I’m so nervous for the first day of my forensics class tomorrow, so I was brainstorming ice-breaker activities, and I came across this gem. It’s not technically an ice-breaker–it’s more of a lets get better as a company activity, but I’m dying to try it, so I’m going to spin it off as an ice-breaker.
Essentially, students have to first diagram how they would make toast, and then they use the diagrams of their peers to both add/take away steps to make the clearest explanation for how to make toast. This way, they are collaborating on the process.
At the end, we’re then going to debrief and go over first off, what they noticed about themselves as they were doing this, and secondly, how this relates to the field of forensics.
Here’s how I imagine it panning out in my head:
- First, everyone draws on post-its how they would make toast (1 step per post-it)
- Get in small groups (of 3-4) and introduce themselves to the group
- Place their post-its all together, and come up with the clearest explanation for how to make toast with their groups (this may mean that some of the steps gets deleted)
- Place all of the “final processes” on the board
- Debrief
- what did you notice about yourself as you were doing this?
- what did you notice about your group as you were doing thing?
- how does this relate to forensics?
- which people are involved in forensics and what do they do?
We’ll see what actually happens tomorrow!
On Teaching 