Lineup Challenge

Learning how to work together is important in building our classroom community. If we learn how to cooperate and work as a team, we can do this frequently and build a strong classroom community for all of us.

1. Direct students to line up based on a certain characteristic. For example:

• Birthday;
• First letter of name;
• Number of siblings, etc.

2. Let students know where the line should start and end (e.g., “starting with January and ending with December, line up by the door!”).
3. Tell students they cannot speak during the activity, but they can use other nonverbal forms of communication.
4. When they have finished, start from the beginning and ask students to share their [birthday, first letter of first name, number of siblings, etc.] to see if the class succeeded at the challenge. If there are mistakes, have students work together to figure out where the mis-ordered students should go.
5. Congratulate students on their nonverbal communication and cooperation skills.

• What made this game easy or hard to play?
• What are some other times we need to use teamwork?
• Why is it important to get to know each other and build relationships at school?
• Did you learn anything new about your classmates while playing this game?
• How else would you like to play this game?

For primary school students:

• To make the game easier, have students line up using something they can see. For example, give students numbers on a piece of paper and have them line up in numerical order. Students can also line up with familiar categories (e.g. shirt color in the order of the rainbow).
• To play in less time, divide the class into small groups and facilitate two games at once.

For students in grades 5-6:

• After students are familiar with the structure of the game, encourage them to share their ideas for the order category.
• To make the game more challenging, students can line up using more abstract categories. For example, have students line up in alphabetical order by last name.