Who's In My Team?

This activity relies strongly on non-verbal communication skills, and is a good team building activity. It can be used to develop an understanding of organisation skills.

It is also a good activity to give your learners the opportunity to understand the importance of being inclusive. To do this you will need to be sensitive to how your learners may react if they are rejected, but it is a strong tool to encourage their response to be prevention of this happening when they come to lead.

How to play:

Ask the group if it's okay to invade their personal space as you wish to stick a small coloured dot on their forehead.

• Establish rules: no one can speak, point to a colour or look anywhere to see their reflection.
• Ask the group to close their eyes while you place one coloured dot on each forehead, for example if 20 participants use four blue, one yellow, five green, five red, five orange.
• Now ask the group to get in their teams based on the colour they have been allocated.
• You may wish to give the single colour to a dominant student, or you could choose two colours that have only one dot. Give them to students who may react differently to being singled out.

Debrief:

• What method did you adopt to organise yourselves?
• Did some members of the group take a leadership role early on? And if so, why?
• If you had to play this game again how would you do it quicker?
• How did the people feel that were on their own, and how could this happen when you lead an activity, especially if it involved grouping people into teams? How would you prevent this?

View a video clip of this activity being demonstrated.

Download a copy of Who's In My Team? to print out and use.