Icebreaker 2 - Picture Perfect
Design Pattern Tags :
Icebreaker 2 - Picture Perfect December 2015
The Picture Perfect icebreaker involves students communicating non-verbally through words (sentences) and pictures in an effort to effectively communicate information to a number of people.
Rationale The activity provides an opportunity for students to get to know one another. It also helps students understand how they will sometimes need to work together during the course to address issues and solve problems.
Learners/Context Suitable for large groups of students in a face-to-face environment in the first week of the semester.
Alignment Establishes the premise that students will at times be required to work together to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes throughout the course.
Instructions/Processes This activity is similar to a written and illustrated version of ‘Pass the message’ or ‘Messenger Game’’:
Provide each student with a piece of A3 paper.
Advise students that there is to be no talking during this activity. This is a non-verbal activity that relies purely on written and illustrated communication.
Students have only one minute per sentence-picture round before they need to pass on their piece of paper.
Have each student write a sentence at the topic of their piece of paper - the sentence can be whatever the student likes; it doesn’t even need to make sense, e.g. ‘The owl hoots twice at midnight’.
The student then passes the paper to the person seated to the right of them. This person then draws a picture that illustrates the sentence and folds the paper so that the sentence can no longer be seen, but the picture they have drawn remains visible.
The student then passes their picture to another student who writes a sentence about what they think the picture illustrates.
Then this third student folds the paper so the picture can no longer be seen, but their sentence (and only their sentence) remains visible. They then pass their sentence on to another student who then draws a picture about what they think the picture illustrates.
The sentence-picture-sentence process can be repeated a pre-determined number of times (e.g. 4 sentences and 3 pictures). Make sure that you end the activity with a sentence, not a picture.
Have each student group join with another group to share the sentences and associated pictures.
Conduct a debrief which focuses on both good and poor examples of non-verbal communication and emphasise the importance of effectively using both verbal and non-verbal communication to achieve a collective outcome.
Conditions/Critical Success Factors No verbal communication between students during activity.
Resources/ Technology Timer/stopwatch (use mobile phone timer)
A3 paper for each group
