Lekcja 7: Team building activities

Toxic Waste, Mine Field i Build-a-bike

Task 1 - Toxic Waste

Equipped with a bungee cord and rope, a group must work out how to transport a bucket of "Toxic Waste" and tip it into the neutralization bucket. The challenge is for the group to work out how to transfer the toxic waste from the small bucket into the large bucket where it will be "neutralized", using only the equipment provided and within a time limit. The waste will blow up and destroy the world after 20 minutes if it is not neutralized. Team building activities are like kids’ games. They can be complex, problem solving tasks, that can last one to several days. They are designed to help group members develop their capacity to work effectively together. Important parts of team building exercises are participants' reflection and discussion about the activity, how they approached the situation, and possible points of learning. For example, a group could be videoed during an activity and later watched, analyzed, and discussed.There can be a variety of activities. Team building activities can also be built around golf, bowling and even paintball.

Task 2 – Mine field

Objects are scattered in an indoor or outdoor place. In pairs, one person verbally guides his/her partner, a blindfolded person, through the minefieldWhy do companies send their employees to participate in such unusual tasks? According to team building specialists such activities inspire trust and employee motivation. They improve communication skills among workers. Additionally, people begin to realize and appreciate each other’s differences and potentials. Taking into account that, nowadays, the real talented and creative people like to work or engage themselves in projects where they can develop their capacities, managers must constantly seek new means of inspiring their workers. Such people want to be happy doing their jobs. Team building activities help the organization to shift into a more productive atmosphere and improve staff morale.

Task 3 – Build-a-bike

Your team must use their wits and creativity to build bikes from scratch in a race against time and each other. Each team is given puzzles to solve, codes to decipher, and secrets to unlock in order to acquire the resources needed (part by part) to build their bicycle. Good luck!

Malwina Staszak, metodyk Archibalda

Practice makes perfect

1. The school was poorly ……………. . It had no computers and teaching aids.2. I don’t like the way they …………… the problem. They completely ignored the important facts.3. Jane ……………….. her books all over her bed. She liked to study in such a way.4. The political debate ………………. the interest of many people.

Vocabulary

Words-of-the-week

Wits – intelligence and the ability to think quickly (zdolność pojmowania, szybkość rozumowania, przytomność umysłu)

Other expressions with ‘wit’:

witty – using words in a clever and funny way (dowcipny)gather your wits –to make an effort to become calm and think clearly (pozbierać się, dojść do siebie)

Examples:

1. Her wits made her a brilliant student.2. During the debate the candidate made many witty remarks.3. During the break the team gathered their wits in order to come up with a winning strategy.

Glossary:

equipped –to provide a person or a place with objects that are necessary for a particular purpose (wyposażony, zaopatrzony)capacity – the total amount that can be produced or contained (pojemność)approached –to deal with something (podejście)scattered –to cover a surface with things (rozrzucony)blindfolded –a person that has a cloth over his eyes in order not to see (z zawiązanymi oczyma)appreciate –to recognize that something is valuable (doceniać)engage – to interest someone in something and keep them thinking about it (angażować się)

Wersja audio

Konkurs

Chciałbyś poznać lepiej angielski? Co tydzień atrakcyjne nagrody, dzięki którym angielski przestanie być obcy – ćwiczenia internetowe, literatura anglojęzyczna, słowniki i inne. 3 osoby, które jako pierwsze odpowiedzą na pytanie: What do we say if we start something from the beginning, without using anything that already exists? otrzymają study pack na wybranym poziomie. W mailu prosimy o podanie adresu korespondencyjnego i poziomu zaawansowania. Odpowiedź (z wykorzystaniem odpowiedniego słownictwa z lekcji) prosimy przesyłać mailem do 31.10.07 r. na adres: kariera@archibald.pl