Team
Building
Initiatives
17
Team building activities provide a great vehicle for enhancing communication, building trust, and fostering understanding within your students. Skilled facilitators of team building activities will guide students through a sequence of team challenges that focus on some very precise key goals.
As a facilitator, you will need to front-load each problem-solving initiative or trust exercise with a metaphor that students will have to keep in mind while taking part in the activity. Following the activity, you will then lead a discussion that relates the activity to what happens in your classroom or school environment. This “debrief” is what changes the program from recreational fun to a vehicle for creating change.
Front-loading and debriefing take a lot of practice in order to be very effective. Poorly led team-building activities may have very negative consequences on your classroom. As a result, you are invited to read more about it. You will find a link at the end of this article.
The sequence of team building activities should go like this:
- Icebreakers
- Getting to Know You Activities
- Problem-solving Initiatives
- Trust Builders
- Final Challenge