Beyond Breaking the Ice: Building a Team in the Classroom

THE GAME PLAN

• Why team building? What can it do for my students?
• Practice
• introduction, communication, and conflict resolution activities.
• Becoming the coach
• introducing, facilitating, and debriefing the activity.
• By the end of the session, you’ll be able to:
• introduce, facilitate, and debrief team building activities for students.
• Identify at least one team building activity to utilize in your classroom.

WHY TEAM BUILDING?

THE EXPLANATION

TEAMBUILDING

“High-performing teams usually exhibit an overall team purpose, mutual accountability, collective work products, shared leadership roles, high cohesiveness, collaboration, and collective assessment of their team’s success,” (Newstrom & Scannell, 1998).

• Organizations, co-workers, volunteer groups, research teams, student cohorts, and student work groups.
• Athletic teams and individual events, musicians, theatrical performers.
• Performance enhancement consultants
• often work with sport teams and individual athletes to enhance their game, but also work with anyone who wants to increase their performance!

WHAT CAN TEAM BUILDING DO FOR MY STUDENTS?

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• Team building activities can strengthen team cohesion and increase group communication, which leads to greater task performance (Eccles & Tran, 2012; Janssen, 2000; Newstrom & Scannell, 1998; Paradis & Martin, 2012).

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Team Building Benefits:

• Help students get to know each other in the classroom or within the cohort. *Not confined to classroom use only!
• Increase group communication: by implementing activities at the beginning of the course, or when student communication becomes limited or conflict arises.
• Increase group cohesion and familiarity, increase students sense of belonging. Can be used to craft group norms and rules.

LET’S BUILD A TEAM

INTRODUCTIONS

TEAM JUGGLE DRILL *IN PERSON ONLY

• The purpose: introducing students to one another, learning names.
• Instructions: ask your students to stand in a circle and have everyone say their name. To begin, you will hold a ball, make eye contact with another person in the circle, throw them the ball and say, “here you go _____”. They will say your name back to you, “thank you ______”. The person you threw the ball too will repeat the action with another person in the circle. This will repeat until there is an established pattern with everyone in the circle having a turn. Add in more balls, to increase difficulty.
• *Tip*- pick a soft ball (inflatable) that cannot damage the classroom or go outside. BE CONFIDENT! Students will find this awkward at first and grow comfortable as the rounds continue!
• Debriefing:
• How did you navigate catching and throwing the ball?
• What can we learn about communication from this game?

WHO AM I LIKE? *IN-PERSON AND ASYNCHRONOUS

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• The purpose: introducing students to one another, increasing group cohesion and communication.
• Instructions: Have students stand up. Ask students to form groups based on the category you call out. For example: “find everyone in the room who is in the same major as you.” “Find everyone in the room with the same favorite season.” Other: pets, favorite color.
• Asynchronous: create discussion boards with set categories (ex: favorite season) and have students “find” each other.
• Debriefing:
• How did you find other people with the same answer? What was difficult about this task? What was easy?
• What implications does this have for communication in the classroom?

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WHO AM I LIKE? *INVERTED

• When we’re in a synchronous online environment, this tricky! You can open breakout rooms on zoom and have students move between them to find the same groups.

OR:

Invert the activity!

Instructions: have students form groups, then ask them to create a list of everything they have in common. All students in the group must share the commonality. Examples: students at NMSU, same major, participating in a sport. Students will pick a team leader for the activity, who will share at least three of the commonalities with the rest of the class.

*Tip*- pair this with the next activity to have students share their team name/logo/slogan with their commonalities.

• Want to give your students a challenge?
• Provide restrictions: you cannot list anything that has to do with NMSU or being a student!

*This option also works well for in-person classes, student groups can work together at a table!

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WHAT’S OUR NAME? SLOGAN? LOGO?�*IN-PERSON, SYNCHRONOUS, ASYNCHRONOUS

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• The purpose: increasing group cohesion.
• Instructions: ask your students to create a group name, slogan/phrase, and logo. They only have four minutes to create all of these, so the pressure is on!
• Teams will present themselves to the entire class. Make sure students pick a team leader for the activity so they know who is presenting.

*Tips*: 1) Display these on a poster, whiteboard, or pinned note on Canvas as a reminder. 2) Set a timer

to ensure that only four minutes are allowed.

• Debriefing:
• How did your group select your name/logo/slogan?
• How do you now feel about your team? Successful? Satisfying?

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STUCK ON STICKERS �*ANY CLASS MODALITY

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• Create a visible sticker board or pinned announcement for your class using the team name/slogan/logo that groups made during the familiarity activity.
• Set up an incentive system that rewards groups with a sticker when they achieve a certain goal. This could be winning a game played in class, producing an innovative project topic, or anything that show progress!
• At the end of the semester, the team with the most stickers could win a prize (candy), extra credit points, or not have to an assessment.

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TEAM MAINTENANCE

COMMUNICATION AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION

DEFINING PEAK PERFORMANCE�*ALL MODALITIES

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• The purpose: (re)establishing group norms, conflict resolution.
• Instructions: Ask your groups/class to individually write down words, pictures, or phrases that show what it means to be performing well (peak) or not well (not peak) in their group. Then have them share with their group. Have groups discuss similarities and differences between the responses. Ask the groups how much control they have over their own performance, what can group mates do to help each other achieve peak performance?
• Debriefing:
• What are the common themes

that emerged?

• How do different people in your group

view peak performance?

• What can this group do to

facilitate peak performance?

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PLEASE PASS THE PROBLEMS �*ALL MODALITIES

• The purpose: conflict resolution: empathy building, problem solving.
• Instructions: Ask each student to think about and write down a problem they are currently facing regarding the class or in their groups. Collect the papers, shuffle them, and hand them back out. Students will write down advice or something encouraging and then pass the paper to the right. Repeat until all students have written something on all papers. Let students come back to collect their own papers.
• Debriefing:
• Did anyone discover novel solutions or find value in some of the suggestions?
• What lesson does this teach us about reaching out to others for their assistance?
• What lesson does this teach us about reaching out to others to help?

BECOMING THE COACH

INTRODUCING, FACILITATING, AND DEBRIEFING THE ACTIVITY

INTRODUCING THE ACTIVITY

• Provide clear and simple directions.
• Repeat directions!
• “What questions do you have?”
• Give students written instructions, worksheets, and other materials when needed.
• If the activity is timed, make sure to set a timer and when possible, make it visible!
• Cultivate buy-in.
• Know your activity and be ready to answer questions.
• Be as enthusiastic about these activities as you wish your students would be! If you see the value in these activities, so will your students.
• Have fun with it! Sometimes students need permission to enjoy these activities, if you’re excited, they’ll be excited.
• Consider your timing. Activities are best at the beginning and middle of the class.

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FACILITATING THE ACTIVITY

• Let them go!
• Working through difficulties is a part of the team-building process. Trust your students to engage in troubleshooting and making sense of the activity.
• Remove yourself from the activity as much as possible after you have introduced it.
• This is time for your students to build cohesion.
• It might be awkward at first, but students will open over time.
• Make the best of the situation!
• Sometimes things don’t work out at first, try again.
• Diagnose the situation. Why didn’t it work? Were students quiet?
• Didn’t buy-into the activity? Is there other conflict occurring?

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DEBRIEFING THE ACTIVITY

• Always allow for discussion at the end of each activity.
• Process the activity, make sure students understand the purpose and benefit of what they did. *Let them tell you what this is first.
• Ask students how they liked the activity.
• What was difficult? What was easy? Why was it difficult? Why was it easy? What was the purpose?
• The answers are always different, and students should be leading the discussion.
• Ask students to apply the activity to the classroom.
• What can we take from this, to apply to our upcoming group project?
• How does this relate to communication with one another in class?

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YOUR TURN!

1) Pick one of the team-building activities from this presentation and plan.

a) Which activity did you choose?

b) In which class could you implement this?

c) Why is this activity a good fit for your class?

2) Next, create at least three debriefing questions for the activity.

***Be ready to share with your group and brainstorm ideas!

REFERENCES

Eccles, D. W., & Tran, K.B. (2012). Getting them on the same page: Strategies for enhancing coordination and communication in sports teams. Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 3(1), 30-40.

Janssen, J. (2000). Peak performance playbook: 50 drills, activities, & ideas for team building and peak performance. Cary, NC: Winning The Mental Game.

Newstrom, J. W., & Scannell, E. E. (1998). The big book of team building games: quick, fun activities for building morale, communication and team spirit. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Paradis, K.F. (2012). Team building in sport: Linking theory and research to practical application. Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 3(3), 150-170.

Thank you for your participation.

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