There's No "I" in Team
/Last week, we started to learn more about teamwork, friendship, and explored the value of working in collaborative groups. We started to explore this more by describing what characteristics we look for in a team mate or friend. We then played a series of Would You Rather games, practicing our active listening skills while sharing our ideas with others. We also had fun making our own Would You Rather question cards to ask our peers. Another fun group activity we played was a game called Stand Up. In this activity students were paired up with one another and had to attempt to stand up, from a sitting position on the floor, while keeping their arms locked with their partner at all times. Although this sounds simple enough, we realized how much communication played an influential role in being successful!
We also participated in multiple teamwork challenges, where we were tasked with completing a series of small group building challenges where we were given limited supplies and time to complete the task. We first started by building paper chains and then tried to tackle building a bridge out of straws that could support 100 pennies in cup. Each student thoughtfully designed their own ideas about how best to complete the tasks individually and then were challenged to decide as a group how they were going to incorporate all their ideas into one. In both challenges, we also had an opportunity to discuss successes, struggles, and different strategies as a whole group after completing the challenge once. This really helped us think about how we would tackle the challenge a second time with a different group of peers.
In addition to these challenges, we also worked on various collaborative art projects. We decorated hands and connected them to one another to represent how working together is important, we used watercolors to paint strips of paper and wove them together to create a classroom work of art, and we braided friendship bracelets to trade with our friends in class. We had a lot of fun making these expressive art projects and it was exciting to see the finished product of something we had all contributed to.
To wrap up our exploration of teamwork and friendship, we went to the field house and played whole group team games, such as capture the flag, zombie tag, and variations of musical chairs. Through the various activities, we participated in this week we not only had a lot of fun, but we also spent a lot of time thinking about how important it is to be able to work both independently and together.
