Today is "Team Building Tuesday" in my classroom for morning meeting. The activity they completed today involved the following:
I split the students into small groups of about 3-4 students. There has to be an even number of groups. After the students got into their small groups I told them their instructions. Each group was going to be assigned ANOTHER group in the room. They were to create a story using the group members from their assigned team as their characters. Example: Group A consisted of Student 1, 2, 3, and 4 Group B consisted of Student 5, 6, 7, and 8. Group A writes about students 5, 6, 7, and 8 and Group B writes about Student 1, 2, 3, and 4. They had the first 5-10 minutes to brainstorm character traits and strengths about the classmates they had been assigned as their characters. After that time they had about 15 minutes to create their stories.
Afterwards, we came together and the students voted to read each of the group's writings. They were HILARIOUS and very positive! The students gave a lot of positive feedback and even asked me to do it again in the future weeks.
Great way to incorporate writing into a team building activity!
Excerpts from their writing:
"Once upon a time there were three friends named Jacob, Emma, and Maegan. Jacob was funny, goofy, and creative. Maegan is intelligent, a great artist, and caring. Emma is a great softball player, she's smart and creative. One day they all met up at the jungle by their pet monkey named Mr. What'cha'ma'call it. When they got to the jungle Maegan said "Do you want to paint a picture of monkeys and bananas?" They hung the picture when they were done in a tree and started playing softball when WHACK! Emma hit the ball through the picture. Jacob quickly said "Uh oh girlfriend."
Their first instinct was the repaint the picture but they realized they were out of paint. Then Jacob started climbing the tree to Mr. What'cha'ma'call it and he was dining on bananas so he grabbed him and smaced him on the canvas. The next day when they went back to school they gave the picture to Ms. B and she said it looked like an elephant."
