Activities For Educators
Communication Skills
Blue & Orange Card Activity
A consciousness-raising activity to improve awareness of the messages we send to others.
Audience: Teachers (adaptable for students)
Be Positive
A mini-lecture to review ten suggestions for improving communication skills.
Audience: Middle School/HS/Adult
Tape Recorder
An activity to increase the participants listening skills and develop awareness that listening is difficult.
Audience: Elementary/MS/HS/Adult
Words I Wish I Had Heard
A group activity to develop an awareness of the powerful influence of words.
Audience: Middle School/HS/Adult
I Heard What You Said...
A role-playing activity to enhance the awareness of the necessity of clarifying that a message was heard accurately.
Audience: Upper Elem/MS/HS/Adult
Changing "You" Messages to "I" Messages
A mini-lecture and role-playing activity to enhance the awareness behind attack messages.
Audience: Middle School/HS/Adult
Barriers to Communication
A role-playing activity to enhance awareness of barriers to effective communication.
Audience: Middle School/HS/Adult
Attack Thoughts
A verbal activity to enhance awareness of the effects of inner language.
Audience: Upper Elem/MS/HS/Adult
Open-ended Questions
A mini-lecture and follow-up activity to teach key words and phrases to get a conversation started.
Audience: Elementary/MS/HS/Adult
Who Are You?
An activity to encourage the development of positive self-talk. To promote collegiality within the organization.
Audience: Elementary/MS/HS/Adult
Puzzle Talk
A partner activity to introduce "self-talk" and discover how positive and negative self-talk influence what one believes to be true about oneself and one's behavior.
Audience: Middle School/HS/Adult
Personal Development
Levels of Functioning
A mini-lecture, individual activity and group activity to 1.examine the 4 levels people function at personally and professionally and
2.allow participants to recall personal experiences in which they were invited or disinvited. (Valuable for all professions.)
Audience: Upper Elementary/MS/HS/Adult
Neither Attacking Nor Defending
A group discussion to teach techniques for remaining calm during intense personal interactions.
Audience: Elementary/MS/HS/Adult
Winning in a Jam
A mini-lecture and discussion to teach participants that winners in life have skills to make themselves as comfortable as possible on a moment to moment basis.
Audience: Age 7/MS/HS/Adult
Give Yourself Permission to Fail
A mini-lecture and discussion to teach participants that winners in life have skills to make themselves as comfortable as possible on a moment to moment basis.
Audience: Age 7/MS/HS/Adult
From the Other Side of the Desk
An individual reflection activity to enable the participants to experience what it is like to be students in their classrooms. (Can be conducted as a group or with a partner.)
Audience: Educators
Checklist for Your Inviting School
An individual reflection activity to enable the participants to experience what it is like to be students in their classrooms. (Can be conducted as a group or with a partner.)
Audience: Educators
Four Corner Press
A mini-lecture to help develop a personal plan of invitational development.
Audience: Adult
Team Building
The Invititational School
A small group consensus activity to facilitate agreement about those behaviors, procedures, programs and policies that would create an inviting school where everyone in the school community feels safe and where the school is a place where students and staff WANT to be. (Can be used individually.)
Audience: Upper Elementary/MS/HS/Adult
Faculty Family Album
A handout to increase camaraderie in the faculty or organization.
Audience: Elementary/MS/HS/Adult
Inviting Organization Activities
Human Graph
A group activity to examine how Invitational Theory applies to a variety of scenarios in schools and encourage participants to examine their choices from a theoretical perspective.
Audience: Adult (may be adapted for student groups.)
Inviting & Disinviting Organizations
A group activity to analyze the organizational climate and pinpoint inviting and disinviting practices.
Audience: Upper Elem/MS/HS/Adult
Draw a Student
A partner or small group activity to enable the participants to examine the characteristics of students who need support. (Can be used by individuals.)
Audience: Upper Elementary/MS/HS/Adult