Ice-breaking exercises
Ice breaking for Lesson 1 (10 minutes)
Trust Me!
Description: Allows students to dissect a major social issue.
Facilitators are welcome to introduce a social justice or activist aspect to the activity inviting students to come up with solutions to the social issues that affect their service sites.
Required Items: A ball of yarn or string
Directions:
Have students sit on the floor in a circle. One person begins by asking a question, i.e. Why does racism exist? He or she then passes the ball of yarn to another student, holding onto the end of the yarn. The next student makes a comment and tosses the ball to another student while holding on to his or her part of the yarn. When the string is completely used, a large web is formed.
Ice breaking for Lesson 2 (10 minutes)
Respect Activity
Description: A way to establish respect. This is useful for future discussions
Directions:
Have everyone in the room find someone who they do not know well and introduce themselves. Each pair should spend 5-10 minutes talking about respect. What does it mean for you to show respect, and what does it mean for you to be shown respect? After the allotted time, ask the participants to return to their seat, and open the discussion. What ideas did people come up with?
The point is to learn from our differences, to understand each other’s understanding. The pint it NOT to agree. Another important part of respect is knowing each other’s names, and how to pronounce them. Also, respect includes keeping the conversation in the group. This type of community building - and the safety which people feel with it - can make or break an attempt to facilitate discussions on multicultural issues.
Ice breaking for Lesson 3 (10 minutes)
Orange game
Required Items: oranges or lemons
Description:
Divide the participants into groups of four and ask each group to pick an orange/lemon from a pile on the floor (have a large bunch of oranges/lemons, more than the number of groups involved). Explain to the students that they have ten minutes to create a story about how their orange/lemon arrived in the room today. Ask them to be as imaginative and creative as they like. After ten minutes invite each group to select one person to share their story with the rest of the group.
Now, take back the oranges/lemon and place them together on the floor. Make sure to mix up the oranges/lemons. Ask one member from each group to retrieve their orange/lemon. (It usually happens that each group will have no problem identifying their own oranges/lemons, as the oranges/lemons are no longer generic specimens but individuals with characteristics).
Ask the students to describe what made each of their oranges/lemons unique for example individual markings, names, personalities, stories, histories, etc.
Ask students questions:
- What do you think we can learn from this exercise in relation to refugees or asylum seekers fleeing conflict?
- Do we stereotype these groups?
- Do we think of the story of how they arrived like the oranges?
- What groups of people do we think about when we think about conflict? E.g. Soldiers, politicians, women? What happens when we do not think of people as individuals?