Team-Building Activities

PERFORMANCE LEARNING PLUS is a monthly e-newsletter by Performance Learning Systems (PLS), a comprehensive educational services company that has provided a full spectrum of programs, products, and consulting services to educators and business professionals since 1971.

When students work as a team, their relationships improve, reliance on one another increases, and a sense of group cohesion is created. Read on for three TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES you can use immediately to create a supportive classroom community.

TIPS:

The following activities help students develop group spirit and a strong sense of community. As you lead your students in these TEAM-BUILDING ACTIVITIES, you may want to assess the group dynamics of your class by noticing how students function within the group, the roles individual students take, and the way the group solves problems.

1. A "FAN" OF VALIDATION

In this activity students validate one another by sharing appreciative comments:

• Give each student a piece of paper.
• Have students make a fan by folding the paper back and forth into seven equal sections. Once fans are folded, have students write their names on the top section, unfold their fan, and pass it to a classmate.
• The classmate writes something he or she really appreciates about the student in the section immediately below the student’s name, folds the section under so the comment is hidden, and passes the fan to another student.
• Students pass the fans until each section has a positive statement. When completed, fans are returned to the student whose name is at the top.

As students read the statements from their classmates, they realize how many "fans" they have on their team!

2. T-E-A-M Cheer

Create a shared group identity and reinforce the importance of working together as a team by doing a class cheer:

• Have students stand in a circle or in lines.
• While shouting out the letters T-E-A-M, have them use their arms to spell the letters over their heads, similar to the YMCA cheer that was made popular by the Village People.
• Have students suggest music and/or lyrics to accompany the cheer.
• Do the cheer whenever your class spirit needs energizing.

Variation: Use this activity with groups of 4-5 students and have each group create a cheer using a different word that relates to a positive aspect of working as a team, such as S-U-C-C-E-S-S, S-U-P-P-O-R-T, or C-O-N-N-E-C-T. When finished, have groups teach their cheer to the rest of the class.

3. THE THREE-STEP INTERVIEW

By asking and responding to questions, students have an opportunity to get to know one another better. You may want to begin the year with general getting-to-know-you questions and then introduce more in-depth questions as the year progresses. The Three-Step Interview also works well to reinforce or review content.

Conduct a Three-Step interview:

• Prep: Give each student a list of questions and divide students into pairs.
• Step One: Partner A interviews Partner B by choosing several questions from the list you provided.
• Step Two: Once Partner A has responded to the questions, the roles are reversed and Partner B interviews Partner A by asking the same set of questions.
• Step Three: Partners A and B interview another pair of A and B partners by asking the same questions and sharing their responses.

Expand these one-on-one connections by repeating this activity with various types of questions throughout the year.

Source: The above activities are based on the PLS graduate course Building Communication and Teamwork in the Classroom™.

For additional TEAM-BUILDING ideas, see "Taking It Further" to the right.