Skip to main content

more exercises to move the brain & body

from kundiman:

c/o Regie Cabico! This exercise helps you work on your comic timing!
  1. stand around in a circle
  2. one person starts by clapping her/his hands once while looking into the next person's eyes
  3. the next person must "catch" the clap by looking into the clapper's eyes and clapping in time to the original clap
  4. the person who catches the clap must then turn around to face the next person in the circle to pass on the clap.
  5. to shake things up: clapping twice sends the clap back to the clapper.

another one from Regie:

stand in a circle and each person has to say a letter of the alphabet, but in 3 totally different ways with three different dramatizations.

from summer camp:

This exercise is sometimes called "A Big Wind Blows" but I think that name is totally dumb. So I call it "Revised Musical Chairs," or if that doesn't work, "Shout Outs."

  1. One person is in the middle and says "I love all my peoples who..."
  2. Anyone in the circle who identifies with that statement has to find a new seat.
  3. No one can sit in the seat directly next to their original seat.
  4. The one left without a seat is It.

from TWTP:

Step-In Step-Out

Do I really need to explain this? I think it would be good to think of some really good statements.

from Estacion Libre, TWTP, and TWTP Remix:

Agree/Disagree

  1. One version of this gives you no gray area. You either agree or disagree with the statement.
  2. In another version you have 4 corners and in each corner there is either "Never" "Usually" "Sometimes" or "Always" - this is a totally different exercise though.
  3. In some versions the facilitators ask people to explain their positions, in others, there is no discussion until the end of the exercise. But this has to be intentional.

Comments

Dojiang said…
oh mika, i like this post. i too, have been meaning to compile icebreakers, energizers, etc.
with the agree/disagree: i've also done it with Jamie Washington like a spectrum. where you move a long a line/general area, depending on how you feel. 2 sides of the room represents the extremes- like strongly agree/disagree.

the alphabet one sounds really fun. i love stuff like that.
another day, i will post the energizers i know up here, and other folks too, and then we can refer to this list in the future.

Popular posts from this blog

Japanese Class in NYC - first lesson!!!!!!!!!!!!

(It's been a while since my last post! I have just begun my first job in NYC!!! Teaching after-school classes in Japanese Language and Anime Culture in a inner-city high school in dowtown manhattan! Welcome to the first installment...) "You better have a leg in it," said N__ when she heard how many students I had in my Japanese class: over 30. I had to ask what that meant, but I wasn't feeling any kind of ominous energy from the students who had signed up for after-school Japanese Language Club. What I mean is: Who signs up to stay at school for 3 extra hours unless they really want to be there??? After trying (and failing) to set up a DVD for the first hour, waiting for the students to trickle in, and being herded into a corner by a Student Government meeting, I began class. The first order of the day was to break up into groups and brainstorm what the students expected of each other, of themselves, and of me as a teacher. Many of them said the same things: for the t

Secret Message Writing Exercise (Epistolary Poem)

This is a great writing activity that I learned from DW, but I’ve modified it a little bit so that it will be easier to use with my poetry students. (D, please feel free to post your own version or other versions you have heard of.) materials: lined paper tracing paper instructions: at the top of the sheet of lined paper, write Dear ___________ (fill in the blank with whatever. this will be your reader, your audience, and you will write a letter as if to _______________.) write a secret message to someone that you’ve been meaning to tell but never had the guts to do it. (1 – 2 sentences, but they don’t have to be full sentences). write it on the lined paper so that the message is scattered on the page but so that you can still read it top to bottom and left to right. now forget your secret message when the moderator begins to keep time, start writing and don’t stop. write anything you want but don’t stop, even if you get stuck. if you can’t think of anything, just write nonsense until

postcard poetry: here are some of my favorite postcards that i've sent to people so far 1

providence can be a brutal city, just like any other. in this glass box I watched the ocean fall in sheets outside computer clusters, braid inside the gutters. umbrellas made no difference. this is the version i actually ended up using: Providence can be and has been just as brutal as any other city in the country, but i was safe and desperately warm within the glass cage, watching the Atlantic fall in sheets, watching the acid rain braid itself into the gut- ters, wringing words like fair- trade coffee from my strained eyeballs to stain the imaginary page on my computer screen.