Making a Great Team!
On Friday 9th September, in place of the usual Games session, a brilliant team building session was held on the Owen field for all Upper School children, the aim being to build team-work within form groups and to develop problem-solving skills.
Seven different activities were run, with the children spending ten minutes at each activity before moving on to the next one. Activities were as follows:
- A Blindfold Obstacle Game, where children paired up taking turns to guide one another - with words alone - in, out, around and through a range of different obstacles.
- A Desert Island game saw forms splitting into two teams, where each team had to work together, using hoops as islands to get across an imaginary sea from the start to a finish line.
- In the Human Knot game, children stood in a circle and first placed one hand in the middle and grasped another persons hand. They did the same with their second hand. Each group, having successfully knotted themselves together, had to disentangle themselves to create a complete open circle, without breaking hands!
- The fourth activity had a mental, rather than physical, focus. This was a Memory Game and again each form split into two teams. Each team was presented with a mat and a black plastic bag, within which lay a load of goodies. Behind a large screen, hidden from view, lay another mat with identical objects to those in the teams bags, but the items were laid out in a set order. Pairs from each group were given ten seconds each to go behind the screen, study the picture and then go back and try to build the same picture on their mats, whilst another pair went to study the image and so on. The most successful team were the ones who managed to make their picture most like the one behind the screen.
- The Water Carry Game involved, as you might imagine, lots of the wet stuff! Each form had to try and get as much water from one bucket to another across a bench in a set time, using only plastic cups carried on table tennis bats.
- The Hoop Game saw each team try to pass a hoop around a circle of joined hands in as quick a time as possible.
- The final activity, the Alike and Different Game, got children to consider how they were alike, but at the same time different, whilst avoiding the obvious comparisons of hair, eye colour, gender etc.
It was a super afternoon, full of laughter and fun, with the children demonstrating a range of skills and providing a great opportunity for them to get to know each other better. Joseph Griffiths, Year 6, said: It was really excellent because we got to know all the new pupils in our form.
