By

Amy Petersilie,   Alternative Learning Center - Rochester

Play:

Community Playtime – It’s Good for Everyone

Topics:

Physical Activity Participation, Student Leadership,  Teamwork

As advisors, we decided to create a fun activity for our teams to work together and foster team unity. We broke from traditional classes for 2.5 hours in the morning, encouraged advisories to have a theme dress up (ours was Black pants with a created “Mrs. P's Squad” shirt), and participate in 7 different rounds (each lasting 15 minutes). The activities included: Human Bowling, Tic-Tac-Toe, bean bags, pipeline, baby food taste testing, scary movie screenshots and Hungry Hippos. The students and staff had an amazing time working together, laughed a lot, and were able to pull their advisory team closer to each other.

How did students and adults work together as a team?

All students and staff were involved with different team challenges. Most activities were head to head with another advisory which allowed for some competition as well as team building. Staff and students encouraged each other and worked to have a lot of fun.

How did you accomplish your goals?

All staff were very flexible, knew their role and needed to encourage all students to be involved and follow the given rules for each game.

What improvements have you seen at your school?

We have seen more student engagement in the advisory program and the students knowing each other a little more in the advisory groups.