Materials needed:
Room enough for everyone to move around and run if necessary
Time needed:
5-10 minutes
Students participating:
everyone at once
This is another good game to kick-start an early session. It’s designed to promote quick improvisation in teams, and break kids into different arrangements suddenly so they work with a variety of people in the class.
- Ask students first to begin walking slowly in a certain pattern: for example, in straight lines and right-angle turns, as if the students were drawing on an Etch-a-Sketch. The only rules: No one talks, no contact or bumping into anyone. Or you can ask them to walk in squiggly lines. Anything to mix them up in the space.
- Yell “freeze!” Then: “Quickly, form groups of three! Groups of three!” Everyone scrambles to form three-person groups. “Show me the groups! Link arms!” If 1 or 2 people are left over, they are simply a smaller unit.
- “Alright, you have 10 seconds to form.... A prickly pear cactus! Go! 10... 9... 8...” and so forth. “Okay, freeze! Let’s see the cacti! Good, good... Okay, begin walking again! No talking, no talking... okay... now... Freeze! Groups of five! Go, go!”
- The same idea is repeated: The groups are asked to become something in which each member must play a role – a chair, a sunrise, a babbling brook, a tornado...
- 5. Eventually, you get the point where you can simply yell out a number: “Eleven! Eleven!” and this means groups of eleven.
- The final one is the exact number of students present. The entire group must form something!