the process with as many other questions as time permits.
5. End the activity and evaluate how well the objective was accomplished by asking several of the reflection items. Ask all participants to quietly think to themselves how they would answer as each reflection item is asked, Then ask a few volunteers to share their responses with the group. The reflection/processing is the most important part of the activity. It allows participants to “process” and evaluate what they did in the activity, and to realize how they and the group benefited and the extent to which they achieved the objective.
Result: Students will write a journal entry answering the following questions.
1. About which person did you learn the most?
2. Which people do you hope to get to know better? Why?
3. Which answer surprised you most?
4. Which person do you think/feel is most like you? Which seems least like you?
5. In what ways did this activity help you get acquainted with other group members?
6. Is it important to take time to get to know other people in your groups and teams? Why or why not?
7. If you use this activity as a leader with another group, what will you do similarly or differently?
20 Questions:
1. What is the best program on television?
2. Or what book would you recommend to your friends?
3. What hobbies, sports, or other leisure time activities do you enjoy most?
4. If you could have anything you wanted for supper, what would be on the menu?
5. What do you want to be doing ten years from now?
6. What do people like most about you?
7. What one day in your life would you like to live over?
8. Who was your best friend in the fourth grade, and why?
9. What is the greatest problem in the world?
10. In what ways are you like your grandparents?
11. What is one of the most creative things you’ve ever done?
12. If you knew you only had six months to live, how would you spend your remaining time?
13. What living person do you most admire?
14. If you could invent or discover one new thing, what would it be?
15. What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
16. If you could go anywhere on earth for a two-week vacation, where would you go?
17. What are one or two things you like about your family?
18. In what ways do you hope your life as an adult is similar to and different from your parents’ lives?
19. When do you feel happiest?
20. What is one thing about you that you have not shared yet, that others would find interesting?
Andee Collinson
Fall 2009
GO TEAM!
Team Building Activities
Objective: Students will solve the knotted hands game by making a complete circle with only one chance to get it right given the instructions prior to the game.
Materials: Hand Sanitizer will be needed at the end of this game.
Steps:
1. Ideally an even number of students is needed for this activity. The teacher may need to join in to make an even number.
2. Have the entire class form a circle facing each other.
3. Instruct the group to close their eyes, reach across the circle and shake hands the some one else. Once you shake their hand, do not let go. Make sure students do this with both hands.
4. Have the students open their eyes. No student should be holding both hands of the same person.
5. Without letting go, have the students try to untangle themselves with the result of having on large circle at the end.
6. Briefly talk with your students about why this is a team building activity. Points to make may be:
• Each person had a part in the circle.
• Without one person the circle would not have been complete.
• Shows the importance of each member of a team.
Result: Students will begin class. Team building activities are not to take an entire class period to work through. They should be like an anticipatory set and get students motivated and ready for the rest of the class period.
Other:
Websites with More Team building Activities –
• http://www.businessballs.com/teambuildinggames.htm#team-building-games-exercises-activities
• http://www.oakharborcheer.com/TeamBuildingGames.html
• http://www.group-games.com/
Katelyn Klute
Fall 2009
Getting to Know One Another
Getting students acquainted with one another.
Objective: Students will participate in the teacher planned icebreaker activity to get them comfortable associating with their classmates. After this activity, students will write their own “I Am From” poem and read it to their selected group members in order for them to become acquainted with their classmates.
Materials: One note card for every student in the class (bring extra in case you have any late registrants) with names of people or characters students would be familiar with (dead or alive) written on the back (exp: George Washington, the school principal, Paris Hilton, Mickey Mouse, etc.), a roll of masking tape, a copy of Mary Pipher’s “I Am From” poem for every student, the teacher’s own “I Am From” poem written to describe their own life, sheets of notebook paper and pencils or pens for each individual student, a small boom box, and soothing, school-appropriate music to play for the students.
Day One
Steps:
1.The teacher will go around the room and tape a note card on each students back
without them seeing the name on their card. After this is completed, students can walk around the room and ask their classmates two yes or no questions in order to find out the name of the person written on their card. Explain to the students that the names on the card are people alive or dead who they are familiar with, they are famous people, historical figures, cartoon characters, or even faculty members from their own school. The goal of the game is to find out whose name is written on their card. Allow students 5-10 minutes for this activity.
2. Place a copy of the I Am From poem on every desk. After the icebreaker, ask
students to return to their seats and read the poem to themselves. After students have completed the poem, explain to them that they will be creating their own I Am From poem to describe their own lives. The teacher will then read his/her adaptation of the I Am From poem so students have an idea of how to complete the activity. Handout sheets of paper to each student and pens and pencils if they need one, tell them their poem can be however long or short they want it to be and they can write it however they like. Their poem doesn’t have to follow the same structure as Mary Pipher’s poem, they can write it in a paragraph if they’d like. Allow students the rest of the class period to complete this activity. Play soothing school-appropriate music in the background. Tell students to take their poem home to revise and put finishing touches on and bring them back to class tomorrow. If students are finished and don’t want to take their poem home, they can leave it with the teacher. Remind students that they will be sharing these poems with their classmates so the information in the poem needs to be information they would be willing to share with their classmates.
Day Two
Materials: Students’ I Am From poem.
Steps:
1. Group students into groups of three by numbering them off. Instruct students to
find a comfortable place in the classroom to meet with their groups. Have students share their poems with their group members.
2. After students have finished the activity, have the class reconvene. Ask for
volunteers to share their poems with the class. Process the activity as a class, did they like the activity? Did they feel comfortable sharing their poems with their group members? Did they find out new information about their classmates? Did this activity help them evaluate their own life?
3. If you have your own classroom, ask students for their permission to hang the poems in the classroom. If students do not feel comfortable doing this, then don’t do it ☺.
I AM FROM
By: Mary Pipher
I am from Avis and Frank, Agnes and Fred, Glessie May
and Mark.
From the Ozark Mountains and the high plains of Eastern
Colorado,
From mountain snowmelt and lazy southern creeks filled with
aater moccasins.
I am from oatmeal eaters, gizzard eaters, haggis and raccoon
eaters.
I’m from craziness, darkness, sensuality, and humor.
From intense do-gooders struggling through ranch winters in
the 1920s.
I’m from “If you can say anything nice about someone don’t
say anything” and “Pretty is as pretty does” […]
I’m from no-dancing-or-drinking Methodists, but cards were
okay except on Sunday, and from tent-meeting Holy
Rollers,
From farmers, soldiers, bootleggers, and teachers.
I’m from Schwinn girl’s bike, 1950 Mercury two-door, and
West Side Story.
I’m from coyotes, baby field mice, chlorinous swimming pools,
Milky Way and harvest moon over Nebraska cornfields,
I’m from muddy Platte and Republican,
from cottonwood and mulberry, tumbleweed and switchgrass
from Willa Cather, Walt Whitman, and Janis Joplin,
My own sweet dance unfolding against a cast of women in
aprons and barefoot men in overalls.
Summer 2005
Truth and Lies Icebreaker
Can YOU tell which one is the truth about me?!?!
TOPIC: Introduction game to get acquainted with one another
MATERIALS: Chalkboard and chalk
OBJECTIVE: The students will participate in the introduction and be able to use it for future references to introducing a group.
STEPS:
1. Have students create a ½ circle in the classroom, facing the chalk board to begin with.
2. Lead the icebreaker off by writing two true statements about yourself and one false statement on the chalk board. Have them all very similar so it is hard to determine the answer.
3. Students are then to ask “lie detector” questions to figure out which one is false.
4. Students vote on which statement is a lie. Record votes for each statement on the board. Reveal which statements are true and which one is false.
5. Then place the students into small groups (3-4) and have them repeat steps 1-4 with each other.
6. Have students introduce themselves in their group.
Example Information:
2. I have been teaching for 10 years.
I have a pet newt called, “Isaac Newt.”
I lived in Switzerland for a year.
3. Teaching – Where have you taught? What have you taught? What year did you start?
Pet – How old is Isaac Newt? What does Isaac eat? Where do you keep Isaac?
Switzerland – Where did you live in Switzerland? What language was spoken in that part of Switzerland?
RESULT: The students should be aware of what an icebreaker is and how it helps with a group of people. They will afterwards understand the benefits of using an acquaintance game like this so the people are more comfortable around each other.
Ice Breaker Speech
I am going to pass around this hat which contains slips of paper with something wrote on each one. Draw one slip of paper a read it, but don’t show anyone else just yet. Each slip of paper has an object, a person, or an activity written on it; this will be your new “pretend” middle name for our class period. When I say so you will need to mingle with the other students in class and try to find students who have an object, person, activity, and so forth that is similar to yours. You will have five minutes to complete this. Then I will allow you another 3 minutes or so to learn the first names and new middle names of the members in your group When you are done please sit together as a group.
Finally, we will take turn standing up one by one. You will introduce yourself to the class then you will introduce your group members by say their first name and their new middle name. For example my name is Jessica Watermelon and my group members are Alex Racket Ball, Beth George W. Bush, and ect. In addition, you will explain in at least three steps the process how you came to find your group. For example, first I asked the girl behind me what she had and she was Bill Clinton, then I asked the guy next to me and he was a grapefruit so we knew we were together, and then finally we found two other people and determined we were all types of melons! I will explain the criteria for your speaking assignment one more time right before we begin.
If everyone has a slip of paper…your first five minutes will begin now!
Summer 2005