Fun Activity for Breaking the Ice and Breaking into Work Groups
Every meeting can benefit from fun activities that get the participants up and moving around the room, talking to other attendees and working together to complete a fun task. This is great for breaking the ice at the beginning of a meeting, breaking large groups into smaller working or brainstorming groups, team building and encouraging full participation. An important point to remember when determining which activities to incorporate, or when coming up with new ideas, is that activities should require minimal preparation and should be easy to implement in order to make the meeting facilitator’s job easier.
One example of an easy to implement activity that will encourage interaction and function as an icebreaker or an effective, fun way to put the attendees into smaller working groups is the Sitcom Game.
Here is how it is implemented:
1. According to how many attendees you have and the number of participants you need in each group, select an appropriate number of popular sitcoms with well-known casts of characters.
2. For each sitcom, make a note card with each character’s name.
3. Without letting the participants see the names, tape a note card on the back of each participant. This will become who they are during the game.
4. Instruct the participants to interact with each other asking questions to help each one determine the name on their back.
5. Once they have determined who they are, the next step is to find the other characters from the same sitcom.
6. Once they are all arranged in groups according to their sitcom, you have your smaller working groups and are ready to begin.
