Okay, so you’re faced with a new day of teaching or another team practice. Your kids are a bit sleepy. Maybe not sleepy… just less energetic than you had hoped they’d be today. Well, can you blame them? The honeymoon of the first week or two of school is over. Reality is setting in that summer break is over. School happens every day. Practices happen every day now too or at least very often. The grind for kids is very real.
So, what can you do about it? Wake them up with a spark of inspiration!
Give them a verbal team task to solve. Get their creative juices flowing with a question that won’t stress them out. With no right or wrong answers, it will be easy for them to engage. Besides the kids will love hearing each other’s (often!) hilarious and entertaining answers.
It’s easy to do.
All you have to do is gather the kids in a circle, set a timer, and fire one question at them. Encourage them to answer as creatively and quickly as possible. While they answer, you keep a tally. Assign one point for a common response and five points for a creative response. You determine which is which. I always suggest offering bonus points too if the group shows incredible teamwork and encouragement. This is a team activity after all! Then, when time is up, add up their score—and celebrate whatever number they get as a class or team.
To really get your kids motivated to think up creative responses, do this challenge once a day or once a week. See if they can beat their previous score!
Verbal Team Tasks 1-10 were uploaded to the site last month. Today, I’m giving you ten more. I scoured the usual places online so you don’t have to and I also came up with a few of my own. The result is a solid batch of quick-thinking challenges that will help your kids to be creative while learning to be confident when sharing their ideas. But best of all, they’ll encourage your team or class to cheer for each other in their quest to get a higher team score.
So, are you ready for ten sparks of inspiration you can give your class or team?
Okay, here you go! FYI, number 18 is my favorite. 🙂
Click on the Spontaneous Tasks tab above to download this document and many others. Have fun & good luck! I hope they get your kids fired up. Thank you so much for reading. I think you know by now how much I appreciate it.
Until next time, keep on building your best—and most inspired team!
