The Human Knot: Team Building Exercise

Team work is always a good thing to teach your students, and the Human Knot is the perfect way to get the point across. Another good thing about this activity, from an ESL perspective, is that it is also great for teaching your students prepositions. Students will link hands (in a special way) to form a human knot, which they then will have to discuss, twist and contort their way out of, without breaking any links.

Objective: To teach the students to work as a team to make and then untangle a human knot. They will do this by conversing what they want to do in English using  prepositions.

Keywords: Over, under, into, out, through, around, across. 

Starter: Begin the class by showing the students the prepositions. A good way to explain these is by using a stool as a prop to demonstrate the above keywords. Step OVER the stool, hold the stool above your head "I am UNDER the stool, Put your arm THROUGH the legs section of the stool etc. Continue to teach and drill the students like this for 5-10 minutes.

Activity: Just before starting the activity, call 5 students to come up and stand in a circle with you, you will need them to listen and then help you to show what to do to the rest of the class. 6 people stand in a circle and they must now link hands but before they do you need to explain the rules to be followed to make this work. If they don't follow the rules they will get two circles or a knot that can't be untied.

Rules To Form The Human Knot:

• The knots can be formed with groups of 6, 8 or 10 people. 6 being easy, 8 -  medium difficulty and 10 people -  very difficult.


• You can't link hands with the person next to you.


• You can't  link both hands with the same person.


• You must start the knot by first connecting right hands and second connecting left hands. If one right hand holds someones left hand...it's not going to work. So get every one in the circle to first put their right hands in and once they are joined, then put their left hands in.

Once the knot has been formed, students need to start to discuss what they need to do to get out of this tie. For example, Joe might say "Bill go under my hand, and Lisa go over here. The students can lift their arms high for students to walk under or all squat low to the floor so students can climb over. It is important not to break hands and rejoin them in an unfair way, but make sure the students know they can re-arrange their grips so as not to twist and hurt their wrists, shoulders etc.

Extra Notes:

• Make sure the students start in groups of 6. This is the easiest knot to get out of. Once they have completed that move on to a group of 8 which is a lot more challenging. If they can get out of the 8 people knot, try a group of 10. A knot consisting of 10 people is really very difficult to escape from, but it can be done.


• Emphasize to the students to take care and be careful not to hurt themselves or others.


• If you find you have some time to spare, you can run some time trial competitions or have some races between the groups to see who is the quickest or can finish first for 6, 8 and 10 person knots.


• You really have to check that the students use as much English as they can, in all the excitement it's easy for them to revert to only using the native language if left unchecked.


• Another great exercise to finish up the class with is to assign one student to each group who will verbally direct them (as an onlooker) on how to untie their knot.

woodleywonderworks via Compfight cc">Photo by woodleywonderworks, cc">some rights reserved.

The Sofa Game: How To Play Name Calling Fun

If you're looking to liven your class up a little, add some laughs and generally have a good time, the couch game is a good way to go. I know what it's like searching for activities that will actually work...In five years I have come across so many lesson plans and activities that you can easily see from the get go... are just not gonna stand up in class...or...You try, and you fry! I am determined to keep the contents that I put up on this site, as pure lesson winners. I'm not going to fill it with lessons that can only go half the distance. This next lesson certainly fills a 45 minute class period with mega fun...Your students will love you!

The Sofa Game also known as The Couch Game, ranks within my top 5 list. Whilst it's not as "English filled" as a lesson such as Wanna Buy A Duck, it makes the kids concentrate, listen and speak. It is also funny and will give them a good laugh.

General Idea - The main idea is to get the kids all sitting in a circle (boy, girl, boy girl) with four chairs at the head of the circle specially marked as the sofa.
Because the students are sitting in a boy, girl formation around the circle... "the sofa" will be occupied by two girls and two boys. The aim of the game is for the girls to totally occupy the sofa with four girls, and of course the aim of the game for the boys, is to occupy the sofa with four boys. Let's take a look how this will happen.

UPDATE : I have now designed a Sofa Game Activity Pack. Everything you need including more detailed instructions and tactical plans, name cards, Sofa Marker PDF and Seating Plan PDF.

The Sofa Game: Set Up and Play

1. Put all of your chairs in a large circle and get the students to sit around on the chairs in a boy, girl formation. The one chair immediately to the left of the sofa should be vacant...but every other chair should have a student sitting on it. To successfully play the couch game, you will probably need at least 20 students to make this game worthwhile.


2. Get the students to write their English names on paper. (Name Cards available in Activity Pack)


3. Collect names in container


4. Get each student to put their hand in like a lucky dip and draw out someones name.


5. BIG NOTE: Make sure that the students don't show or tell anyone what name they have...in China, this is very hard thing to stop the student's doing, but after a couple of rounds they start to realise that this game works better when they learn to keep quiet about their new persona.


6. Now the students have to pretend that they are the person whose name they have pulled out of the container. Play starts with the person sitting to the left of the empty chair, calling out a classmates name.


7. The student who is holding that name in their hand (on the paper) must stand up and walk to the empty chair. This often causes many laughs when a boy has inadvertently picked out a girls name... and a big, tall and beefy looking Mary, stands up and wanders across to sit in their new position.


8. Now the vacant chair is in another spot...yes? so the person sitting on the left of the new vacant chair calls another name and the new "whoever" moves over next to them.


9. The trick is for the students to try to remember who has who's name. The girls want four girls to move onto the sofa... even if one of the girls now has a boys name, and of course the same goes for the boys.

Obviously the team that wins will be the team that can fill the couch with either girls or boys. My classes love to do girl vs boy games! Competition is fierce.

The Couch Game Resources

• small strips of paper


• container to put all the names into


• something you can use to mark the four chairs that will be "the couch".

OR GO THE EASY WAY WITH THE SOFA GAME ACTIVITY PACK

The Couch Game Lesson Notes

• The hardest thing is not getting the students to cheat or give away their identity. You must stop the kids from calling out or mouthing their new names in their excitement and want to win.


• The next most difficult thing is of course the explanation.  As always, with activities like this one, I find it is best to get it all set up and for the first round, describe and show as you go. The student's catch on pretty quickly when they see how competitive and fun the activity is. When I first gathered enough courage to try this activity (I was scared about how to explain) I just couldn't get over how well and easily it all fell together.

The Cup Game Lesson Plan: Teaching Rhythm

 The Cup Game: The Cup Rhythm makes a great rhythmical music lesson. Sounds great and looks cool.
BIG NEWS - ALL NEW CUP GAME 2 is now available. A new hip rhythm with flips and slides, new play-alongs and heaps more.To read my post and see video's and information, click here. 
Having studied at the Conservatorium of Music in Australia (and being a drum teacher back home) means that I like to incorporate some music into my classes every now and again. Song lessons have never been particularly easy to pull off for me (even as a music teacher). Chinese kids are shy and don't always want to perform. Add to that the fact that you can never please everyone, with half the kids not liking the song... not singing or taking part...I rarely do songs.
Drums or more specifically rhythms however, are a different story. With clapping games being popular at schools here and all over the world, students really love The Cup Game lesson. 

A class of of 60 students getting into the groove to one of the tunes in the cup game lesson activity pack :-)

In this post I have included  the lesson plan I follow when teaching this... However the easiest and most fun way to run this activity is with the interactive PPT . It has step by step video instructions, a metronome feature to practice each step in time and two original tunes that I designed especially as "play alongs for this rhythm. Check out this video to see it in action.

If however you wish to proceed with a cup, some students and yourself...(as I did for many years)I've detailed some instructions here.

Title: The Cup Game Rhythm Lesson 

 Keywords:: Clap, Tap, Move Over, Pick Up, Put Down, Exchange, Over, Hand, rhythm, beat, cup

Objective: To be able to say the new words, learn about what a rhythm is and how to go about playing one.

Starter: Explain what a beat in music is and how we can also call it a rhythm. Rhythms and beats are played on drums. Demonstrate with the hand drum and let some kids try.
Next, show them how we can play beats on anything and that today they will learn how to play a beat with cups called the cup game. Demonstrate what it will look and sound like and then hand out a cup to each student .

Note: Students must either have desks for this lesson or sit in circles on the floor. If you are teaching in China...getting the kids to sit on the floor is not likely to happen.


Activity: Go through the beat and actions with words slowly... section by section, first demonstrating and then getting the kids to try. Make sure you do it section by section and slowly tie each section together.

Note:Prior to developing The Cup Game ppt,  I incorporated explaining rhythm and beat by playing my djembe drum. If you can also play a hand drum...it's a great way to start the lesson, however...it's really not needed. If you want to get a basic grounding on playing a hand drum you can look at Life Is Rhythm: Beat A Drum For Health where I run through basic hand drum techniques and benefits of drumming. It may give you some more ideas to add to the cup game class.

The Cup Game Rhythm

This is the chant I teach the kids. I have heard slight variations on the words used, however, I find this chant works well.

Clap clap, tap tap tap, clap move over, clap pick up...down, change over hand.

Get the kids to practice by themselves. Next,show them how they can play in a group passing the cups around the table and keeping the beat even (like in the group video below)

Extra Stuff: Show them a couple of extra stacking the cups whilst playing the cup game beat tricks...for example setting 5 cups up in a row and starting from left moving to the right, play the cup game rhythm and as you "exchange over hand" at the end, put the cup on top of the next cup in the line, so at the end, you will have your 5 cups in a stack..

You can also get them to play all together resulting in one big class beat... Be inventive.

Resources:

• You will need one plastic or paper cup for each student and desks for them to play on. My findings with the cups are that the paper ones sound better, and if you can find some fairly sturdy ones, they also last longer...the plastic ones seem to split down the sides fairly easily. I teach over 600 students, and I find I need 1 pack of 100 cups to safely get me through a week. Packs of cups are not expensive, so you can also buy enough to double up. Give each student two cups for double the strength.


• Djembe drum for rhythms introduction

Reminder: During the cup game lesson, we must remember to remind the students - don't hit the cups too hard, they will break.

Standards:The standards we will fulfil during this lesson are: learning new vocabulary, team building, playing rhythms.

If you're feeling really inspired, see if you can get them to do it in time with some music like in The Cup Game PPT

ENJOY!
BIG NEWS - ALL NEW CUP GAME 2 is now available. A new hip rhythm with flips and slides, new play-alongs and heaps more.To read my post and see video's and information, click here. 

Name Game - Slap Slap Clap Clap

Slap slap clap clap is a perfect name game and icebreaker activity, helping to learn and remember names whilst getting the students to speak loudly and have fun in the process. It can also be used in a lesson about rhythm. I have used this successfully with 11-15 year olds but I think any age would happily complete this lesson (except maybe extremely young children who just haven't got the coordination skills required).

How To Play The Clapping Name Game

https://youtu.be/gLqMKUtVb3Q?list=PLP_xsoFOetKhtZuNI_Lda5ADrThcr1ujh Click here to see game in action.
1. Start by seating your students in a circle, try not to make the circle too big as the students need to hear each other to successfully participate, so get them to sit close together.


2. Ask if they know the meanings of the two words slap and clap, explain and show them the difference by clapping your hands and slapping your thighs. Now tell them that we are going to play a rhythm or a beat, like they hear when listening music. Demonstrate the beat  slap, slap (slap your thighs twice) and clap, clap (clap your hands twice). For those of you with music training, it is just a straight 4/4 beat, and you need to make sure the students stay in time. Count them in nice and slow to start.... 1234 slap(1) slap(2)clap(3)clap(4)


3. This is where the name game aspect kicks in. Once the very easy rhythm is sorted, explain that the first two times they clap their hands they must say their own English name, demonstrate and then get them to join in... Then tell them on the second time they clap, clap their hands they must say a classmates name... Again demonstrate and get them to follow.


4. Now get the class to be quite and explain that we will all slap, slap, clap, clap,  but say nothing and listen for your name. As the teacher you start... slap, slap, clap, clap(your name) slap, slap, clap, clap (students name). When that student hears their name they must now slap, slap, clap, clap(their name) slap, slap, clap, clap( another students name) and so on and so on.

NOTE : make sure the students keep the continual rhythm, any hesitation is OUT.

-Other ways to get out
If your name is called and you don't continue the name chant.
If you forget to say your name and straight away say another students name instead.
If you say a students name who is already out
If you go out of rhythm( I'm very tough on this particular one).

It all sounds a little confusing, but it's very easy, takes no prep, gets students familiar with others names, gets them vocal and makes them laugh. This is an excellent name game that is made even more fun by incorporating music and rhythm. If you're class is great at this, you could try and find and instrumental piece of music that they can play the name game along with, making them stay in time.
Watch the video and see for yourself how the basic name game chant is played.