Methods For Splitting Into Groups - מתודות להתחלק לקבוצות

Methods to split into groups

ICEBREAKER TYPE GROUPING

1.       Arm Cross: Have everyone cross their arms across their chest. Amazingly, it almost always works out to about 50% cross right over left, and the other 50% cross left over right.

2.       Finger cross: (For boys and girls separately) Have the group close their eyes and then put their hands together so their fingers are interlocking and their palms are touching each other. Have them open their eyes and look down at their hands. If their right thumb is on top then they are one team and if their left thumb is on top then they go to the other team.

3.      Clusters: Have the chanichim group themselves according to attributes— type of toothpaste used, favorite foods, type of vacation preferred. The sillier and more personal the categories, the better.

4.      Line Ups: Group lines up according to any variable you can think of to use. Examples are: oldest to youngest; tallest to shortest; alphabetically by first or last name; chronologically by month and date of birthday. If you want to add challenge to the process, do not allow people to talk. The two people at the ends of the line become partners, the next two become partners, etc.

5.      Pick a Number: Ask everyone to pick a number between 1 and (choose the upper number depending on the size of your group). Line them up according to which number they picked. The two people at the end of the line become partners, the next two become partners, etc. Those who have picked the same number become partners. If only one person chooses a particular number, ask them to choose another number.

6.      Values Clarification: Present the group with a value statement related to the theme of the event. Ask them to arrange themselves in a line from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree. Encourage discussion so each person is in the right place in line. Count off by 2's for diverse groups or divide in half for more homogeneous groups.

7.      Experts and novices: A continuum of how much they know about the topic and then pairing experts with novices, or experts with experts etc.

PROP RELATED GROUPING

8.      This goes with that: Randomly hand out cards/paper with images on such as peanut butter/jelly, sticky tape/stapler, helmet/bike, torah/avoda, and other such groups of things. Then get them to find someone with a card that ‘goes’ with their card.

9.      Playing cards: Take a pack of playing cards – randomly give out  the kings, queens and jacks or whatever. Pair/team up accordingly.

10.   Pairs of socks: How about a bag of (preferably washed) socks – each picks one then finds their pair. For larger groups pairs join other pairs by size or colour to form larger sub-groups

11.    Button Sort: Have sets of matching buttons or other objects such as colored hair bands, etc. (four of each kind if you want four in the group, etc.) Have chanichim find their group by matching buttons.

12.    Hat Sort: Drawing teams out of a hat: give each team a name, put the names on slips of paper and put them into a hat. Have each chanich pull a team name from a hat.

13.   Variation: Drawing team associations out of a hat: as above, but each slip of paper has a word associated with the team name. For example, one team might be “planets” another might be “countries” and another might be “animals”. Slips of paper will have words like: “Jupiter”, “Belgium” and “hyena” written on them.

14.   Picture Puzzles: Cut pictures from a magazine (half as many pictures as members of the group.) Cut each picture in half and mix them up in a hat. Eac h person takes one piece and partners are those whose pieces form a complete picture.

15.   Playing Cards: Decide how many groups you want and what size. For example, if you would like to have 5 groups of 5 and you wanted to randomly put them into groups then get 5 Kings, 5 Aces, 5 2's, 5 Jacks, and 5 Queens (of course you will need more than one deck of cards) and shuffle them up. Pass them out and match up the five who get the Kings, Queens, etc. Decks of Old Maid cards work well for dividing into partners.

16.   Shake, Rattle and Roll: Take as many film can isters as you have people. In each film canister, put an object. The objects you pick can be like the following: cotton balls, pennies, paperclips, jelly beans, M&M's, etc. If you have 30 people and you want to divide them into three groups of 10 each, you would place a cotton ball in 10 of the canisters, a paperclip in 10 of the canisters, and a penny in 10 of the canisters. Each individual then picks a canister from a bag, basket or some other container. They cannot smell or look in the canister. They can only shake the canister to distinguish the different sounds of the objects. The object is for the individual to find persons in the group with a like sound.

GROUPING WITH GAMES

17.   Barnyard Bedlam: Give each person a slip of paper with an animal name (or colored sticks, etc. and assign blue=pig, red=cow, etc.) Participants must make the corresponding animal sound to find their group.

18.   Finding "Twins" Variation: Decide ahead of time on a category such as animals, famous people, occupations, emotions, sports, etc. and prepare slips of paper with specific examples of the category you have chosen. Make two slips for each example (one set of three for an odd number). After distributing the slips, each person makes a noise associated with the example and/or performs a movement. The group circulates until partners have been found. Have as many categories as groups desired.

19.   Double Simon Says: Have the group play “Simon Says” as you normally would. (Game leader says Simon Says do this and does some motion. Then occasionally the game leader just says “Do this” and if anyone does that action, they are out.) However, instead of being “out” if a chanich makes a mistake, they go into a second circle. When the groups are fairly even, stop the game.

20.  Famous Pairs: For groups of 2 (pairs), put a slip on each person’s back with one of a famous pair: mustard and ketchup, PB and jelly, hot and cold, etc. Have a "mustard" find a "ketchup", a "PB" find a "jelly", a "hot" find a "cold", etc. Or, have people ask yes/no questions (no more than 2-3 per person) to find out what they are, and then find their pair.

21.    Form A Band: Tell the chanichim to divide themselves into groups of four (if you want four groups—three if you want three groups, etc.) Each band must have a drummer, guitar player, keyboard player and singer (add more parts if you want more teams.) Then they mime out their band. Then all of the drummers are in one group, all singers in another, etc. You can create as many band members as you need groups (above example gets you four groups). Or, you can do the same with a baseball (or any sports) team. For example, ask them to be pitchers, catchers, hitters, outfielders and hot dog salespeople. This gets five groups.

22.   Values Statements: Ask a series of questions and have the chanichim run from one side of the room to the other. (Questions could be: Do you like to do puzzles? If yes, run to one side, if no, run to the other side. Or instead of yes/ no questions, use questions such as which do you like better— pizza or hamburgers? ) When the split is broken into roughly even groups, stop the game.

23.   Huggy bears: Madrich calls a number for huggy bears which means chanicim have to get into groups of that number. The madrich calls out "Huggy Bears 5" and chanichim have to get into groups of 5. Whoever is not in a group is out. The madrich calls another number eg. "huggy bears 4" and everyone gets into a group of four. At one point, the groups they are in will be their groups for the next activity.

24.  Tongues: Give everybody gumballs of a different color (the right number for your groups).  Have them eat them as they are arriving, then divide them by the color of their tongues.