Looking for an opening activity that's relevant to your content for your next technical training? Look no further! This is from SCORE for Technical Training released in January 2014.
Author: Adrianne Roggenbuck
Description: Participants with a hardware nut scramble to find partners with the matching bolt.
Objective: Participants find their “nuts and bolts” partner and share their learning expectations for the course.
Time: 10 minutes
Audience: Technical group with some background knowledge of the content
Group Size: Best suited for groups up to 30 people. Even numbers work best for partnering purposes.
Materials: Pairs of nuts and bolts, enough so each participant gets either one nut or one bolt
Process:
1. Before class, count out an equal number of nuts and bolts to equal the number of participants.
2. Give each person either a nut or a bolt as they come in after a break or at the start of the session. You may want to give all nuts to one table and all bolts to another to ensure that the participants will mix.
3. Instruct participants to individually think about what the “nuts and bolts” of today’s content might be.
4. Have them stand up and do a human scramble to find their “nuts and bolts” partner. Have them stand with their partner. Make sure every participant has only one partner.
5. Partners share what they think the “nuts and bolts” of the session will be for two minutes with each other.
6. Ask for volunteer “nuts” to share what their partnership discussed. Take as many volunteers as there are who have new or different information to share.
7. Thank the participants for sharing their expectations. Show them the agenda of topics for the session and indicate how their expectations do or do not line up.
Debrief: None
Variations: None
This book, SCORE for Technical Training, is now available at here.
