Communicating Effectively Intro Activity

Lesson: Communicating Effectively

Unit: Health and Safe Relationships

Age: Middle or High School

Prep: If your classroom has desks then prior to class turn them in such a way that they are all in pairs facing one another. It also works best if you can have all of the pairs in a circle, but it still works if you need to keep them in rows. Additionally, you will need to secretly talk to 3-4 students and let them know about the activity beforehand. These students will each be given one characteristic that they must act out for the duration of the activity (obnoxious, shy, controlling/conceited, negative). You will also need a stop watch or timer of sorts (I use a boxing round timer) and a list of several topics for the students to talk about.
Topic ideas: Food, sports, video games, movies, books, school, summer, animals, hobbies, etc.

How I do the activity:

When the students first come into the class I have them sit at the desks so they are facing another student. Once they are all situated I explain that they will be having conversations to start off the class with other students in a Speed Dating style format. For this they will be given a topic to talk about and then have 1-2 minutes (or however long you like) to talk about it. After their time is up they will be signaled to rotate and one student will stay while another finds a new partner. In my class I have the students on the inside of the circle rotate one chair to the right while the ones on the outside stay. Once they are with a new partner the class will be given a new prompt and then they will repeat the process. To cue my students to rotate I use a boxing round timer which buzzes at a set interval, but you could use a whistle, bell, or simply tell them to rotate when the time is up.

Once I’ve had the students do 5 or 6 rounds I then have them go back to their original seats and fix their desks so that they’re facing the front. We then move into a discussion about the activity and I ask them a variety of questions: Was it hard/easy to talk for the full time? What did you notice about how other people talked? “Were you more of a talker or listener? What body language did you see/use? Did you feel you had a voice or that the other person dominated the conversation?” etc. Finally I reveal to the class who my “secret students” were and that I had asked them to act the way that they did during their conversations, then we move into the main part of the lesson.

Although my students are often initially hesitant to do this activity, they usually enjoy it a lot. It’s also a nice little segway into the main part of the lesson and gets them thinking about not only how other people communicate, but allows them to analyze some of their own tendencies.