Three Activities from Down Under

At the 21st Annual Creative Training Techniques Conference, Marc Ratcliffe and Jason Ash, two Australian licensees of The Bob Pike Group, shared a number of CORE activities they developed. Here are just a few of the closers, openers, revisiters and energizers that were shared in their breakout session. You can use the activities to inject a little fun and engagement into your lessons, which will boost retention.

180 Degree Review: Closer

Purpose: This activity is to be used as a closer, as it helps participants create an action plan.

Activity Length: 3 minutes (180 seconds)

Instructions:

• Once you near the end of your session, ask participants to take 3 minutes (180 seconds) to look back at the course and highlight anything they can adopt, adapt or apply to their content.
• After the 3 minutes, ask participants to share their plans with the class. This will help them find new ways to apply the material you taught.

Make a Meal: Opener/Energizer

Purpose: This activity breaks participants’ preoccupations at the start of the training session or after breaks. It also allows participants to network with each other and get comfortable in their learning environment, which increases retention. The opener works well for putting a process in order, categorizing brands or models, or teaching languages.

Activity Length: 5-10 Minutes

Materials: You’ll need pieces of paper with a word printed on each of them: for example, the name of a spice, food or condiment.

Prep: Print a paper with the name of foods on them such as: carrots, lettuce, spinach, ham, chicken, fried rice, pepper, salt, olive oil, Italian seasoning, etc. Then cut out each word from the paper. When you’re done, you should have several strips of paper with only one word printed on them. Place a stack of the paper strips on each table and make sure you have enough for each participant.

Instructions:

• Tell your participants to take a strip from the stack of papers you left at their tables.

• Ask participants to leave their seats and group together with others to make a fictional meal from the names of the foods on their slips. If you want the groups to be even numbered, put a restriction on the number of food items per group. Remember to instruct your participants to make a meal that makes sense. For example, spinach, lettuce and salad dressing could make a meal, but not pepper, salt and Italian seasoning.
• Once the participants have formed their groups, have them share the fictional meals they created with the class.
• After the participants shared, tell them to get together with their new group members. The new group can then be used for future classroom activities.

Variations: This activity can be used as an energizer or revisiter to get groups of participants to order steps in a process. It can also be used as an energizer or revisiter to get groups of participants to categorize different brands and models that belong in the same group.

Review Roulette: Revisiter

Purpose: This activity is to be used as a revisiter. It’s also an easy way to have a quiz made for you.

Activity length: 10-15 minutes

Materials: Paper, pen and a basket or hat

Instructions:

• Before you dismiss your participants for a break, have them write down a question based on what they learned in your session so far. Be sure to instruct your participants to formulate a question that has a clear and specific answer—if the answer would take several paragraphs to spell out, then it’s not specific enough.
• Ask participants to fold their slips of paper in half and hand them to you.
• Collect the questions your participants wrote before you dismiss them for a break.
• Place the questions in a basket or hat and mix them up.
• Divide your class into two groups or teams. Then announce to the classroom that you’re going to play a game of review roulette and explain the rules.
  • You will walk around the room to each person, and the participant will draw a question from the basket or hat.
  • That person’s team will then have to answer the question they draw.
  • For each question the team gets right, give them a point.
  • If the team gets the question wrong, the other team gets the chance to answer the question and steal the other team’s point.

• Alternate questions between the two teams until there are no more questions remaining.

The next Creative Training Techniques Conference will take place on September 30 through October 2, 2015. To learn more about this event, click here.

Additional CORE activities can be found in Ratcliffe's books Trainer's Cook Book, Trainer's Toolkit, and SCORE 3.

By Jordan Meyers