Communication Leadership Activities

Controlled Discussion: Students sit in groups of 4-6 in a small circle. Each circle is given a topic to talk about. The topics can range from dress code issues to more worldly topics. Each person in the group is given five tickets. Every time a student speaks they must hand in a ticket to the moderator. Once a student is out of tickets they cannot speak again until a new topic is presented. This activity allows for a group discussion to take place, and prevents any one person from dominating the discussion.

Similar to the aforementioned activity, each group is given a topic to talk about. This time the group uses a roll of yarn to trace the discussion pattern. A predetermined person begins the discussion, and when interrupted or another person speaks the open end of the yarn string is passed to that person. By the end of the discussion the circle should resemble a spider web.

In this activity, students sit back to back. One person is the drawer and the other person is the direction giver. The direction giver is given a picture by the teacher in which the drawer must draw without seeing it. Therefore, the direction giver must clearly communicate how they want the drawer to draw the picture. At the end of the exercise, the direction giver looks at the picture and sees how well they did at communicating their directions.

In this activity students write down verbatim how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. After they are done writing down the instructions, a student volunteers to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich based solely on reading the written instructions they were given. At the end of the activity, the students discuss any of the communication problems encountered during the activity.

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