With school just around the corner and new staff coming together in person, we understand how important a strong team is. We were curious to know what our users were planning on doing so we asked…here is what they said:
- “On our opening day I wanted something for my staff as a get-to-know you activity. We have a BUNCH of new folks starting this year. We decided to do a “speed dating” activity. Staff forms two concentric circles. I had this list of questions and the partners asked each other one question from the list I provided. Each partner had 15 seconds to talk. The inside circle rotated after 30 seconds. We did about 40 staff in just a few minutes!”
- “Break into teams of 3 or 4. Have brown paper bags and put 3-4 items in them. The whole team has to come up with a “commercial” about the school with the items in the bag. Everyone must speak.”
- “Ultimate Rock, Paper Scissors… the idea being, we cheer each other on and support one another through everything. Everyone pairs up to beginning, then the round one losing partner, becomes a member of the winner’s team and takes on another pair. The competitor continues to add everyone he/she defeats to his/her team. All supporters cheer for their contestant. In the end, you have 2 huge teams cheering and yelling for their participant. We did this at a PD session several summers ago and took it back to our own district. They loved it!!”
- “A to Z body search. Break them into teams and give them a sheet with all letters of the alphabet. They have to come up with something they have that begins with each letter. Rule is you can only use an item once and you must be happy willing to put it on the table. U is usually funny with underwear. Set the timer for 2 minutes and watch the laughs.”
- “I did a scavenger hunt for our teachers. I put them in teams and they ran around and had to solve the clues and send pics to prove they figured it out. We had 10 clues plus a bonus and it took like 30 minutes.”
- “We did Cover Your Cups-a cup flipping game- and we started with 8 teams and then had one grand champion team. It took about 20 minutes and the staff had a BLAST!”
- “We did Human scrabble and it was super fun, quick and easy. Everyone gets a 5×7 label (or whatever size). They don’t know what you are about to play. Put people in their group. Tell everyone to write a letter on their label. Then they pick one person on their team. This person gets another label and they write a vowel. Everyone puts a label on their front and one person also gets the additional vowel label on their back. Create as many words as you can in 3 minutes. You can have a score keeper for each time write down the words they spell.”
- “Team up with people wearing the same type of footwear, hair color, married or single. Find three things to share about that person. They must be three nouns or action verbs. Give 15 minutes. Allow each person to write their name on an index card. At the end of the 15 minutes. Randomly pull four names out of the bag or box. Great fun.”
