Team Building: Creating a safe, fun and inclusive classroom environment

Team building activities are an essential for the beginning of the year, especially with upper-primary/intermediate students. It is a chance for students to make connections, collaborate and realise their potential as confident and capable members of the classroom. Every year I use the same words when beginning this fun team building unit - safe, inclusive and fun.  I strongly believe that if a classroom is safe, inclusive and fun, then learning and achievement will come naturally. A happy student is a student who will feel ready and motivated to learn!

This year I have brought in some old favourites, and introduced some new team building activities. Here are my favourites:

People Bingo!

Since I had a feeling my students would need a little push to interact with each other, I decided to use a ice breaker activity that would literally force them to talk to everyone on day one. I created a 5 x 5 grid and came up with a bunch of statements about students likes, dislikes and hobbies. I purposely used a 5 x 5 grid so students would practically speak to everyone (there are 27 students in my classroom).


Instructions: Students need to roam around the room and find someone who matched the statement. Their challenge was to dill their entire grid, and only have a persons name once.

Duration: 10 - 15 minutes.





Adaptations: this activity usually calls for students getting 5 names in a row, however I wanted to force them to speak to all of their new classmates. Also, because I knew some would be shy, I allowed them to choose between working with a peer or by themselves. This really helped my introverted students, as having a buddy gave them more confidence to approach their new classmates.





The verdict: Students started off pretty quiet, so I had to be patient with this one. After about 3-5 minutes, students had already asked their 'friends' to fill in their sheet, so they had to start asking people they didn't know. About 10 minutes in the class was buzzing with movement, chatter and giggles. If you have patience and keep encouraging your students (and hyping them up!) to take risks and speak to everyone, this is great for to use for your very first ice breaker.

Build it from memory

Create a structure (or series of structures like I did), and place it somewhere that the students can't see from their workspaces. In groups of 4, students have to work together to recreate the structure, making it exactly the same as the example. 

Instructions: One at a time, a student may look at the example structure for 5 seconds. The catch is, if they are the one that has looked, they cannot touch their blocks. Students will have to use their memory and communication skills. 

Duration: Around 15-30 minutes, depending on your students and the types of degree of difficulty of the structures. For my class, this took just over 20 minutes for three groups to finish.

Adaptations: 

To make it easier:

• Allow students to look for 10 seconds
• Be more flexible about the choice of colours of the blocks.
• Have less structures, or more simplistic ones.

To make it harder:

• Add additional blocks to their piles so students are not sure which ones are needed and which are surplus.
• Set a time limit to add more pressure.
• Make structures more complicated and involve more pieces (I was restricted by the number of blocks I had).

The verdict: this activity was so much fun! it was great to see students using their communication skills with their teammates, and coming up with strategies to make their structures the fastest. This activity does require a lot of teacher preparation, as you need to make sure that each student has the same exact blocks to work with.

Can you draw it?

This is activity is a class favourite!  You will need to find a simple drawing for your class to recreate. Each group (4 students only) will have a print out of the drawing, their own A3 paper and a felt pen with four strings attached.

Instructions: Each student must be holding onto the string. They need to communicate and work as a team to complete their drawing. They are not allowed to touch the felt, and all four students must be taking part and holding onto a piece of string.

Duration: depending on your students and the drawing you choose for them, it could take between 5-10 minutes. This a quick but super fun lesson! You could draw it out for longer by stopping part way through and having a discussion about why some groups are more successful than others.

Adaptations:
To make it easier:

• Securely tie the strings to the felt pen (I didn't do this because I wanted the students to problem solve and work collaboratively, as if one student pulled up too fast then the string would come off).
• Get them to write TEAM or TEAMWORK instead.
• Choose a very simple drawing

To make it harder:

• Don't give students any guidance or tips.
• Give your students the tools and ask them to figure out how to assemble the strings so they are controlling the felt pen but not touching it.
• Have a complicated and detailed drawing

The verdict:
This activity is always a hit with students. There is a lot of laughter during this activity, as it is really tricky to draw as a team. Can You Draw It helps students to work on their communication skills, problem solving, their patience and co-operation as it is vital that all students take part, listen to each other and work as a team

Minefield

Another classic team building activity. You will need a large playing space (indoors and outdoors works fine!) some obstacles for students to avoid and some blindfolds. It can also be useful to have a minefield for each group so that more students can be involved, and to add a bit of friendly competition!

Instructions: Students get into small groups and wait at the start of their minefield. One at a time, a blindfolded student will attempt to make their way through the minefield. Their team members will need to give clear, simple and careful instructions!

Duration: between 10-20 minutes.

Adaptations:

To make it easier:

• Space out your 'mines'
• Have less 'mines'

To make it harder

• Have tarpaulins (or something similar) to crawl under.
• Set a time limit to add more pressure.
• Add lots of 'mines'

The verdict: this activity is great for building students communication skills and trust. This is heaps of fun and is a good way for students to take risks and trust their classmates. My students also enjoy making it into a little competition with the other groups.
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I Found a New Digital Tool & it is AWESOME!

So a few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about some digital tools that I'd newly discovered and was keen to use in my classroom.  One of those mentioned was Mentimeter.  It sounded great and I was so excited to use it.  I signed up and began creating my first interactive presentation.  I created two activities, and then it told me I needed to pay a subscription in order to add more.  Needless to say I was super gutted... and seriously considering paying. Instead, I did a quick Google search for similar digital tools.  I couldn't really find anything.

I randomly stumbled upon a digital tool when reading Jennifer Gonzalez's blog post about digital tools to use this year.  And I am so glad I did because I discovered Nearpod! It was Jennifer's number one pick, and I can see why!

Why Nearpod is so Great

As far as I can tell, Nearpod is basically free.  You can pay a subscription if you want even more features (collaborate, fill in the blanks and memory test), but the free version lets you create 'live lessons', using quizzes, open-ended questions, and polls.  Also, unlike Mentimeter, you can add in heaps of activities on one presentation.

It's really easy to use.  You create a new presentation and choose between creating a slide with content, web content of an activity.

The 'live version' of Nearpod is the free one, and it is the best option.  This is one that the teacher uses during a teaching session.  The difference between the live and student paced lesson is that the teacher controls the live version.

My Nearpod presentation

I created a Nearpod presentation to introduce my learners to explanation texts. The purpose was to discover whether my learners could identify an explanation text, and if they could explain why/why not a text was an explanation.

In my presentation was:

• A slide with a screenshot of a text type 
• A quiz, asking "Is this an explanation?"
• An open ended question, asking "Why is this/is this NOT an explanation?"

So for every text type, there were three slides.  I had about 6 different text types (each with the screenshot, quiz and open-ended question).

Because I wanted my learners to collaborate, they were put in groups of 3 or 4. This meant that they could share their ideas before deciding on their answers.

How it went

I was surprised with how enthusiastic my learners were during this lesson! I knew it would help them to be engaged, but they were also super excited by the task.   Even my most reluctant learners were super engaged and wanted to see whether they got the quiz questions correct. They liked that they could see what each other got, and there were no 

Teacher's screen for quiz

Students' screen for the quiz

Teacher's screen for open-ended question

Students' screen for open-ended question

I realised that if the teacher's display was always on, then the students would see who got the right answers.  This could be a problem, as some students could wait to see what the other groups said and then choose the correct answer.  To avoid this, when it was the quiz time, I changed my tab to a student's screen.

Final thoughts

I think Nearpod might be my new favourite digital tool.  The level of engagement and enthusiasm it brought to my lesson was unlike any other tool I have used.  It was a great way to see what my learners already knew about explanations and to begin to form some ideas about the structure, content and features of explanation writing.  The students were motivated to take part, which was a massive win, as I have some reluctant learners.  I could also tell that they felt proud and very pleased with themselves, when they saw that they got a correct answer.

I will definitely be using this tool again. Students could even create their own presentations to show what they have learnt.

Creating a Collaborative Classroom: Team Building

This week I have focussed on creating a safe, inclusive and happy classroom environment.  One of my favourite tasks so far would have to be the one we completed on Friday.

Can You Draw It?

I'm not sure of this games exact name, but it is a variation of this team building exercise, found on Pinterest. This is what you need:

• Groups of four - five is ok too, if one student is the instructor.
• A felt tip pen with two strings tied to it, creating four pieces of string.
• A2 or A3 paper for each group
• A print out of a simple drawing

All you need: A felt-tip pen with two strings tied, a simple drawing and some A2 newsprint paper

Instructions

1.  Each group member holds a piece of string.  They each have a piece of A2 paper and a print out of a simple drawing.
2. The group has to work together to replicate the simple drawing.
3. Students must be holding onto the string, they cannot touch the pen.

The group with the best drawing wins!

The finished product. Click here to see a larger version of their drawings

This activity was lots of fun and pretty hilarious.  There was laughter and a bit of frustration, as teams worked together to draw the image.

Although this activity was meant to be fun, there were some more serious lessons which underpinned the students success.  The students had to work together. Everyone had to help out and take part.  If one group member decided not to try, then the pen would not stay upright and the team would struggle.

Moral of the lesson

Everyone must work together, if one person doesn't then it won't work.  This is the case for collaborative work.  It is crucial that everybody pitches in and helps out. In order to succeed, everyone needs to play a role and contribute to the group.

Once students had calmed down from the excitement, we had a discussion about what the point of this task was.  I was happy that they could relay that it was about the importance teamwork and everyone doing their bit.

Next week...

Next week I am planning to continue setting team building challenges for my classroom.  This is helping my learners to feel safe and confident in my classroom.  It is also building a collaborative environment - which is what my learners asked for. I am looking forward to watching my learners progress from shy to confident classmates.