Team building activities can help build classroom community in your grade 5 6 7 science class. Having a positive, strong, and comforting classroom will not only help your classroom management but will also help you build relationships with your students. In addition, these activities can be quick and effortless, leaving time to focus on the science curriculum!
Team Building Activities
Longest Paper Chain
Materials needed per group:
- 1 piece of paper
- Stapler or tape
- Scissors
According to Official Guinness Records, The longest paper chain by an individual measures 779.21 m (2,556 ft 5.5 in) long and was achieved by Julie McKinney (USA) in Fishers, Indiana, USA, on 22 June 2014. Julie reached this extraordinary effort in just under 12 hours.
Of course, you don’t have 12 hours to complete this task, so assign students time at the end of a class period or at the beginning to create their paper chain. Ten minutes seems to be a reasonable amount of time.
Ways to extend this classroom community building activity:
- Have each group keep their paper chain and give more paper to reward good behaviors throughout the year.
- Decide to change up student seats? Keep it interesting by keeping the paper chain at the group table, and now different players add to it. This will really help enforce classroom community!
- Use this activity as a class reward. Students love the competitive nature, and it is easy to set up and requires little supplies from you!
Textbook Challenge
Materials needed:
- 1 index card
- Scissors
- Tape, glue, or stapler
Duration:
Planning time: about 10 minutes
Engineering time: about 20 minutes
Like the paper chain challenge, this classroom community building activity will have students work together to build a structure that can hold textbooks.
You can have students build to:
- Support the most weight
- Build the tallest structure
Meter Stick Challenge
Challenge: Can you lower the meter stick to the ground using one finger?
Materials needed:
- Students (divide the class into small groups)
- Meter stick
Watch how students work together to complete this activity. Each student will place one finger on the meter stick. Their challenge is to lower it to the ground while EACH student has only one finger on the meter stick.
Classroom community skills will be strengthened as students brainstorm how to accomplish this task and work together to follow through with their ideas.
Cup Challenge
There are so many team building activities you can do with cups!
- Cup stacking challenge
Students can complete this activity with or without hands. Using it without hands will mean that you’ll need:
- 10 ft string
- 6 cups
- 5 rubber bands
You can further this challenge by having students:
- make different shapes with the cups (put in a line, stack on top of one another, etc.)
- complete the activity WITHOUT talking
- Timed Cup Challenge: Place 36 standard-size plastic drinking cups into a perfectly aligned triangular tower and then take the cups down one diagonal line at a time. Have students work in pairs to complete this task in a minute. Another fun idea would be to have students go head to head in completing the activity.
Try these activities in your classroom as
- time fillers
- Fun Friday activities
- activities before school breaks
- class rewards
Looking for more ideas to build relationships with your students? Check these out…
