Engaging Team-Building Activities for Your Physed Program

What's up Friends of PE Nation!
What if your classroom could be transformed into a thriving community of teamwork and mutual respect from day one? Join me on this episode where we uncover a treasure trove of team-building activities that promise to bring your students closer together. From the ice-breaking fun of group juggling where students not only learn each other's names but also share personal favorites, to the strategic excitement of "The Floor is Lava" and its superhero twist, "Avengers," there's something for everyone. Get ready to boost camaraderie and cultivate leadership skills through engaging exercises like the "Four Corner Questions" game that encourages personal sharing, helping students build deeper connections. Tune in and get inspired for your students!

Take care,

Dave

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Chapters

• 0:11 Team Building Activities for Students
• 9:03 Interactive Team Building Activities for Students
• 18:53 PE Nation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:11

Hello and welcome to the Super Size Fizz Ed podcast. My name is Dave, and today I want to talk about team building activities that you can do, especially in the beginning of the year, to get to know your students a little better and for them to get to know each other better. So, without further ado, here we go. Welcome back, pe Nation. So, again, thank you for tuning in today and thank you for the guys and girls that have been followers of the show for a long time and have been part of the group. What is your favorite concert you've been to and things about concerts and your favorite concerts and what type of music you listen to. And so Tiffany wrote that she went to five concerts from Prince, or went to five Prince concerts, and he has the soundtrack of my life. I love that. That is awesome. I feel that way about a lot of different performers. Now, if you haven't signed up for our newsletter, please do so. It is in the episode notes of every episode, and I'd love to have you be a part of it. I usually have a cool thing I'm listening to definitely a PE thing to help you and other documentaries. I've been enjoying Things that can be part of the PE experience, though I always try to put a PE spin on things. So definitely sign up at the end if you would like to do that. I'd love to have you be a part of it.

Speaker 1: 1:58

Now on to our main topic of the day, which is team building activities. Our main topic of the day, which is team building activities. So in the beginning of every school year I try to get camaraderie going and establish team building activities, the culture of working together and getting to know each other, and that's what these activities, I think do. They foster teamwork. You get to learn their names and they get to learn each other's names, which is great. You get to work together towards a common goal. The students get to strategize. You can see leaders form, by the way. You can see leaders kind of take over, and usually in a good way, but sometimes you have to rein that in a little bit. They get to solve problems together and they also learn how to resolve conflicts, and I think it's really important we talk about all that ahead of time and then we do these activities, which I really think add to what we're trying to accomplish here. So I'm going to give you five really cool team building activities that you could do with your class, especially the beginning of school year, but really any time of year, and so I will make this a boomer today. Yes, a boomer, let's why, why not? Let's just do it.

Speaker 1: 3:06

So, number one here we go, all right. Number one is group juggling. Now, I've posted about this before. I even reposted a an older podcast I did on this. This is an awesome way to get to know each other and for the students to work together. This is an awesome way to get to know each other and for the students to work together. They get to learn each other's names, their favorite things. That could even end up becoming a different game, like defend the pin. You could add dice, you could add a hoop pass, and I even posted a thing called Magic 11. So let me talk about all these things as we go.

Speaker 1: 3:40

Okay, so first you put them in groups of five or six. Five is the best because when they juggle a ball, they have to not really juggle it like a circus clown or something like that, but it's juggling with a ball passed to somebody not next to you, in a star pattern. So they have to make a pattern and if they keep that pattern going the whole time. Not only that, they have to call each other's names out. So if I start with the ball, I'll ask the person their name. If I don't know it, and I'll say you know Jim, and I'll pass to him underhand like a soft ball, like a gator skin ball or a yarn ball, and then Jim will pass to Savannah and then Savannah will pass to somebody and somebody back to me. So that's a star pattern we do the whole time and it really gets kids knowing names really fast. And while they're doing that, I tell them they have to do it without dropping it, and if they drop it it's okay. But I want to see how many times they can get it around without dropping it. It's got to be underhand because I see a lot of kids throwing overhand and it gets. It gets kind of crazy. So they learn each other's names. They keep passing a pattern a few times. Then I'll give them topics to ask, like what's your favorite ice cream and favorite movie and favorite color, favorite animal, whatever. So as they pass they have to say the person's name and ask them their favorite color. So it slows it down, but they get to know each other's, I guess, passions and likes and dislikes, kind of in that regard. All right From there I can freeze the action after a few minutes and then I let them add a ball or another object, like a chicken. They love the chickens, so they pass.

Speaker 1: 5:21

Let's say again I'm passing a gem, or Jimmy, I pass him a ball. I say Jimmy, I pass him a ball. I say Jimmy, I pass him a ball and he throws the ball to Savannah. Then I throw him a check and I say Jimmy, and he throws to Savannah and we see how many times we can get to go around without dropping it. So that's juggling, that's group juggling. And then I tell them, if they can get around three times without stopping, they can add another object, which is really cool.

Speaker 1: 5:42

I had a few groups who really really well with three objects, which is very difficult and one group actually got four objects going at a time and I put that on my Instagram. I could even link that up in here somewhere, so it was really cool. It was really cool. So there's five people and they got four objects going at the same time. It was awesome and it was a lot of fun to watch because they really worked together. They had to call each other's names every time. They had to go Jimmy, jimmy, jimmy, jimmy, and he'd go Savannah, savannah, savannah, savannah, and then she had to keep going and that kind of thing. So four objects I had never seen before. It was awesome. It was really fun to watch.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Now, after that, you can add dice to it. They had to roll a certain number, they had to keep rolling and they had to jog in place until they rolled the number kind of thing. We did a hoop pass where they had to get the hoop all the way around by holding hands or holding wrists. We did the Magic 11, which is—oh, it's hard to explain Again. I put this on my Instagram and, I think, on Twitter and Facebook PE Central I put it on there where they had to go one, two, three, 11, and they put out their fingers, zero through five, and make the number 11 somehow without talking to each other, and it's kind of hard to do, but it was done and I even had it recorded that it was done. But one of my groups that did a really good job.

Speaker 1: 7:01

That is group juggling. There's a lot of things you could do to that and you can even add defend the pin to it. You can add a pin and have one person defend another person. Have a, a ball. They had to throw around a gator skin ball, uh, to the open person and they had to try to knock the pin down and then switch. Or you had to pass to a person in the hoop, which is another thing. Like they had passed to, like an open pass to a person. They had to catch it and then they would switch. So all these things don't not only help each other, help them learn their names, but they also could go on to be like invasion game strategies, that kind of thing. So, uh yeah, group juggle is an awesome thing to do with your students. So that is number one. All right. Number two is the Floor is Lava. So this is a simple one. I'm sure a lot of you played this already. It can be called different names, like Cross the River.

Speaker 1: 7:52

I have another addition to it in a moment that I'll talk about, but in general it is the students get are still in groups of five or six or whatever you need. It could be a little more. I like to keep them even and give them a certain number of hoops, that is, at least two less than the number of people in the group. So if there's five in a group I give them three hula hoops, but I usually make them a little bigger because I have to work even harder together. So let's say even six or seven in a group and I'll give them four hoops and that really makes them talk and work together. So basically they have to get across the entire basketball court and I say that's the lava kind of thing and they can only use the hoops. They can't move the hoops. I mean they can throw them down, but they have to work together to get across using only the hoops. And the person in the back obviously they have to figure this out, but they have to the person in the back is just important as a person in front because they have to lift that hoop off the ground, pass it to the front and get it, put it down and keep going. So I've seen slow and steady win the race quite a bit, or more like medium and steady. I would say Medium and steady definitely wins the race.

Speaker 1: 9:03

I've seen students not work together at all very well, but I've seen some groups work really well together and I always try to reward. That at the end will get. Uh well, we call it bear paws, which is a little uh piece of paper with a thing, a bear paw that they can, you know, use to buy things or whatever. In the classroom I might also have them roll the dice. We do that at the end of class for group points, team points, so it's it's worth it to them. They want to work together. Um, leaders definitely form, and people, um, you could see who doesn't work well at all with groups and you can see who works really well. And, yeah, I think it's a great game though, to get to know each other and for them to have to talk, because a lot of kids are missing that socialization piece, especially from COVID. We just didn't have it, obviously, and it's been hard the last couple of years with that. So the Floor is Lava is a great game for like first week or two of school. It's really awesome. I love it, the kids love it and it is number two. All right, I'm going to call this 2.5. It goes along with the Floor is is lava, but I call it Avengers, and that's especially back when Avengers was the hit movie, or hit movies.

Speaker 1: 10:25

I put tennis balls all over the basketball court, or, in my case of my former school, the pavilion which is really big, and I put out like the rail yard obstacle course or some kind of barriers. Now you don't have to do that, you could just put tennis balls everywhere and especially if you have different colors, I call them infinity stones, and they had to work together to get as many as they could by using those hula hoops or other objects. Sometimes I gave them, uh, like a jump rope that they could kind of balance on like a like a tight rope. They can use things like that, just different equipment and they had to go pick up the Infinity Stones. Now you could make that anything you want. You could call that Gold Rush, which I've done before, and just that could be gold, and they had to pick it up and bring it back to their hoops or their buckets. So that's kind of 2.5. I guess floor is lava plus tennis balls and things like that could be Avengers. So that's number 2.5. Like that could be Avengers. So that's number two. Point five All right.

Speaker 1: 11:24

Number three is actually called Four Corner Questions. So everybody knows the game Four Corners and you can actually play that game if you want with the kids as you're doing this. I don't eliminate students in this game, I just have them do exercises or things like that. But I also make a game called four corner questions where I will ask a question and it has to be a number and they have to go to that corner. So let's say the, uh, I'll ask about how many siblings you have, and the first corner will be zero, and then the second corner will be one, third corner will be two, and then the fourth corner will be like three or more, and then they could get a question after they go to that corner. Or they can just talk for a moment about hey, who's your sibling, who's your brother or sister or cousin. They can talk for a little bit and then they can. But then I might pose a question to them about something totally different that we're working on. It could also be number of pets in your house or just anything with numbers. I guess.

Speaker 1: 12:20

What do you consider your skill level is at, like soccer, are you a one, two, three or four? You know beginners. One four? Is you play travel soccer kind of thing? Or jump rope skills, things like that, hula hooping skills? I'm a one, by the way, in hula hooping skills I might be a zero but jump roping I'm like a two or three, I guess I'm a three, not a four, but it gets kids talking and you know, maybe forming some bonds and even talking about hey, I'm a three and you know jump rope as well. What can you do or what you know? Maybe they can help each other kind of thing. So that is called four corner questions and the kids really enjoy that. That is number three. All right, I wasn't going to do this, but I'm going to do another 3.5.

Speaker 1: 13:08

And that is just forming groups of, I'll say, groups of four, and kids have to get in groups of four or groups of two. I'll even roll a dice sometimes, and so they don't even know what I'm going to do and I don't even know what the answer is going to be. It might be groups of one. That's a stand by themselves, but then I'll give them a question and if they can't form a group, they put their hands in the air or they call people over and as soon as they have the group they sit down. So if it's a group of like four and they have three people already, they put one finger in the air to try to get somebody to come with them. Now, there's always some kids that don't want to go, or they're like nobody wants to be my friend, or well, I have them. Have a spot for students. Okay, if you don't have a partner, come to this spot right here, and then I help them pair up with them, or we, the paras, or if just me, we'll put them in a certain group, like, oh, they need a partner over there, ahead, go ahead. And then I'll ask them questions as they sit down. So that is 3.5. It is called groups of Okay. Number four is this or that.

Speaker 1: 14:06

Now we've seen a lot of this or that online lately, even on YouTube. Would you want this or that? Would you rather this, rather that? So they move to a color or a hoop or a corner if they vote on something, or that's what they like better. So what I did the first week of school is I had students I think I had two classes at a time. I had them stand on one line one class and then a couple rows later or after, or in between them was another class, and I said, okay, move to the middle If you like this or, and then they would or would not, or if you like that, now you could do other things like this or that football or baseball, and they'd go to one side or the other. You know beach or pool, dog or cats um, you know things like that where they vote on an NBA or NFL, nfl. Um, you know certain games, certain colors, certain whatever you like this animal better than this animal? Just to get to know each other, and they can even give each other high fives. Uh, if they move to the middle, that's what I had them do like okay, go to the middle if you have a sibling, and then they give somebody a high five and walk back. It's just, it's getting them moving but also getting them kind of knowing each other a little bit, or at least against some common interests, some common ground. So that is called this or that and it's number four. All right, number five. I love number five.

Speaker 1: 15:33

I have not done it in a couple of years but I want to try it again. It's called Woosh Ball and I got that from the Ultimate Camp Resource on YouTube. They have a lot of cool games made for campers, like summer camps, but this game is so cool so I'll go into part of it. It's hard to explain, but I do have a video on my YouTube channel of a really good explanation of it that my students did. I mean, this is good seven or eight years ago, but it was really good.

Speaker 1: 16:01

So in Woosh Ball you get a pretend ball. So somebody starts with a pretend ball and you are passing that pretend ball around in your group. So again, let's say it's five or six people and it's just funny to watch You'll see the person pretend to have a ball and they'll say whoosh and they'll pass to the next person and they have to go whoosh, whoosh, whoosh all the way around to the beginning and then I'll just tell them okay, then go whoosh, or then go whoa, and if you say whoa, you put your hand out like whoa and then have to go back the other way. Okay, so that's the first two I give them is whoosh and whoa. Then after that they can get a different. I give them different things, like a zap, where they can zap it across and point at somebody and the ball goes to them. Again, it's an imaginary ball, it's just funny to watch and then it goes. So I've got whoosh, whoa, zap. Uh, there's boing where they have to jump up and down. They can call out different things where they some of the kids just make this up, make things up and you could, you could tell what uh.

Speaker 1: 16:59

Around the year this was, my one group made a dab, so that was definitely a few years ago. They'd the girl, the girl or boy would have it would say dab, and everybody have to dab. Uh, one kid said conga lion, and they all get in conga lion and start. It was just funny. So, um, I got them to do uh, or if they, if it's another one, was freak out. So if they said freak out, they had to go and they had to run. Um, they just do a different order. They had to get different orders in the group in the circle. So, um, you got to check that out. Though it's again, it's ultimate camp resource. Um, it's called whoosh ball. It's also on my channel, which is coach carney 99. It's fun though, and the kids like it. I just I haven't done in a few years, but I definitely have to bring that back.

Speaker 1: 17:40

And now it is time for your cowbell tip of the day. And now it is time for your cowbell tip of the day. All right, everybody. So your tip of the day is to grab a copy of my group juggle PDF for free. I only ask that you sign up for the newsletter with that free PDF. Now, if you're already a member, you've already signed up for the newsletter. This is absolutely free, no obligation necessary. So definitely grab that. It explains group juggle much better than I did probably now and it gives you more of a visual. But again, you can also go on my YouTube channel. If you don't want to do that, that's okay. Group juggle is on my YouTube channel. It's Coach Carney 99. And it's also where Wooshball is and Avengers and some of the other games. So definitely check that out. So that is your homework. That is your Cowboy Tip of the Day. Sign up for the newsletter, get my Group Juggle. I will put that in the show notes and that is your Cowbell tip of the day.

Speaker 1: 18:53

Thank you everybody for tuning in. I really do appreciate it. As always, go to supersize phys edcom for more information or, like I said, sign up for the newsletter and you'll get some cool new games, new things. I'm talking about I learning about that. I wanted to share with you, um, some different people to follow some different, um, cool things online different documentaries, books, all sorts of stuff. So have a great day, week, weekend, whenever you're listening to this PE nation. You guys and girls are awesome. Let's keep pushing our profession forward. Thank you.