Monday, 13 February, 2017 - 00:00
Category:
Activities
A class works best when pupils understand one another and know how to cooperate. Here are some simple ways to build team spirit
The new term is now well under way and if you’re a form tutor, you’ve probably got to know your new group well enough to match names with faces. But how well do they know one another?
Developing a friendly, cooperative atmosphere will enable your pupils to bond and work together. Here are five simple activities that you can use to bring their personalities to the surface and create a happy, harmonious form group.
Where do you overlap?
Divide students into pairs and give them a large sheet of paper with two overlapping circles – your standard Venn diagram. Ask students to fill the appropriate spaces with the things they do and don’t have in common. Suggest they include things like shoe size, hair colour, the primary schools they attended, favourites colours, pets, achievements, places they have visited, things they find difficult. Let each pair tell the class a few of the things they found they had in common.
How well do we know you?
Prepare a selection of multiple-choice questions and answers that reveal something about your students’ likes and dislikes. For example:
Which of the following would scare you the most?
- a parachute jump
- holding a tarantula
- walking in a graveyard at night
- swimming in shark-infested waters
You can turn this into a game show-style quiz where one student has to guess the answers given by another.
Can you negotiate?
Start by asking every student in the class to think what their favourite flavour crisp is. Next, ask them to find a partner and share this information. Then tell the pairs of students that they need to decide which flavour they could both eat if they had to agree on just one flavour.
For example: if one student chose cheese and onion and the other chose prawn cocktail, they need to find out if either of those flavours would be palatable to both of them, or if they had to find a third flavour they both liked.
Having agreed on the flavour, they need to join another pair of pupils and agree on a taste that would be acceptable to all four of them. Continue until the class is split into just two groups. Finally, see if the group can agree on one final flavour.
Here’s the answer – what’s the question?
Spread large sheets of paper around the room. On each sheet is an answer. The students need to come up with a question that would make the answer true for them personally.
For example, the paper might say: “No, I hate them.” The question for one student might be: “Do you like brussel sprouts?” For another, it might be: “Do you enjoy maths lessons?” Encourage them not to duplicate questions.
Answers you might like to use include: “Every now and then”, “At the weekends”, “It always makes me laugh” and “Yes, I have three”.
Choose a secret best friend
Put the names of all of your students into a hat, and invite each one to pick a name (check they haven’t got themselves).
The person they’ve selected has become their “secret best friend” and they need to do at least one kind thing for them this week without letting them know who did it.
Give examples of the kind of things students could do: get another student to deliver a small gift to your “friend”, have someone open the door for them and see them to their seat, have a drink delivered to the person at lunch time, make something for them.
At the end of the week, ask students to share what happened – and see if they can guess who did a nice thing for them.