Personal development, Physical, Teambuilding
Body, movement and senses, Storytelling, Teambuilding and empowerment
> 60 min.
Large group, Small group
Upto 1 hour
Materials needed
Advanced, Beginner, Moderate
Speaking, Writing, Listening, Reading
Narrative thinking, Creativity
Communication
Learning to learn, Self-expression
Objectives
The learner can develop and tell a story.
Material
- 4 non-transparent bags per team
- Different ingredients (see preparation below)
- 4 small pieces of paper per person
- Paper and pens
Preparation
- Divide the bags into 4 categories. Write the number on each bag.
- For each category, invent a ‘recipe’: be creative, mix all sorts of ingredients. Here are some examples.
- Bag 1 coffee, pepper & curry
- Bag 2 toothpaste & soap
- Bag 3 scented candles & mint
- Bag 4 shampoo & vinegar
Instructions
- Divide the group into teams of four learners.
- Put a bag from each category, the 4 pieces of paper per person and pens on each table.
- Tell them to take bag 1.
- Give them the instructions: Close your eyes, open the bag, don’t look at it, don’t speak, just smell. Think of a character: a person or an animal, real or imagined. Close the bag and pass it to the next learner.
- After smelling the first bag, everybody writes down the character the smell makes them think of, without telling it to the other members of the team.
- And so on with the other bags.
- Bag 2: Think of a place.
- Bag 3: Think of an action, a verb.
- Bag 4: Think of an emotion.
- After the four rounds, give each team time to share their characters, places, actions and emotions.
- Collect all the papers per category. You have now 4 piles of folded papers.
- In every team, let a learner choose a paper from the ‘character pile’, another from the ‘place pile’, a third from the ‘action pile’ and the fourth from the ‘emotion pile’. Each group has now a character, a place, an action and an emotion.
- Let each team create a story based on these four elements. Learners can do this verbally or in writing, or even draw it.
- Each team tells its story in front of the class.
Variant
Beginners: use 2 bags, e.g. a character and a verb. Ask learners to make sentences.
Closing Up
- Bring everyone together for the final activity.
- Discuss what was in the bags, ask them what they think it was and reveal the content.
- Put all the papers in one box. One by one, invite the learners to pick a paper and portray the word. Let the others guess.
- Discuss the difficulties encountered by the learners during the exercise.
- Emphasize how they made up all the stories together as the ideas came from everybody.
- Write down and explain new words.