Tip #468: Terrific Activities, Day, Train the Trainer, Second Round

“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”  Bill Moyers

This was the last day of the second 5-day train the trainer. Last night, after getting back so late from the trip to the Dead Sea restaurant, I stayed up until 2 a.m. reviewing 27 of the participants’ lesson plans. As opposed to last week’s participants, who were often confused, I had about 7 lesson plans that were excellent. (I attribute this to: (1) reminding them to compare their lesson plans to the examples in their binders and (2) walking them through the different elements of the lesson plan at two different points to make sure they understood what each category meant).

This group also enjoyed the Jeopardy game. Then, after catching up on 4 Showcase presentations left over from yesterday, the participants took their Feedback Oath and then worked on creating their AV (flip charts) for 30 minutes.

We split up into the three groups- and Maha and I made sure that the other two rooms had kites, Koosh, candy, and sweet rolls, etc. to make them feel as comfortable as possible.

My group, as like last time, did amazingly creative activities. Many of them designed their own games. Noor played music (!!!) during her activity.

Maysoon went one step further: she played both music and then background effects of traffic. Her activity related to taking public transportation. She began by asking common ground questions: How many of you were late to class at some point during the week? A number (sheepishly) raised their hands. Most of the reasons pertained to getting caught in traffic, or having to drop children at school, husbands at work, and then getting to the training hotel. She also asked how many had experienced a traffic jam, to which a few raised their hands.

She got everyone up to look at photos of cars, bicycles and buses, all the while playing the background traffic noises. Then she asked the participants (9 in all) to identify one advantage and one disadvantage of public transportation on sticky notes.

Next, she created four teams for a simulated relay/traffic jam. Two teams had to “fight” past the other two teams (who stood in front of them or pelted them with Koosh balls) to place their advantages and disadvantages on flip charts.

She didn’t have enough time to finish in the 10 minutes, but her quick summary related to the fact that taking public transportation was much less stressful.  Very clever.

Finally, she gave a tee shirt cut out of something thick and sturdy (I think the saying on it was “I survived a traffic jam”) as a prize to someone who had experienced a traffic jam on the way to the training.

Sawson’s activity was absolutely brilliant. She gave us (including me) 10 small sticky notes with our names on each note. Then she had us participate in a type of gallery walk. She had created 6 flip charts for 6 types of energy-saving categories. She divided each flip chart in half, with two possible energy-saving activities and an energy saving fact on top, and two different possible energy-saving activities and a different energy saving fact on the bottom.

We had to place our names next to every energy-saving activity we did.

Then she looked at the results and asked us why many people did certain activities, but not others- which led to a great conversation.

Finally, she had us each add up the number of name post-its we still had in hand and we were able to give ourselves a score that she entered on a huge energy-saving thermometer she had constructed.

She rewarded the person who achieved 90% energy saving with an energy-saving booklet that her organization produced. Later, we all discussed the fact that she should have actually given the book to the person who achieved the least energy saving!!

May your learning be sweet.

Deborah

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