communication assignments for high school students

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Communication Lesson Plans for High School, Middle School and Upper Elementary: The BIG list of Communication Activities for your Students!

Communication Lesson Plans and Activities for High School students, Middle School and Upper Elementary – Mar 1, 2024 : Effective communication is more than just a presentation mark.

• Here’s a free Text Message Puzzle : Why would you post it online? Can your students figure out who is texting and what is going on?
• Chat GPT has completely changed how we can communicate. Read more .

Communication is about getting your message across in a clear, effective way – especially when you’re tired, stressed out, or talking about hot-topic, controversial topics .

Here are some lessons to help students communicate clearly and effectively by understanding how communication breaks down. Students also reflect on their communication style. Are you assertive? Aggressive? Passive? Passive-Aggressive? Take the student survey to start the conversation!

Are you talking about ChatGPT and Education in your Communication Lesson Plans

ChatGPT is going to completely change Education. (Whether you want it to or not.)

A lot of teachers have mixed feelings about using ChatGPT in the classroom.

• Here’s a free YouTube video exploring if ChatGPT should be allowed in School
• Check out the Chat GPT Critical Thinking Debate lesson , which includes the slideshow and handouts used in that video.

Here are three ways we can use ChatGPT to help improve communication

• Ask ChatGPT for feedback on how to say something more assertively.
• Ask ChatGPT to predict how someone might respond to your message.
• Ask ChatGPT to rephrase your ideas to communicate more clearly or concisely.

Anyone can use this artificial intelligence tool to give us a second opinion on how we can get our message across more effectively.

Now imagine what it can do for a student who is an English Language Learner (ELL, ESL) or a student with a learning disability.

If you have the ideas in your head, but you have trouble writing them down, or communicating them clearly, you can simply ask Chat GPT for help: “Here are some ideas I have. Can you help me put them together into a paragraph?”

PS, Chat GPT speaks multiple languages.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Our robot friends can learn to become biased or sexist (just like the Google search algorithm did. Here’s an example of how Google search provides sexist misinformation video lesson at 36:44 )

Sometimes, you can do everything right and still not be heard.

It’s not fair now what.

Check out these 12 communication lessons .

Help your students with these engaging lessons to develop the soft skills they need to deal with 21st-century problems.

How do you get your point across during those important conversations about things that really matter:

• Do you agree with Woke culture?
• Is this Fake News ?
• Do students deserve trigger warnings about teaching content in the same way as nut-free snacks? (Is mental health as important as physical health?)
• Is ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence going to take all of our jobs?
• Are we allowed to feel Ukraine war fatigue in the “West” when Ukrainian soldiers fight mental fatigue?
• Do you deserve a raise? a job?
• Why are you casting shade on my best friend?

Communication Activities for Students Quick Links:

• communication skills activities (for high school students)
• communication lessons (for middle school / upper elementary)
• effective communication (lesson plan)
• Check out this article about Rosa Parks. What if we focused on her conversation with the bus driver? The resource includes discussion questions and sample answers.

Communication and Social-Emotional Learning

Want an example of assertive communication.

Help students understand the communication process. Explore how different communication styles can help with Social-Emotional Learning.

• Self-Management (managing emotions and behaviours to achieve goals)
• Self-Awareness (recognizing one’s strengths and challenges when it comes to communicating)
• Responsible decision-making (deciding when to hold your ground and be assertive and when to be flexible on an issue is part of how we make ethical and constructive choices about our personal and social behaviour.)
• Relationship skills (forming positive relationships, working in groups, dealing with conflict… the success or failure depends on how well we get our message across!)
• Social Awareness (showing understanding and empathy for others and their communication style can help us think about how to adjust our choices to get our message across)…

Remind students HOW to communicate in a classroom setting.

I’m not talking about setting classroom rules like raise your hand, or look at the person speaking.

I’m talking about helping students get their message across more effectively – at school and in life.

Help students recognize they can choose how to communicate: whether it’s being assertive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, or just plain passive.

We live in a changing world. How we communicate makes all the difference.

Communication isn’t always easy – whether we’re trying to communicate:

• online through a pandemic,
• during hot emotional topics and racial divides,
• or in every day life with our classmates or family members !

Students often don’t realize that communication is a learnable skill.

Communicating with others is “a two-way street.”

• Effective communication skills can be more than just oral presentations and group work marks.
• A communication skills lesson plan can help empower students with strategies to get their message across at school and outside of school.

Just because we think we’re communicating clearly doesn’t mean our message is being heard.

Here are some fun communication activities for students to see how easily our message can break down.

Let’s help everyone communicate a little more effectively during these challenging times.

What about when you’re trying to communicate with someone you completely disagree with on a topic that’s important to both of you.

Like systemic racism , institutionalized injustice, voting and election fraud, or climate change.

Black Lives Matter.

Those three words can trigger strong emotional feelings on all sides.

Jacob Blake.

George Floyd.

Breonna Taylor.

Daunte Wright.

The Washington Post has logged every person shot and killed by an on-duty police officer in the United States. They have logged over 8,381 fatal police shootings in the US since 2015.

Although half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for roughly 14 percent of the U.S. population and are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate. Source: Washington Post Police Shootings Database

So, how well do you communicate in an argument, a fight, or a conversation where the stakes matter?

Events in the US and around the world have put a spotlight on systemic problems.

Conversations around race can trigger some powerful and deep-rooted feelings in many people..

Sometimes, watching the news can bring up tough conversations, angry voices, and frustrated people.

So, what happens when the next news cycle begins, and the media moves on to the next hot-button topic?

The strong feelings are still just as strong.

Maybe there are communication activities for high school students and middle school classrooms that can help provide strategies.

Just because we communicate (or communicate loudly) doesn’t mean our message gets across.

(Or that we get what we want.)

Everyone can communicate.

• But how do we teach our students to communicate clearly, effectively, and assertively in tough situations when emotions are running high?
• More importantly, how can we teach our students that just because you communicate clearly, effectively, and assertively, it doesn’t mean things change?

The real world isn’t always fair. Neither is the schoolyard.

Teacher-student communication in the classroom isn’t a one-way street.

• When students yell at their teachers, it usually doesn’t end well.
• Likewise, when teachers monologue in their lessons without looking for verbal or non-verbal cues for feedback from the students, it can mean that students are not engaged or learning.

Effective communication skills are more than just school learning skills. They’re life skills.

And, sometimes, we need to recognize that we also send a message through how we portray or stereotype groups of people.

(Check out this FREE Who is Invisible resource to start a conversation about which groups of people aren’t seen at all!)

Communication Lesson Plans for a World That Can Be Unfair (i.e. Systemic Racism, Bias, and Discrimination)

6 ways to teach students to communicate more clearly when things matter.

Here do we help students get their message across when emotions run high? Here are 6 ideas:

• Teach students that communication is a process.
• Give students a toolbox of communication strategies.
• Help students understand the difference between assertive communication, aggressive communication, passive communication, and passive-aggressive communication.
• Remind students that sometimes you can do “everything right” and communicate assertively… and things still don’t work out.
• Encourage a growth mindset. Reflect back on our communication blunders and successes and learn from our experience.
• Role model communication strategies ourselves. Talk-aloud our choices.

Communication in the real world is more than just an oral communication mark in English Language Arts

Communicating is more than just doing an oral presentation in class or giving a mark for class participation.

Those can be good places to start, but let’s keep the conversation going (pun intended!)

• Let’s acknowledge that communicating face-to-face at school can be tough.
• But, communicating online during a pandemic can be even tougher.
• And, communicating with someone who disagrees with us during racial tensions? Wow!

Help your students understand how to communicate better whether they’re at home, at school, in relationships, and eventually in the workplace.

Help your students understand how to use their voice and be heard.

And also understand that they can do everything right in terms of communication strategies and still not be heard.

Being assertive doesn’t mean we get what we want.

It means we communicate clearly what our boundaries are and try to work towards solutions where we all win… without compromising our values.

(Or, it’s a deal-breaker, and sometimes, you need to walk away.)

6 Cs Communication Lesson Plans because Education is Constantly Changing – Did we sign up for this?

Everyone can communicate. not everyone can communicate well..

What did your communication lesson plans look like during the pandemic?

• Of course, acknowledge the difficult circumstances we are all in.
• Discuss the idea about #alonetogether – we are alone… but we are also together in our aloneness.

Then, turn the conversation to the silver lining which is this:

This is an opportunity for us to explore how we communicate – especially now that we have the added challenge of learning together… when we’re not together!

Learning in the classroom can be tough.

Distance learning and online learning can be even tougher because you don’t have nonverbal language to to help you understand the message.

Communication lesson plans need to focus on more than just presentation skills.

Let’s explore communication activities for high school students where students analyze where their face-to-face conversations and online chats might be going wrong.

How about we look at communication skills lesson plans. Middle school students can understand the difference between assertive conversations and coming across as aggressive, passive-aggressive, or just passive.

What about communication skills lesson plans for elementary where we use “games” to break down different parts of the communication process.

Communication lesson plans give teachers effective communication process strategies to teach elementary, middle school, and high school students.

We need to provide our children and students with 21st-century competencies / transferable learning skills to enable them to cope with challenges in their personal and professional relationships.

And, even if you have communication lessons to help your students “communicate more effectively”, the real question is how do your students do when they’re angry, triggered, stressed out, or in some other tough conversation?

A lesson plan for communication skills needs to go over several things:

• How the communication process works
• Where communication breaks down (in the communication process)
• Communication strategies to help get the message across and to double/check the message gets across
• Different communication styles in tough conversations: Assertive, Aggressive, Passive-Aggressive, and Passive

(Oh, and by the way – communication is different from collaboration. And while we’re at it, collaboration and teamwork do not always mean the same thing ! Read this page about collaboration skills to find out the difference!)

Communication Activities for Students during unusual times

The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting learning in different ways around the world. Social distance requires us to find creative ways to teach students were not physically in the same classroom as us. We call this distance-learning or distance education.

Bottom line? It means adapting and modifying our lesson plans to be effective using online learning tools.

Communication clearly is tough.

Communicating clearly when you can’t read nonverbal signals can be even tougher.

We need to explicitly teach our students about the communication process so they can be aware of how their message might be perceived by the other person – especially in an online environment.

Over the next few days, these communication lesson plans can be adapted and include suggestions on how you could teach or modify these communication activities so they work in the classroom or through an online learning tool.

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6Cs Communication Lesson Plans – Table of Contents

• Adapting the communication lessons for middle school / older elementary students
• Modifying these communication skills activities for high school students / adult learners
• Understanding how to communicate effectively requires an understanding of the communication process

Strategies on how to communicate effectively

Strategies on how to be assertive during tough conversations.

• There are 4 basic parts to communication
• There are 4 communication styles in tough conversations
• We can use communication strategies to be more clear and assertive.
• We can change the way we communicate
• Effective Communication CHAPTER BIG IDEA:
• You get 455 slides / pages in 12 lessons
• Software Requirements
• Homeroom teachers
• Literacy teachers / English Teachers / ESL Teachers
• School leaders / admin
• Teacher Pro Tips
• The big list of Effective Communication Activities
• PART 1. EXPERIENCE
• PART 2. WATCH
• PART 3. UNDERSTAND
• Here’s what you get in the Communication Lesson Plans ZIPPED FILE

Who can benefit from effective communication skills?

Learning how to communicate effectively is a skill that anyone (and everyone) can work on.

This is actually a pretty big deal. School is kind of an artificial institution. We talk about oral communication and being effective communicators … and then focus on things like presentation skills:

• Do you have eye contact
• How is your body language?
• Do you have any distracting visual or verbal noises… um… ah… er…
• Can we hear you clearly?
• Are you speaking too quickly?

But, communication lessons need to focus on more than just presentation skills or active listening skills.

We communicate with people all the time. From our conversations with family, to our emails with our co-workers and other team members, to social media exchanges.

The real question is how do you communicate effectively in tough conversations when you both want different things, or you’re both mad…

Although these communication lesson plans were developed initially with middle school students in mind, they can be modified or adapted for:

• Elementary students
• High school students
• Home-schooled students
• Small business human resources training
• Large corporation human resources training

Adapting these communication lessons for middle school and older elementary students

Younger students in the primary grades are more ego-centric, so of course, teachers will need to modify and simplify the language or examples. But the concepts around clear communication are still the same.

Communication skills for elementary students often look at presentation skills:

• Do you make eye contact?
• How is your body language? Any distractions?
• Are you speaking loud enough for people to hear at the back of the room
• Can you be easily understood? Do you speak clearly or do you speak too fast or mumble?
• Are you listening to the person presenting? Are you looking at the person and nodding at appropriate times?

When in fact, communication skills for elementary students should also look at every day conversations.

There’s more to oral communication than just marking a presentation – although that’s often the easiest way to get a mark for report cards.

Suggestions:

• Explore different ways that we communicate – not just during presentations, but in every day life, with friends, at home, and in the classroom.
• Are they the sender of the message?
• Are they the receiver of the message?
• What was the message?
• How do we know the message was received?
• There are words in the message.
• But, there’s also a message that gets told by our tone of voice, our body language, and our facial expression.
• It’s not just what you say, but how you say it. These all impact how we are heard.

Modifying these Communication Lesson Plans / Skills / Activities for High School students / Adult learners

These concepts about assertive and clear communication are equally valid for high school and adult learners as they are for elementary students.

When you use these communication scenarios for high school students, remember that no one wants to be told they don’t communicate well.

After all, if there’s a breakdown in communication, it’s the other person’s fault.

That may be true. But, if our goal is to get our message across, what can we do to give our message the best chance of being heard?

Here are some specific communication strategies to consider:

• Are we able to be more assertive (and protect our boundaries)?
• Do we need to accept that this issue isn’t worth fighting over?
• Should we walk away because this issue is a dealbreaker for us?

Sure, we may already be great at communication. But let’s remind our students that effective communication skills can always be honed and improved!

Teaching communication skills activities to high school students is important. It helps build healthy relationships – whether we’re looking at personal relationships or workplace relationships.

Communication Scenarios for High School Students

Here are some prompts you can use with your communication activities for high school students.

These might make for some great acting scenes in drama class.

But, let’s take a moment and do more than just an over-the-top melodramatic performance for our friends.

STEP 1. Have high school students review the communication process and 4 styles of communication .

STEP 2. Give the junior or senior high school students one of the communication scenarios below.

STEP 3. Ask students to reflect on what sort of communication style they would use by default? Would they be:

• aggressive?
• passive-aggressive?

STEP 4. Use the handout from the “What’s your Style?” communication activity (Lesson 6) and the “Communication Strategies to be Assertive” activity (Lesson 7)

Ask students to brainstorm what a different communication style might look like in this scenario.

Make sure to refer back to the communication style handouts to double-check that their performance matches what that communication style actually is.

• What makes aggressive behavior, aggressive?
• What are the criteria for passive-aggressive behavior?
• What makes something assertive?
• What would an assertive response look like in this communication scenario?

Make sure to remind students, that being assertive doesn’t mean you “win” the conversation: It means you set personal boundaries and stick to them.

Sometimes, being assertive means you don’t get what you want. Or, the relationship breaks down.

But this is an important part of developing self-awareness, self-management, and relationship skills.

Being able to set healthy boundaries for ourselves is tough stuff – for high school students, for elementary students, for adults.

12 High School Communication Scenarios to explore healthy communication skills:

• You get blamed for something when you did nothing wrong.
• You want to ask someone out, but you’re too nervous.
• Someone asks you out, but you’re not interested.
• Your best friend / boy friend / girl friend / partner wants to do something that you really don’t want to do.
• There’s a rumour, photo or screenshot going around about you (or your friend).
• A friend needs help, but you don’t want them to get them in trouble.
• Your friend is mad at you and ignores / excludes you.
• A friend tells you a secret and confides in you, but you know you have to break the secret.
• Your friend gets a better mark (makes the sports team / gets the part in the school play / does better) even though you really wanted to win.
• People are jerks, sometimes.
• Your parents are spliting up.
• Your parents (guardians / people who buy you cereal) don’t like your friends

Teaching communication lesson plans / skills / activities to high school students:

• Place the context first : The end goal is to learn how to communicate more effectively during tough conversations. (A tough conversation is where both parties are emotionally triggered and the outcome of the conversation is important to both sides.)
• Have fun with the communication activities in the first part – acknowledge that communication activities can be simplistic when done in isolation. But, they prove a point by isolating specific components of communication in an extreme way. (Yes, we’ll never have to describe a drawing to someone else in a different room, but what can we learn about communicating clearly, anyway? How could we communicate better in a way that gets the message across?)
• Focus on the workplace video examples. You can be assertive and do everything right sometimes… and still not get your point across. Then, what?
• Spend more time looking at communication styles – being assertive is tough. But, learning how to get your point across without sacrificing what’s important to you… that’s a game-changer that can help us in relationships, in jobs, and when life goes wrong.

Ask them to come up with a better list of communication scenarios for high school students.

Sometimes, we need to throw the lesson plan away if things aren’t working and the students aren’t engaged.

If students scoff at the communication scene because it’s not realistic, then challenge them to come up with a better scene from their lived experience.

Mental Health Note: You may need to set boundaries to keep things appropriate for the classroom.

• The real world can be a tough place.
• As teachers, we’re never really fully aware of what our students may have gone through.
• Some of our students may have undisclosed (or undiscovered) PTSD, anxiety or mental health struggles from serious or traumatic experiences.
• While we want to give high school students an opportunity to explore communication scenarios that are relevant to them, we also don’t want to trigger or single out students who are going through personal challenges themselves.

Here are some communication skills activities for high school students that are in the unit:

• Taboo: Get classmates to guess a word without using certain words to describe the object. This focuses on expressing meaning in different ways.
• Describe the Drawing: Students have to describe a drawing to their partner who has to draw it on a piece of paper. What’s the catch? The partner never gets to see the original image. This communication skills game focuses on active listening and asking questions. Students learn that clarifying understanding is a vital part of getting your point across. Both the sender and the receiver can play a role in clarifying information.
• Counting Numbers: The class has to count numbers starting from one but they can only speak one at a time, they can’t use any gestures or pre-plan the order in which they go. This communication game focuses on communicating through non-verbal facial expressions – who goes next?

For other communication lesson plans / skills / games for high school students, check the big list of communication activities .

Understanding HOW to communicate effectively requires an understanding of the communication process

There are many communication models out there.

In this 6Cs Communication Lesson Plan, students explore communication as a two-way process (and not a one-way monologue.)

There are 4 basic parts to the communication process:

• the message , and

Communication Breakdown lesson video

Understanding where communication can break down means recognizing that communication is a cyclical process

Watch this short YouTube video to get a better understanding of How Communication Works: https://youtu.be/3AYdHzUVmZY

These communication lesson plans provides a framework for students to analyze how to communicate more effectively by thinking about where things go wrong.

• Did I send the message unclearly?
• Did I send the message well, but was there noise that messed the message up?
• Was the message sent well, but the receiver didn’t understand the message – maybe because of a hidden bias or stereotype?
• Did I send the message clearly and it was received correctly, but maybe there simply wasn’t any feedback to let me know one way or another?

As a middle school teacher, I used to mark oral communication based on things like how much a student participated in the conversation, or shared ideas with the group.

But, actually, an effective communication process is more than just talking or presenting.

You can talk or write and still be ineffective if the other person doesn’t understand your message clearly.

Just because you send the message doesn’t mean the other person received the message or understood what you meant.

Being effective at communication is a cornerstone of so much in life. Our students need to know:

• How to communicate more clearly in their personal relationships (with friends, authority figures, parents, classmates, and random strangers)
• How to communicate effectively regardless of the medium – whether it’s oral communication, written communication, non-verbal communication or digital communication
• Communicating effectively is a learned skill. Some of us might pick up these skills more than others, and not even realize what we’re doing.
• Healthy communication is key to building lasting relationships.
• If we have a growth mindset, then we can realize that we can try certain techniques to communicate more clearly. (Read this article about why we need a growth mindset .)

We can use communication activities for students to help them realize that they’re saying one thing… but the way they’re saying it is sending an entirely different message!

A tough conversation is one where both sides feel strongly about the issue. The stakes matter and this is where communication can break down.

Being assertive means recognizing the core things that are important to you that you can’t budge on. These are deal-breakers in a relationship. For example, if one person wants kids and the other person doesn’t, that issue is probably a deal-breaker.

If we teach students about different communication styles, we can help them reflect on what their default personal communication style is. Knowing about communication styles might help students choose one to help them protect their boundaries and get what they want.

• We can teach these life skills by using various communication activities for students.
• Lesson plans on communication can include strategies on how to be more assertive during tough conversations . Students don’t have to be aggressive, passive-aggressive, or just plain passive.
• If we give students criteria about the differences in communication styles, this might help them reflect and shift strategies, depending on the situation.

Communication Lesson Plan PRO TIP: Being assertive doesn’t mean you have to stand your ground on every single issue.

Sometimes, we might choose not to argue or negotiate over every little issue with our team members. We can choose to let things go as long as those issues don’t cross our personal limits and boundaries.

Sometimes students will communicate in a group and participate, but that doesn’t mean they have effective communication strategies.

• Are they aggressively taking control of the conversation, making sure their points are heard and their ideas are implemented?
• Do they simply agree with everything and go with the flow even though they know it’s not a good idea – but they’re afraid of conflict?
• How often do they disagree with an idea on the inside but because they don’t want to directly confront the other person, they just find a passive-aggressive way to move slowly on the issue (in silent protest) Or, maybe they’re grumbling behind people’s backs?

Just because a team gets something done, doesn’t mean there was true collaboration .

Just because a group of students talk with each other, doesn’t mean there is effective communication happening, either…

Group work doesn’t always mean people are communicating clearly or effectively, and if we can show our students the difference between effective and ineffective communication, we can help them to become better communicators.

So, here are a few communication activities for students to help them understand where their message might be lost.

Effective communication lesson plans for Elementary, Middle, and High School students: KEY CONCEPTS:

In this package, we provide over 2 weeks of effective communication lessons to do with your class.

Communication is about imparting or exchanging information. It’s not just oral communication lessons that we have to think about.

We also need to teach students that communicating clearly and communicating assertively in tough conversations is NOT always easy , but we can improve by using strategies!

It’s one thing to tell someone something. But, when you’re arguing, are they really listening to you?

Here are four key concepts to include in Effective Communication Lesson Plans:

1. there are four basic parts to communication.

• A sender (who encodes a message),
• A receiver (who decodes the message)
• The message itself (which can be verbal, non-verbal, visual, digital, etc.)
• And feedback from the receiver (which gives the sender information about how well the message was received, if at all.)

2. There are four communication styles in tough conversations

A tough conversation is where both people want different things, and the issue is important to both parties.

Communication is easy if both players want the same thing. Things get tough when we want different things.

Then the question becomes how effectively can we communicate our needs and our boundaries so that we get what we want, but also protect our personal boundaries.

There are 4 communication styles in difficult conversations:

• Passive-Aggressive

3. We can use communication strategies to be more clear and assertive. 

Communication can break down at different parts or because we have different perspectives that affect the way we interpret messages. Strategies can help us overcome miscommunication. They are building blocks that we use to get our message across or to achieve our goals when we communicate with others.

In this package, we:

• Explore communication through 11 different activities and discuss where communication breaks down, and what strategies might help to communicate more clearly.
• Explore the difference between assertive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, and passive behaviour, and apply our understanding to multiple scenarios.
• Introduce students to the 4 basic parts of communication through a short video.
• Explore assertive / passive scenarios through video clips.
• Allow for deeper exploration of the concept of “Communication” by playing with the term using a graphic organizer (the Frayer Model of understanding.)

4. We can change the way we communicate

This is the idea behind a growth mindset – that through effort and strategies, we can improve. Effective communication is not something are born knowing how to do. It’s a skill that we can nurture and develop over time.

Effective Communication Activities for Students – CHAPTER BIG IDEA:

After this chapter, students will be able to explain that Communication is about:

• A  sender  encoding a  message  to a  receiver  who decodes the message and then provides some  feedback .
• Assertive behaviour  is when you protect your boundaries, but also respectfully consider the other person’s point of view and try to come up with a solution that works for everyone (but doesn’t compromise your personal limits.)
• People with different lived experiences / cultural background will interpret the same message differently.  We need to consider local and global perspectives when communicating.

Students will have the opportunity to:

• EXPERIENCE  classroom activities to explore how communication breaks down
• WATCH  examples of communication where people are assertive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, or passive and analyze the situations to come up with alternatives.
• UNDERSTAND  what “collaboration” is by using a vocabulary building graphic organizer (Frayer model) to brainstorm features of collaboration, examples and non-examples of collaborating with others, and finally narrow down essential characteristics of the word.

Get TWO weeks of EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION LESSON PLANS:

We communicate all the time, but students don’t always understand HOW to communicate more clearly or HOW to be ASSERTIVE and protect their personal boundaries.

So, we’ve put together OVER 2 WEEKS of lesson plans to do with your class to help your students understand how communication works (sender, receiver, message, feedback), how communication breaks down, and how to communicate more ASSERTIVELY by using strategies during tough conversations.

YOU GET 455 SLIDES / PAGES in 12 COMMUNICATION LESSON PLANS. 

• 256 slides  in POWERPOINT and GOOGLE SLIDE format
• 97 page lesson plan PDF  with  12 DIFFERENT lessons  (45-55 min each.)
• 2 page graphic organizer to analyze debate questions (HANDOUT + sample answer key)
• 2 page Vocabulary Building Graphic Organizer and Venn diagram (HANDOUT + sample answer key)
• 1 page Communication Learning Skills SELF-EVALUATION handout
• 2 page Communication Review Assessment – What did you learn? (6 short answer questions + sample answer key.)

We just saved you an incredible amount of prep work!

And the slides and handouts look legit good. Just sayin’.

Who are these Effective Communication Lesson Plans for?

Teachers  could use these communication lesson plans to introduce the concept that  communication is a skill . And, we can choose to use strategies to communicate more clearly.

Communication Lesson Plans for Homeroom teachers / Advisory Class

• Do this package in the first month of class, to set the gold standard ideal for what good communication looks like.
• Throughout the year, when students are having tough moments, you could explore whether they were being assertive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, or passive and this becomes a framework to help them communicate more clearly, especially when they’re in conflict or upset.

Communication Lesson Plans for English Language Arts teachers (English teachers / ESL / ELL teachers)

• Reading Lesson  – Reading notes about 4 communicate styles and using criteria to come up with assertive responses. (Activity 11)
• Writing Lesson – Creating memes (Activity 9) and assertive responses (Activity 11)
• Express meaning in multiple ways
• Ask questions or listen actively
• Verbal communication
• Non-Verbal communication
• Visual communication
• Clearly express yourself
• Respect different perspectives – local / global
• Media Literacy Lesson – inferring meaning from emojis and memes (Activity 9) and inferring communication styles and meaning from videos (Videos 2-8)
• List communication strategies and communication styles. (REMEMBER)
• Explain communication styles (UNDERSTAND)
• Watch new videos / scenarios and justify which communication style is predominant (APPLY)
• Compare / contrast different communication styles (ANALYZE)
• Justify an opinion by appraising the evidence supporting and against a specific communication style for a given video (EVALUATE)
• Some students will create a deep understanding (ah-ha moment) about the subtle differences between the 4 communication styles (CREATE)

Guidance Teachers / Life Skills / Social-Emotional Learning

Healthy Communication is a key component of building Relationship Skills and Social-Emotional Learning.

Use this communication curriculum to help students

• communicate their needs, wants and hard limits more effectively.
• develop positive relationships with themselves, their friends and family, their teachers and classmates, etc.
• resist peer pressure and societal pressure by communicating assertively.
• stand up for others and communicate as an active bystander.

School leaders / Admin

Principals, Admin, Division Leaders) could use these communication lessons in their schools to create a common language and exploration of growth mindset.

• This unit provides a systematic way for a grade, division, or school to explore learning skills / character development as a framework for delivering curriculum.
• Communication is often taken for granted. If all students are exposed to this framework, it makes it easier for teachers and students to try to be more assertive and to communicate more clearly.
• Doing the same (Frayer model) vocabulary building graphic organizer provides a common tool / framework that students and teachers can build around in other areas (i.e. math concepts, grammar concepts, science concepts, etc).

Ultimately, these communication lessons are meant to kick off a year / lifetime of discussion, as opposed to being a one-off activity.

• If all classes start off with the same approach, then throughout the year, as teachers do different activities, you could still connect it back to concepts of communication.
• During group work, students could be asked if they are being assertive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, or passive. Which strategy might help them to better communicate and get the learning done?

SAMPLE TWO WEEK LESSONS about Communication: (12 EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION LESSON PLANS)

We base this schedule on a 50 minute period and provide around 40-45 minutes of content per lesson. Depending on your teaching style, how often you see your class, and class dynamics, you may find that you can get through all 12 lessons in 10 days… or it stretches out to a month.

Communication activities for students – PRO TIPS:

• If you’re short on time:  pick and choose which communication games to do with your class, and which videos to watch. (You don’t have to use everything in these communication lesson plans – although you can!)
• Watch the video yourself about the Four Basic Parts of Communication  to get an idea of where the unit is going in terms of Sender, Receiver, Message, and Feedback. This way you can paraphrase student answers from this perspective to help them make connections later on:   https://youtu.be/3AYdHzUVmZY
• In Part 1, we have 11 different ice breakers / activities  that highlight different aspects of communication.

OPTION 1: Do all of the ice breakers / communication games in a row

• Thereby developing classroom spirit and finding patterns in communication.

OPTION 2: Do one or two icebreakers / communication games each day

• Each class could start with a different icebreaker each day before getting into some of the more complex and deep conversations around communication styles (assertive, aggressive, passive-aggressive, passive)
• By spreading it out, it’s not like they’re learning a bunch of games in one day.

THE BIG LIST of EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION LESSON PLANS / ACTIVITIES

Here are 11 different communication activities and communication games for students to explore how communication works and why it breaks down.

If we understand the communication process, and problems with communication, we can reflect on how we can improve communication so it doesn’t break down (and the message gets across clearly.)

• Who Am I  (Express meaning in multiple ways, ask questions, listen actively, verbal communication) – oral communication lesson
• Charades  (Express meaning in multiple ways, non-verbal communication)
• Pictionary  (Express meaning in multiple ways, visual communication)
• Taboo  (Express meaning in multiple ways, verbal communication) – oral communication lesson
• Follow the Leader  (Express meaning in multiple ways, non-verbal communication)
• Counting Numbers  (“Listen” actively to understand what is communicated, non-verbal communication)
• Twenty Questions  (Express meaning in multiple ways, ask questions / listen actively; verbal communication)
• Describe the Drawing  (Express meaning in multiple ways, ask questions / listen actively; clearly express yourself; verbal communication)
• Metaphors and Symbols. Memes and Emojis.  (Express meaning in multiple ways, express yourself; written communication, virtual spaces)
• What’s your style?  (Express meaning in multiple ways, ask questions / listen actively; clearly express yourself; respect different perspectives; verbal communication)
• Strategies to be Assertive / Practice being assertive  (Express meaning in multiple ways, ask questions / listen actively; clearly express yourself; respect different perspectives; verbal communication)

Communication Lesson Plans – PART 1. EXPERIENCE

Day / lesson 1 (50 min) communication games for students/activities part 1 (slides 1-20).

• Introduction to Communication (slides 1-5) – 5 min
• #1 Who am I Communication Game (slides 6-10) – 15 min
• #2 Charades Communication Game (slides 11-15) – 15 min
• #3 Pictionary Communication Game (slides 16-20) – 15 min

DAY / LESSON 2 (45 min) Communication Games for Students/Activities Part 2 (slides 21 – 34)

• #4 Taboo Communication Game (slides 21-25) – 15 min
• #5 Follow the leader Communication Game (slides 26-29) – 15 min
• #6 Counting numbers Communication Game (slides 30-34) – 15 min

DAY / LESSON 3 (45 min) Communication Games for Students/Activities Part 3 (slides 35 – 52)

• #7 Twenty Questions Communication Game (slides 35-39) – 15 min
• Round 1 (slide 40-45)
• Round 2 (slide 46-48)
• Round 3 (slide 49-50)
• Round 4 (slide 51-52)

DAY / LESSON 4 (50 min) Communication Games for Students/Activities Part 4 (slides 53 – 85)

• Introduction (slides 53-54)
• What is a metaphor (slides 55-60)
• What is a symbol? (slides 61-63)
• Emojis (slides 64-71) – 10 min
• What is a meme? (slide 72-76)
• Success Kid (slide 77)
• Jack Sparrow Being Chased (slide 78-81)
• Grumpy Cat (slide 82-85)

DAY / LESSON 5 (45 min) Communication Games for Students/Activities Part 5 (slides 86 – 89)

• #9 Communication Activity Part 2: Create your own meme (slide 86-89) – 45 min

DAY / LESSON 6 (50 min) Communication Games for Students/Activities Part 6 (slide 90 – 152)

• #10 What’s your style? Communication Activity (slide 90-115) – 20 min
• #11 Styles of Communication Communication Activity (slide 116 – 152) – 30 min

DAY / LESSON 7 (50 min) Communication Games for Students/Activities Part 7 (slides 153 – 170)

• Review assertive communication style (slide 153-159)
• Strategies (slides 160-169)
• Practice handout (slide 170)

Communication Lesson Plans – PART 2. WATCH

Day / lesson 8 (50 min)  videos part 1  (slides 171 – 187).

• Minds on – What are the different parts of communications (slide 171-173) – 5 min
• Watch video – identify 4 parts of communication (slide 174-176) – 10 min
• How could communication break down (slide 177 – 178) – 5 min
• What could you do to prevent communication break down (slide 179) – 5 min
• Review (slides 180-181) – 5 min
• Back to the Future Video #2 (slide 182-187) – 20 min

DAY / LESSON 9 (55 min)  Videos Part 2 (slides 188 – 216)

• Passive Aggression Video #3 (slide 188-189) 15 min
• Watch the video / discussion – 5 min
• Scenario A – 5 min
• Scenario B – 5 min
• Scenario C – 5 min
• Communication Strategies for when life is hard (slide 207 – 216) 15 min

DAY / LESSON 10 (60 min) Videos Part 3 (slides 217 – 233)

• Wrong Flower Video #5 (slides 219 – 222) 15 min
• Golf Video #6 (slide 223 – 226) 15 min
• Eels Video #7 (slide 227 – 230)  15 min
• Live Theatre Point of View Video #8 (slide 231 – 233) 15 min

Communication Lesson Plans – PART 3. UNDERSTAND

Day / lesson 11 (40 min) vocabulary builder (slides 234 – 250).

• Introduce Part 3 / Minds on (slides 234 – 236)
• Understand (Vocabulary Builder) (slide 237 – 238)
• Filling out the graphic organizer (slides 239 – 242)
• Revising graphic organizer (slides 243-247)
• Summary (slides 248-250)

DAY / LESSON 12 – Self Evaluation / Review 40 minutes total Self Evaluation / Review – (slides 251-256)

• Student Self Evaluation (slide 251-255) – 10 min
• Chapter Review Test (slide 256) – 30 min

HERE’S WHAT YOU GET  when you download the zipped file:

THE READ ME file in the PREVIEW file section tells you exactly what you get when you buy these communication lesson plans.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave a comment below!

We provide handouts:

• 5 handout packages of different activity cards: Who am I, Charades, Pictionary, Taboo, Copy this Drawing
• Create-your-own meme activity handout
• “What’s your Communication style?” student survey
• 3  DIFFERENTIATED  versions of a communication styles handout  + answer key
• “Practice being Assertive” handout  + answer key
• Vocabulary Builder graphic organizer (to develop a deeper understanding of what  Communication  means.)
• Student Self Evaluation of their “ Communication ” Learning Skill
• Chapter Review assessment and answer key of possible answers

We provide 3 different versions of the lesson slideshow (256 slides):

• A link to the Google Slideshow so you can show it right away. ( Get started in seconds!)
• A link to a version of the Google Slideshow that you can make a copy of the presentation. ( Edit the content to fit your exact classroom needs. )
• A powerpoint file that you can download (PPTX) and modify. (Edit the presentation to fit your needs, and  use the presentation when the internet is down! )

SAVE HOURS OF PREP WORK

What communication lessons do you use to teach effective communication strategies to your students?

What kind of communication lesson plans do you like to use in your classroom.

Public Speaking Activities for Secondary Students

Read on for six public speaking activities. Then, sign up for a free download of the activities that you can hopefully use in diverse ways, even as public speaking games. 

I earned an endorsement in “speech” for my teaching license. (I’m in Illinois.) In college, I took extra communication courses and observed high school speech classes. Plenty of my extracurricular activities (plus my classes) required me to prepare and deliver speeches. When I started teaching, I had experienced public speaking activities as a student and a teacher observer.

Still, I felt underprepared to teach public speaking. I had zero speech activities for high school students. My first year of teaching, I thought materials were lacking on the Internet, from textbooks, from anywhere (and I searched). This was pre-TpT and I was sinking or swimming. My textbook for the class was about sixty years old, and I had no teacher edition.

That first year I did lots of paddling, but over the years I grew confident in teaching a speech class. I developed fun impromptu speech activities and other speech activities for high school students.

That isn’t to say that I didn’t make mistakes ; I made plenty. Through messy lessons, too-short of lessons, and confused students, I learned to provide structure for students without squashing them. I realized how much preparation was needed. I changed basic rubrics to rubrics that encouraged students to set goals and take ownership of their improvement. Scaffolding and modeling became part of my class.

So! I improved and reflected. After years of teaching public speaking, I crafted ideas for what would help young speakers. Hopefully, these activities help your speech classes too.

What are some ice-breaker exercises that can be used in a public speaking activity?

Some ice-breaker exercises that can be used in public speaking activities include “Two Truths and a Lie,” where participants share two true statements and one false statement about themselves, and “Would You Rather,” where participants are asked to choose between two options and explain their choice.

What about public speaking games?

Sometimes, structure helps young speakers, so I created these public speaking activities to address common areas of concern with high schoolers. Most students fear the nature of a speech class, use too many fillers when speaking, and focus on one area, such as volume and forget about the rest: non-verbal communication, tone, eye contact, etc.

Through coaching speech, spending many weekends at speech tournaments, and teaching public speaking, I created these public speaking activities. I’ve seen variations of these or adapted these from activities geared toward younger students. These speech activities should work well with high school students, but you can modify them for middle school or college speech classes.

These are included in my public speaking unit as well because they can be used numerous times.

Fillers can distract an audience from hearing a really well-developed speech. First, not all fillers are bad. We naturally pause and add fillers. The abundance of fillers, however, can be distracting.

Sometimes speech students are unaware that they use fillers. Other times, students become nervous, pause, and fill the empty time with a filler. Talk with students about the reasons why fillers occur and if they have a time they rely on one. Showing compassion and understanding about a common problem during speeches will relax students, and they will be more likely to work on eliminating an abundance of fillers.

After showing compassion, play public speaking games to address filler words.

Before starting, choose your topic and write a list of common fillers that don’t positively add to spoken communication: um, yeah, like, uh. Ask students to contribute to the list. I normally write the list so that students can consult it.

Instruct students to speak for 30 seconds (vary the time if necessary) and not use any fillers. Students should realize how easily fillers creep into their speech. NOW! Everyone uses some fillers, and fillers can make public speaking natural. However, too many fillers can distract audiences.

Each student will give a short speech for 30 seconds. The topic isn’t too important. You can choose one for the entire class or allow students to choose.

Students must restart their speech if they use a filler. Some students will try to pause and draw out the speech by not speaking, but most students speak at a normal pace. Overall, the audience is compassionate toward the speaker because everyone realizes the difficulty of not relying on these words.

This activity is perfect after the first formal speech. Students need to decompress, but they also need to eliminate fillers. When I ask students to write goals for their future speeches, eliminating fillers is a common goal.

2. Nonverbal practice

Nonverbal communication matters. To help students experience that, ask them to perform an activity where the focus is nonverbal communication.

Students will line up in alphabetical order only using nonverbal communication. I have students line up by order of their middle names since they typically know everyone’s last names. They experiment with different forms of nonverbal communication and have fun. Most often they make a capital letter with their fingers. If some students know middle names, they will switch classmates around.

The real practice is when students realize many of them have a middle name that starts with the same letter. “A” is a common one. Then students must figure out how to communicate the second letters of Aarron, Ann, Alice, and Abraham. I will say I’ve never had a class line up correctly.

This activity is the perfect introduction to nonverbal communication. As students continue through the semester, they’ll be able to focus on purposeful movements that emphasize their points. This nonverbal activity breaks the ice as you start to work on nonverbal communication. I never plan on this nonverbal practice becoming a public speaking game, but it often does.

3. One goal

Speeches can overwhelm students. Help students focus on one goal. The best part about the “one goal” activity is that students choose their focus which creates less work for you and buy-in for students.

As students continue with class, ask them what area they see as the greatest potential for improvement. Brainstorm areas as a class. There is no right or wrong! Students normally list eye contact, proper volume level, appropriate nonverbal communication, and natural movement. Then let students decide what they desire to improve.

Students will individually decide what they want to improve in their speaking—they will each have a goal. Some students want to work on eye contact, others want to balance their volume, others want to stop fidgeting. Then I divide students into small groups. Students will practice the current speech they are creating, receiving constructive feedback when they need to correct an action to meet their goal. Their group will also tell them when they did well and moved toward meeting their goal.

(This is a bit like #1 but fillers are such a huge issue with high school orators that it gets its own activity.) I normally do this activity later in the year after students are comfortable with each other. I also don’t do this activity if I feel a class may not give meaningful feedback. Finally, I share with students that improving in an area is part of most jobs. In teaching, for example, teachers often record themselves and reflect on the video later. They then develop goals for improvement in their profession. (Sometimes it is a public speaking goal!)

This activity works well to meet individual goals and to build classroom community. My speech rubrics contain a spot for consideration on improvement of a goal. Plus, the art of reflection will serve students in any field or career, so I stress that message to them. This focused practice works well because it encourages students to work on a goal in which the teacher had very little involvement.

4. M&M/ Skittles

Who doesn’t like candy? With this fun exercise, students share information about a topic. You’ll get students talking in a low-stress, engaging way.

This candy activity is fun and quick. Bring a large bag of small candies like M&M or Skittles to class. Ask students to take as many pieces of candy as they like, but stress not to eat the candies yet. Pass the bag around. Then, students must tell a fact about themselves for each piece of candy. 15 pieces of candy? 15 facts.

This also works with review. 5 pieces of candy? Review 5 facts with the class concerning public speaking terms. After speaking, students may eat their candy. I’ve used a similar process in other classes to review material.

This activity works well as a review or as a first day of school activity. Students are publicly speaking in their speech class on the first day of school without any feedback or real regulations. Since the process is fun, their first experience in class is a positive one. Plus, the candy aspect lends itself to making a public speaking game.

5. Impromptu

Most speeches in real life are actually impromptu speeches. Interviews, business meetings, and proposal presentations require people to think quickly and to speak eloquently, all while proving their point. Body language matters too!

Activate prior knowledge with a bit of an anticipatory set. Ask students about a time they gave an impromptu speech (even though they did not probably label it “impromptu” at the time!). Most people can relate to the frustration of having ideas but not conveying them well. Many times, people think of what they should have said days later! Students probably face this frustration. Acknowledge that feeling, share they you’ve experienced it too, and supply a solution.

Thinking and speaking on your feet might come naturally to some people. With practice, even those who struggle to articulate their ideas under pressure can improve.

Have students organize a speech quickly by delivering an impromptu speech. Often I would ask a class to write a topic on a piece of paper. (Sometimes I would say that the topic needed to be persuasive or informative—but it always needed to be clean.) Students would write their topic, add it to a box, and draw from a box. The topics were great because I didn’t make them and because students knew they had the potential to draw their own.

After drawing, provide 30 seconds to outline their speech. Then, students will talk about the topic for one minute. As the school year continued, I would increase the speaking time.

Older students who have been in class for a bit will probably organize their speech with a general introductory statement, two concepts, and a concluding statement. (That varies, of course.) If students struggle with the format, create a quick outline they can apply to their topics.

Students enjoy creating their own topics and learn to speak on the spot in a mature, organized manner. At first, students groan about impromptu speaking. This area is actually where I see the most growth. Students gain confidence that they can think and speak quickly, and they start to enjoy the process.

Tone matters! Many adults don’t realize the tone that they convey shapes their communication. We should certainly work with our students concerning tone so that they are aware of its power. Not only can the wrong tone hurt speakers, but the right tone can also emphasize their message.

Define “tone” for students. Brainstorm times that students know their tone has affected them. (Normally students share stories about times they were in trouble with their parents for having the wrong tone.) Then think of times that the right tone conveyed the correct message. Students might struggle to come up with examples for best use of tone. Oftentimes, a tone that matches a speaker’s message doesn’t stand out, and that is probably because the tone was woven into the message so well.

Experiment with tone with students. Put students into groups, and assign a speaker. (Everyone will have the chance to be a speaker.) Give the speaker a list of emotions and a list of generic statements. Then ask the speaker to choose a question and an emotion that conveys tone.

Finally, the rest of the group must decide the speaker’s tone. This opportunity allows for discussion about intentional tone and miscommunication. You’ll want to circulate as students practice this.

Public speaking activities can be engaging and memorable. Students might be nervous about giving speeches, so provide a variety of opportunities for them to practice. As you build a classroom community, these activities easily can become public speaking games.

Work on material slowly and purposefully. By helping students see success with public speaking, they will gain more confidence in your speech class and in life. Soon, your speech activities for high school students will be personalized and fit your community.

As you incorporate these public speaking games and activities into your speech units, you’ll discover that they are easily adaptable. Plus, you’ll find the perfect timing for each exercise. Teaching public speaking requires experimentation and reflection. I hope these help!

Would you like these public speaking activities at your fingertips? Download these six lesson plans (plus many more!) when you sign up for library access.

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49 Communication Activities, Exercises & Games

Read on to learn about how important communication is in a relationship and how you can work on improving your communication skills.

Before you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Positive Communication Exercises (PDF) for free . These science-based tools will help you and those you work with build better social skills and better connect with others.

This Article Contains:

What are communication activities, exercises, and games, the role of communication in a relationship, how can we develop better communication skills, 18 communication games and activities for adults, 17 exercises to help improve communication in a relationship, the importance of communication in the family unit, 14 family therapy activities for communication, a take-home message.

The resources in this piece include tips, techniques, exercises, games, and other activities that give you the opportunity to learn more about effective communication, help guide your interactions with others, and improve your communication skills.

Some might feel like a chore you need to cross off your to-do list while others may make you forget you’re not just having fun with your family , but actually boosting vital life skills; however, they all have one thing in common: they will help you become a better, more effective, and more positive communicator with those who mean the most to you.

But what’s the deal with these activities, exercises, and therapy games ? Are they really that important or impactful? Do we really need to work on communicating when it seems like we’re pretty good at it already?

Check out this quote from Stephen R. Covey and take a minute to think about how vital communication really is.

The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are. And if our words and our actions come from superficial human relations techniques rather than from our own inner core, others will sense that duplicity. We simply won’t be able to create and sustain the foundation necessary for effective interdependence.

Stephen R. Covey

As Covey notes, communication is the foundation of all of our relationships , forming the basis of our interactions and feelings about one another.

According to Australia’s Better Health Channel, communication is “ the transfer of information from one place to another ” and within relationships, it “ allows you to explain to someone else what you are experiencing and what your needs are ” (Victoria Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.).

When communication is good, we feel good about our relationships. Dr. Susan Heitler (2010) puts it this way:

When people say, ‘We have a great relationship,’ what they often mean is how they feel when they talk with one another. They mean, ‘I feel positive toward that person when we interact. I send and I receive positive vibes with them.’

Besides making our relationships easier, there are also relationship-boosting benefits to good communication:

• Effective communication shows respect and value of the other person.
• It helps us to better understand each other; not all communication is about understanding—some are intended to fight, dismiss, invalidate, undermine, etc.—but it should be!
• It makes us feel more comfortable with each other and encourages even more healthy and effective communication (Abass, n.d.).

Download 3 Communication Exercises (PDF)

These detailed, science-based exercises will equip you or your clients with tools to improve communication skills and enjoy more positive social interactions with others.

Download 3 Free Communication Tools Pack (PDF)

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Fortunately, all it takes to develop better communication skills is a commitment to do so and a little bit of effort.

These tips from Australia’s Better Health Channel can help guide you toward better communication with your partner or spouse (these tips can also apply to any other relationship in your life with a little tweaking):

• Set aside time to talk without interruption from other people or distractions like phones, computers or television.
• Think about what you want to say.
• Be clear about what you want to communicate.
• Make your message clear, so that your partner hears it accurately and understands what you mean.
• Talk about what is happening and how it affects you.
• Talk about what you want, need and feel – use ‘I’ statements such as ‘I need’, ‘I want’ and ‘I feel’.
• Accept responsibility for your own feelings.
• Listen to your partner. Put aside your own thoughts for the time being and try to understand their intentions, feelings, needs and wants (this is called empathy ).
• Share positive feelings with your partner, such as what you appreciate and admire about them, and how important they are to you.
• Be aware of your tone of voice.
• Negotiate and remember that you don’t have to be right all the time. If the issue you are having is not that important, sometimes let the issue go, or agree to disagree (Victoria Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.).

If you’re experiencing high levels of conflict in your relationship(s), the Better Health Channel has some specific recommendations for you:

• Avoid using the silent treatment.
• Don’t jump to conclusions. Find out all the facts rather than guessing at motives.
• Discuss what actually happened. Don’t judge.
• Learn to understand each other, not to defeat each other.
• Talk using the future and present tense, not the past tense.
• Concentrate on the major problem, and don’t get distracted by other minor problems.
• Talk about the problems that hurt your or your partner’s feelings, then move on to problems about differences in opinions.
• Use ‘I feel’ statements, not ‘You are’ statements (Victoria Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.).

8 Tips on How to Teach Communication Skills

This useful framework comes from Alice Stott at Edutopia (2018):

• Physical: How a speaker uses their body language, facial expressions, and voice.
• Linguistic: The speaker’s use of language, including their understanding of formality and rhetorical devices.
• Cognitive: The content of what a speaker says and their ability to build on, challenge, question, and summarize others’ ideas.
• Social and emotional : How well a speaker listens, includes others, and responds to their audience (Stott, 2018).

Once you have a good framework for understanding communication, try these 8 ways to foster effective communication in your children or students:

• Teach your kids empathy so they can get a sense of what the other person is thinking and feeling.
• Teach your kids conversation skills with techniques like puppets and video modeling, which they can then apply in exercises and activities.
• Establish listening and speaking procedures in the classroom or at home (e.g., Dr. Allen Mendler’s SLANT strategy : Sit up straight, Listen, Answer and ask questions, Nod to show interest, Track the speaker; Mendler, 2013).
• Teach respectful vocabulary and remind students that being “cold” (passive) or “hot” (angry) will probably result in less understanding and more conflict.
• Teach the power of pausing (e.g., encourage them to pause, think, and ask questions like “What do you mean by that?” and “Why?”).
• Have your kids practice speaking and listening in natural settings (e.g., outside of the home and classroom).
• Encourage introspection in your children; it will help them understand themselves better as well as those around them.
• Practice taking turns with a talking stick or a ball, teaching your children that they can speak when they have the object but they are expected to listen when others are talking (Stanfield, 2017).

One of the most effective ways to avoid unnecessary disputes is to practice non-violent communication (NVC). According to Rosenberg (1999), non-violent communication methods can serve us in three ways:

• It can increase your ability to live with choice, meaning, and connection
• It helps connect empathically with yourself and others to have more satisfying relationships
• It shares resources so everyone is able to benefit

In an effort to exemplify the various forms that communication can take, we want to share some key differences between passive, assertive, and aggressive communication styles.

• Specifically, a passive communicator prioritizes the needs of others, even at their own expense. This often leads to being taken advantage of and having their own needs disregarded by others as well.
• An assertive communicator mirrors the values of NVC, which is what we should aim for. This communication style emphasizes the importance of all parties’ needs and is defined by confidence and the willingness to compromise
• Aggressive communication, also referred to as violent communication, disregards any other parties involved and consists of constant disrespect, interrupting, and domination.

Now that you are familiar with these types of communication styles, it’s time to analyze how you convey your thoughts to others (and if there is any room for improvement).

If you’re looking for some concrete ways to build communication skills in adults, you’ve come to the right place. Below are 18 games, activities, and exercises that you can use to help adults develop more effective listening and communication skills.

5 Communication Activities for Adults

To get started improving your (or your team’s, or your student’s) communication skills, give these 5 activities a try.

1. Card Pieces

This exercise from the team at MindTools is a good way to help participants develop more empathy, consider other perspectives, build their communication and negotiation skills.

First, make sure you have enough people for at least three teams of two, enough playing cards to give out between 4 and 6 cards to each person, and 15 minutes to spare.

Here’s how the activity works:

• Cut each playing card into half diagonally, then in half diagonally again, so you have four triangular pieces for each card.
• Mix all the pieces together and put equal numbers of cards into as many envelopes as you have teams.
• Divide people up into teams of three or four. You need at least three teams. If you’re short of people, teams of two will work just as well.
• Give each team an envelope of playing card pieces.
• Each team has three minutes to sort its pieces, determine which ones it needs to make complete cards, and develop a bargaining strategy.
• After three minutes, allow the teams to start bartering for pieces. People can barter on their own or collectively with their team. Give the teams eight minutes to barter.
• When the time is up, count each team’s completed cards. Whichever team has the most cards wins the round.

Afterward, you can use these questions to guide discussion on the exercise:

• Which negotiation strategies worked? Which didn’t?
• What could they have done better?
• What other skills, such as active listening or empathy, did they need to use?

2. Listen and Draw

This game is easy to play but not so easy to “win.” It requires participants’ full attention and active listening.

Gather your group of participants together and hand out a piece of paper and a pen or pencil to each player. Tell them you will give them verbal instructions on drawing an object, one step at a time.

For example, you might give them instructions like:

• Draw a square, measuring 5 inches on each side.
• Draw a circle within the square, such that it fits exactly in the middle of the square.
• Intersect 2 lines through the circle, dividing the circle into 4 equal parts.

As the exercise continues, it will get progressively harder; one misstep could mean that every following instruction is misinterpreted or misapplied. Participants will need to listen carefully to ensure their drawing comes out accurately. Once the instructions have all been read, compare drawings and decide who won.

For added engagement, decide in advance on what the finished product is supposed to represent (e.g., a spiderweb, a tree).

3. Communication Origami

This is a great exercise to help people understand that we all hear and interpret things differently, even if we are given the exact same information.

Here’s how it works:

• Give one sheet of standard-sized paper (8.5 x 11 inches) to each participant.
• Tell your participants that you will be giving them step-by-step instructions on how to fold their piece of paper into an origami shape.
• Inform your participants that they must keep their eyes and mouths closed as they follow instructions; they are not allowed to look at the paper or ask any clarifying questions.
• Give the group your instructions on how to fold the paper into the origami shape of your choice.
• Once the instructions have all been given, have everyone open their eyes and compare their shape with the intended shape.

You will likely find that each shape is a little bit different! To hit the point home, refer to these discussion points and questions:

• Make the point that each paper looks different even though you have given the same instructions to everybody. What does this mean?
• Ask the group if you think the results would have been better if they kept their eyes open or were allowed to ask questions.
• Communicating clearly is not easy, we all interpret the information we get differently that’s why it’s very important to ask questions and confirm understanding to ensure the communicated message is not distorted.

4. Guess the Emotion

Another useful exercise from the Training Course Material website is called “ Guess the Emotion .” As you might expect, it involves acting out and guessing emotions. This helps all participants practice empathy and better understand their coworkers or group members’ reactions.

Follow these instructions to play this engaging game:

• Divide the group into two teams.
• Place on a table (or put in a box) a packet of cards, each of which has a particular emotion typed on it
• Have a participant from Group A take the top card from the table and act out (pantomime) the emotion for his/her group. This is to be done in a fixed time limit (such as a minute or two).
• If the emotion is guessed correctly by Group A, they receive ten points.
• Now have a participant from Group B act out an emotion; award points as appropriate.
• Rotate the acting opportunities between the two groups.
• After 20 to 30 minutes of acting and guessing, call time and announce the winning team based on its point total.

If you have a particularly competitive group, consider giving a prize to the winning team!

5. The Guessing Game

Finally, another fun and engaging game that can boost communication skills: “ The Guessing Game. ” You will probably recognize this game, as it’s similar to what many people know as “ Twenty Questions ,” except there is no hard limit on the number of questions you can ask.

To start, separate the group into two teams of equal (or roughly equal) size. Instruct one player from each team to leave the room for one minute and come up with a common object that can be found in most offices (e.g., a stapler, a printer, a whiteboard).

When this person returns, their teammates will try to guess what the object is by asking only “Yes or No” questions (i.e., questions that can only be answered with “yes” or “no”). The team can ask as many questions as they need to figure it out, but remind them that they’re in competition with the other team. If there’s time, you can have multiple rounds for added competition between the teams.

Take the last 10 minutes or so to discuss and debrief. Use the following points and questions to guide it:

• Tell the group that obviously it took a long time and effort for us to find out the object in each round, but what if we didn’t have time and only had one question to ask to find out the object, what would that question be?
• The question would be “What is the object?” which is an open-ended question.
• Open-ended questions are an excellent way to save time and energy and help you get to the information you need fast, however, closed questions can also be very useful in some instances to confirm your understanding or to help you control the conversation with an overly talkative person/customer.

5 Listening Activities for Adults

If you’re intent on improving listening skills, in particular, you have lots of options; give these 5 activities a try.

1. Telephone Exercise

This classic exercise from Becky Norman (2018) at Sift’s Training Zone illustrates why listening is such an important skill, and why we shouldn’t ignore any opportunities to improve it.

Split your group into two even lines. At opposite ends of each line, whisper a phrase or short sentence to the person on the end and tell them to pass it on using only whispers, one person at a time. They can only repeat the phrase or sentence once.

While participants are busy passing the message along to the next person in line, play music or engage them in conversation to create some white noise. This will make it a bit more difficult but it will mimic real-life conditions, where distractions abound.

When the messages have made it to the end of each line, have the last person to receive the message in each line report out on what they heard. Next, have the first person to receive the message in each line report the original message and compare it to the final message received.

2. Stop Listening Exercise

This exercise , also from Becky Norman’s piece (2018), will show participants the emotional consequences of not listening and—hopefully—encourage them to practice better listening skills.

Split your group into two smaller groups of equal size and take one group outside the room. Tell them that they are instructed to stop listening to their partner after about 30 seconds, and to be open in showing their disinterest. Tell the other group to think of something that they are passionate about and be prepared to tell their soon-to-be partner a meaningful or personally relevant story about this topic.

Bring the other group back in, put all the participants into pairs, and tell them to get started. Observe the behavior from the listeners and the reactions from the speakers until you’re sure each speaker has picked up on what’s happening. Stop the conversations at this point and explain the instructions that were given to each group.

Facilitate a group discussion on the importance of listening, how to use active listening, and what indicates that someone is truly listening.

3. Listener and Talker Activity

The “Listener and Talker” activity is another good activity for showing the importance of active listening and giving participants a chance to practice their skills.

Divide your group into pairs, with one partner assigned to the talker role and the other assigned to the listener role. The talker’s job is to describe what he or she wants from a vacation without specifying a destination. The listener’s job is to listen attentively to what is being said (and what is not being said) and to demonstrate their listening through their behavior.

After a few minutes of active listening, the listener should summarize the three or main criteria the talker is considering when it comes to enjoying their vacation. Finally, the listener should try to sell the talker on a destination for their vacation. After a quick debrief on how well the listener listened, the two should switch roles and try the exercise again.

This exercise gives each participant a chance to practice talking about their wants and needs, as well as an opportunity to engage in active listening and use the knowledge they gained to understand and relate to the speaker.

4. Memory Test Activity

This great activity from TrainingCourseMaterial.com is called the “Memory Test” activity.

• Tell participants that you are going to read them a list of words to test their memory.
• Instruct them to listen carefully, as they cannot write down any of the words. Tell them you will test them later to see how many of the words they can remember.
• When you finish reading the list of words, distract your participants by talking about something else for at least one full minute.
• Once you have finished talking, have each participant write down as many words as they can remember from the list.

You (and your participants) will find that it’s pretty difficult to remember a list of somewhat-random words, especially when there is a break in time and another discussion in between hearing them and recalling them! Relate this to real-life listening by emphasizing the importance of paying attention to people when they are speaking to you, especially if it’s an important conversation.

5. Just Listen Activity

This activity comes from the folks at MindTools.com and offers participants a chance to communicate their feelings and provide a recap or rephrasing of another person’s feelings on a subject.

To get started, you will need an even number of people to pair off (or prepare to partner with one yourself) and eight index cards per pair. These index cards should have one topic written on each card; try to make sure the topics are interesting but not too controversial, as you don’t want listeners to dislike the speakers if they disagree with their viewpoint (e.g., you should probably avoid politics and religion).

Use these instructions to conduct the activity:

• Have the team members sit down in their pairs.
• Give each pair eight of the index cards.
• Instruct one partner to choose a random card and then speak for three minutes on how he or she feels about the topic.
• Instruct the other partner to stay quiet while the first partner talks, just listening instead of speaking.
• After the three minutes is up, the listener has one minute to recap what the speaker said (not agree, disagree, or debate, just recap).
• Have each pair switch roles and repeat the exercise so both partners get a chance to speak and to listen.

After each participant has played both roles, end the activity and guide a discussion with the following questions:

• How did speakers feel about their partners’ ability to listen with an open mind? Did their partners’ body language communicate how they felt about what was being said?
• How did listeners feel about not being able to speak about their own views on the topic? How well were they able to keep an open mind? How well did they listen?
• How well did the listening partners summarize the speakers’ opinions? Did they get better as the exercise progressed?
• How can they use the lessons from this exercise at work?

You will find this activity at this link , exercise #4.

6 Nonverbal Communication Activities for Adults

Nonverbal communication is just as important as verbal communication, if not more so!

Use these 6 activities to practice reading and “speaking” effective nonverbal messages.

1. Power of Body Language

This activity from TrainingCourseMaterial.com will help your participants work on their body language skills.

• Tell the participants that you are going to give them a series of instructions and you want them to follow them as fast as they can.
• Put your hand to your nose.
• Clap your hands.
• Touch your shoulder.
• Stamp your foot.
• Cross your arms.
• Put your hand to your mouth (but while saying this one, put your hand to your nose).
• Observe how many participants copied what you did instead of what you said.

Share this observation with your group and lead a discussion on how body language can influence our understanding and our reactions. It can reinforce what we hear or it can interfere with the verbal communication we receive. The more aware we are of this possibility, the better communicators we become. It’s vital to keep your own body language in mind, just as it’s vital to notice and understand others’ body language.

2. Clap and Follow

The “Clap and Follow” activity is a great way to practice using your body in conjunction with verbal communication.

It works like this:

• Tell your group that this is a game that requires their full concentration.
• When they hear one clap from the leader (you), tell them this means they should stand up.
• When they hear two claps from the leader, they should hop once in place.
• When they hear three claps, they should rub their belly.
• When they hear four claps, they should do a 360-degree turn on the spot.
• When they hear five claps, they should pat their head.
• Begin the activity! Start with one clap, then two claps, and so on until you have given the group each instruction once.
• Now, mix it up! Switch between the five different instructions and begin to pick up the pace. This is when the eliminations begin.
• Each time a participant engages in the wrong activity, eliminate them from the game. Continue until there is one clear winner.

If you have a competitive group, you may want to bring a prize to ensure active engagement with the exercise. It will give participants a chance to practice nonverbal communication in a fun context.

3. Wordless Acting

This activity from Grace Fleming (2018) at ThoughtCo will show your participants how much we “speak” with our body language and facial expressions.

Here are the instructions:

• Separate your group into pairs.
• Assign one participant in each pair to be Partner A and the other to be Partner B.
• Give each participant a copy of the script (copied below).
• Instruct Participant A to read his or her lines out loud, but instruct Participant B to communicate his or her lines in a nonverbal way.
• Provide Participant B with a secret emotional distraction written on a piece of paper (e.g., Participant B is in a rush, is really bored, or is feeling guilty).
• Have each pair work through the script.
• After each pair has finished working through the script, have the “A” participants guess what emotion their partner was feeling.

This is the script you will give each participant:

A: Have you seen my book? I can’t remember where I put it. B: Which one? A: The murder mystery. The one you borrowed. B: Is this it? A: No. It’s the one you borrowed. B: I did not! A: Maybe it’s under the chair. Can you look? B: Okay—just give me a minute. A: How long are you going to be? B: Geez, why so impatient? I hate when you get bossy. A: Forget it. I’ll find it myself. B: Wait—I found it!

After the activity, guide a discussion on how much information we can pick up from nonverbal communication and how important it is to regulate our bodies and our facial expressions when communicating, even if we’re also using verbal communication.

4. We Have to Move Now!

Another great exercise from Grace Fleming (2018) is called “We Have to Move Now!” and it will help your participants learn how to express and detect several different emotions.

These are the instructions for this activity:

• Cut several strips of paper.
• On each strip of paper, write down a mood, feeling, or disposition, like guilty, happy, suspicious, paranoid, insulted, or insecure.
• Fold the strips of paper so you can’t see what is written on it and place them in a bowl or jar. These are your prompts.
• Have each participant take a prompt from the bowl or jar and read the exact same sentence to the class, but with the emotion the prompt specifies.
• The sentence everybody will read is: “We all need to gather our possessions and move to another building as soon as possible.”
• Have the participants guess the emotion of each reader by writing down what they think the speaker is feeling (or what they are supposed to be feeling).

After each participant has had a chance to read the sentence based on one of the prompts, run through the emotions displayed and see how many each participant guessed correctly. Finally, lead a debriefing discussion on how things like tone and body language can impact the way a message is received.

5. Stack the Deck

All you’ll need for this exercise is a deck of playing cards, a blindfold for each participant, and some space to move around.

Here’s how “Stack the Deck” works:

• Shuffle the deck of cards and hand one out to each participant.
• Instruct the participants to keep their cards a secret; no one should see the suit or color of another participant’s card.
• Tell the participants that they will not be allowed to talk at all during this exercise.
• Instruct your participants to assemble into four groups according to their suit (hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades), but using only nonverbal communication.
• If you have the time and your participants have the inclination, try blindfolding each participant and giving the same instructions—it makes it much more difficult and more time-consuming!
• Once participants have all gathered into one of the four groups, have them line up according to their rank (Ace is the lowest, King is the highest); again, they cannot speak or show their cards to anyone during this part of the exercise.
• The group that lines up in the right order first wins!

As always, you can offer a prize to the winning team to motivate your participants.

This exercise will show how difficult it is to communicate without words, but it will also show your participants that it is not only possible, it gets easier as they start to pick up on one another’s nonverbal cues.

You can find this exercise at this link (Activity #3).

6. Silent Movie

Finally, facilitate this activity to really drive home the importance of effective nonverbal communication.

Divide your participants into two groups. For the first half of the activity, one group will be screenwriters and the other group will be actors. In the second half, the two groups will switch roles.

Instruct the screenwriters to write a silent movie, but to keep these things in mind:

• Silent movies tell a story without words. It’s important to start the scene with the actor doing an obvious task, like cleaning the house or rowing a boat.
• The scene must be interrupted when a second actor (or several actors) enter the scene, and their arrival should have a big impact. The character(s) could be anyone (or anything), including burglars, salesmen, children, or even animals.
• A physical commotion must occur.
• The problem that is caused by the commotion must be resolved by the end of the scene.

Give the screenwriters time to write out their script, then have the actors perform the script. Once the scene is finished, have the groups switch roles.

The communication game – Asgar Hussain

2 Communication Group Activities

Other great activities for group communication include the “Square Talk” and “Follow All Instructions” activities.

1. Square Talk Activity

For this activity , you will need one blindfold for each participant, one long piece of rope for each team (teams should be composed of around 5 participants each), and 25 minutes.

Follow these steps to give this activity a try:

• Divide your group of participants into groups of about 5 each.
• Clear the room so you have as much space as possible.
• Blindfold each participant and tell them their objective: to make a square from a rope (i.e., stand in the shape of a square with their team).
• Disorientate each participant by moving them a bit, spinning them around, etc.
• All team members are blindfolded and must remain so for the duration of the activity.
• The rope you are holding is approximately ___ feet in length.
• The role you are holding is knotted together to form a circle; it must not be undone.
• You must not let go of the rope.
• You will be told when you have 5 minutes remaining.
• Allow the teams to work on the activity and inform them when they have 5 minutes left.

Once the teams have given this activity their best shot, use these 5 discussion questions to review the importance of good group communication:

• Do you feel as a group you communicated effectively?
• During the Activity, what communication skills did you use effectively?
• During the activity, what communication skills could you have used to improve performance?
• How important is communication in the workplace? Why?
• What key points have you learned about communication from this activity, that you wish to apply in the workplace?

2. Follow All Instructions Activity

This activity from TrainingCourseMaterial.com is a great one for young people, but it can be used with participants of all ages. All you’ll need is a set of instructions for each participant.

• Write all of your teams initials at the top right-hand corner of this sheet.
• Write your first name on your sheet of paper.
• Write the total of 3 + 16 + 32 + 64 here: __________________
• Underline instruction 1 above.
• Check the time by your watch with that of one of your neighbor’s.
• Write down the difference in time between the two watches at the foot of this page.
• Draw three circles in the left-hand margin.
• Put a tick in each of the circles mentioned in 6.
• Sign your signature at the foot of the page.
• On the back of the page, divide 50 by 12.5.
• When you get to this point in the test, stand up, then sit down and continue with the next item.
• If you have carefully followed all these instructions, call out ‘I have’.
• On the reverse of this page, draw quickly what you think an upright bicycle looks like from overhead.
• Check your answer to Item 9, multiply it by 5 and write the result in the left-hand margin opposite this item.
• Write the 5th, 10th, 9th and 20th letters of the alphabet here: ___________________
• Punch three holes with your pen here: o o o
• If you think you are the first person to get this far, call out ‘I’m in the lead’.
• Underline all the even digits on the left-hand side of the page.
• Draw triangles around the holes you punched in Item 15.
• Now you’ve finished reading all the instructions, obey only 1, 2, 20 & 21.
• Stand up and say, “We’re the greatest team in the World!”

As you can see, the instructions include lots of silly directives (e.g., “When you get to this point in the test, stand up, then sit down and continue with the next item.”) that will identify who is following the directions and who is not—but the person that stands is actually the one not following directions!

The first and only verbal instruction you will give participants is to read all the written instructions first before engaging in any of the directives. The first person to complete the list will be declared the winner of the activity. You can offer a prize to the winner if you think the group would be motivated by it.

This exercise is a fun way to see who is paying attention and who is skipping the most vital instruction—to read everything before acting.

7 Communication Games for Couples

Defeating Divorce shares the following three games aimed at improving communication in a romantic relationship.

This game is goal-directed, meaning the couple is working towards a common goal, and that goal requires effective communication.

• The couple sits back to back with an identical set of building blocks in front of each of them.
• One partner uses their blocks to create some sort of building or structure.
• The builder partner then relays a series of instructions to the other partner to help him or her build the exact same structure.
• The listener partner must try to build the same structure based on the speaker partner’s instructions.

This game takes some serious teamwork and good communication, and it can be repeated as needed to help a couple build their skills.

2. Minefield

“Minefield” is a physical game that will not only get both partners up and moving, but it will also require a great deal of trust and communication to complete the challenge.

You will need a blindfold for one partner, some space to navigate, and some objects with which you can create a minefield or obstacle course. Once the course is ready to go, blindfold one partner and bring them into the room.

The challenge here is for the non-blindfolded partner to guide the blindfolded partner through the obstacle course using only verbal communication. The couple will only succeed if the blindfolded partner has trust in their partner and the non-blindfolded partner is an effective verbal communicator.

Feelings of frustration are common in this game, but it can be a great way to highlight issues in communication or, alternately, highlight the couple’s communication strengths.

3. Give Me a Hand

This game is another one that can be frustrating for the couple but ultimately provides a great opportunity to build effective communication skills and unite the two in a common goal.

In this game, the couple will be given a seemingly easy task to complete, such as buttoning a shirt or tying a shoe, but with a catch—each partner will have one arm tied behind their back. The couple will find that the lack of one arm makes the task much more difficult than they might expect!

To complete the task, the couple will need to communicate effectively and coordinate their movements. It will be tough, but immensely satisfying to successfully complete this challenge!

4. Twenty Questions Times Two

If you remember the game “Twenty Questions”, you’ll recognize this game. It can be used to help couples communicate, share important details, and strengthen their connection.

Here’s how:

• The couple should schedule some time alone, without distractions.
• Before playing the game, each partner should come up with a list of 20 detailed personal questions to ask the other partner. The couple should feel free to get creative here!
• Both partners take turns asking each other one question at a time.
• When they’ve finished asking each other their questions, they should reverse them! Instead of asking questions like, “What is your favorite color?” each partner will ask, “What is my favorite color?”

This fun twist on a familiar game will result in greater knowledge and understanding of your spouse and, hopefully, better communication skills.

5. Eye-to-Eye

This game is a good way for couples to work on communicating and improving their connection, and all you need is your eyes!

Here’s how to do it:

• The couple sits facing each other, close enough to hold hands.
• Each partner looks directly into the other partner’s eyes.
• Each partner should take a minute to notice the feelings they are experiencing at this point.
• One partner begins talking about something simple and easy to discuss, like what happened that day, what they had for lunch, or something they are grateful for.
• The other partner reciprocates with a similar conversation, all while holding eye contact.
• The couple continues sharing things one at a time until each partner has shared at least three or four times.
• The couple discusses what the experience was like.

Many people find this game uncomfortable at first, but with practice, it can greatly enhance your sense of intimacy with your partner.

6. The Top Three

Similar to the “three good things” exercise, this game’s aim is to boost a couple’s gratitude for one another and give them both a chance to practice expressing it. Couples should schedule a time for this game every day, but the good news is that it doesn’t take long—just a few minutes will do.

To play “The Top Three”, couples should follow these instructions:

• At the end of each day, take some time to reflect on your day. Think about what your partner has done for you today.
• Take turns sharing those three things with your partner and tell them what each thing meant to you.
• Don’t forget to say “thank you” or otherwise verbally express your gratitude to your partner!

This game gets couples to practice vocalizing their appreciation and expressing gratitude, two things that are not necessarily in everyone’s daily communications but can have a big impact on a relationship.

7. Make a Playdate

Playdates are not just for kids or puppies—they are a great idea for couples as well! A play date is not your average, regularly scheduled programming sort of date, but something that is different, spontaneous, unique, and/or just plain fun!

Here are the three ground rules for the playdate:

• It has to be something for just the couple to do and they cannot include the kids or discuss mundane things like chores or bills.
• It has to be something that requires both partners to be present in the moment; think sailing, rock climbing, or dance lessons rather than seeing a movie or going out to dinner.
• The couple should take turns picking the activity and try to surprise their partner with something new.

Planning this date will not only make it easier to feel connected and closer to one another, but it also provides couples with an opportunity to communicate their love for one another through their actions. Depending on the date activity, it can also provide some much-needed time for the couple to talk.

5 Exercises and Activities for Married Couples

These exercises , also from Defeating Divorce, are not just for married couples, but for anyone in a committed relationship.

1. Fireside Chats

This communication exercise is based on President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats,” in which he addressed the American people with the intention of making it feel as if he was speaking directly into their living room, carrying on a calm and rational discussion of important issues.

The intention of this exercise for couples is similar: to make the couple feel more connected, more aware of what is going on in each other’s lives, and to maintain a pulse on how the relationship is going.

The two partners should schedule a 15 to 30-minute “fireside chat” each week to practice their ability to speak calmly, respectfully, and effectively about important and relevant issues. They should minimize the chances of distraction (turn off the TV, put their phones on silent, etc.) and focus only on one another for these chats.

What the couple discusses is up to them, but if there are salient relationship issues, this is a good time to talk about them. If the issues are very serious, it may be a good idea to start out this exercise talking about less intense, less emotional topics before moving on to the problem areas.

2. High-Low Activity

The high-low activity also aims to help couples feel more connected and in touch with one another, which requires measured and thoughtful communication. Engaging in this exercise daily will give the couple a chance to practice their communication skills on a regular basis, as well as their active listening skills.

Here’s how the exercise works:

• Wait until the end of the day (e.g., at the end of dinner, around bedtime) to put it into practice.
• The couple will then “check-in” with each other about the other’s day.
• Each partner will ask the other to share their “high” of the day or the best part of their day.
• Next, each partner will ask the other to share their “low” of the day or the worst or most disappointing part of their day.
• As one partner is sharing, the other should practice active listening techniques, conveying their empathy and understanding to their partner.

This simple activity will result in a more intimate and understanding relationship between the two partners, all for just a few minutes a day.

3. Listening Without Words

If a couple wants to practice both their verbal and nonverbal communication, this is a great way to do it. The “Listening Without Words” activity allows each partner to apply both verbal and nonverbal communication skills, as it involves switching between only speaking and only listening.

This is how to practice it:

• The couple will schedule some time for themselves without kids, work, or other responsibilities interrupting them.
• They set a timer for somewhere between 3 to 5 minutes.
• Until the timer goes off, one partner acts as the speaker and the other acts as the listener. The speaker will talk about any subject they’d like to talk about.
• While the speaker talks, the listener will attempt to show the speaker compassion, empathy, and understanding through nonverbal communication only (e.g., smiling, nodding, taking their partner’s hand).
• When the timer goes off, the partners will have a chance to process what they experienced and discuss any thoughts or feelings that came up.
• Finally, the partners switch roles and repeat the exercise.

This exercise is a great way to boost your bond and your skills at the same time.

4. Eye See You

Similar to a previous exercise (“Eye-to-Eye”), this exercise relies heavily on eye contact; however, unlike the previous exercise, this one does not allow talking until the end.

Here’s how to give it a try:

• The couple should be in a quiet and relaxing environment, with as few distractions as possible.
• They sit in two chairs facing one another, near to one another but not touching.
• The couple sets a timer for five minutes and settles in their respective seats, making and holding eye contact with one another. They will hold eye contact but refrain from speaking or touching until the timer goes off.
• Both partners should be encouraged to note any thoughts, feelings, or sensations that come bubbling up during these five minutes.
• Once the timer goes off, the two should try to guess what the other person was thinking and feeling during the five minutes. Once they have a chance to guess, they should discuss these things that bubbled to the surface as they maintained eye contact.

It might surprise some people to hear what their partner was thinking and feeling during the activity, but a strong relationship depends on understanding and empathizing with one another, making communication like this a necessity.

5. Send Me a Postcard

Although we’ve mostly focused on verbal communication and communications via body language, facial expressions, and touch, there is another form that we haven’t mentioned: written communication. This activity guides the couple in developing more effective written communication skills.

Both partners should have two blank postcards and something to write with for this exercise. On one postcard, each partner will write down a message to the other partner communicating a frustration, a feeling, or a desire. They should take a few minutes to create a thoughtful message to their partner.

Once they have their postcard ready to “mail” each partner will deliver their message to their partner without any verbal communication. They will both read their partner’s message and take a few moments to process. When they feel ready, they will use their remaining blank postcard to craft a response to their partner’s message.

When both partners have finished writing their response, they will deliver those messages to one another as well. After they have both read the response postcards, the couple can debrief and discuss their messages to one another.

5 Communication Exercises for Couples Therapy

If you’re hungry for more couples’ communication exercises, maybe these five exercises will hit the spot!

1. Active Listening

Active listening is not the easiest skill to master, but it is an important one to develop. This exercise from marriage counseling expert Racheal Tasker will give you a chance to practice it with the person closest to you.

The next time you and your partner are talking about something important or sensitive, put these tips and techniques into practice:

• The speaker should remain focused on a single thought or idea.
• The listener should listen attentively to the speaker, concentrating on understanding their perspective and attempting to gain new insights into their thoughts and feelings.
• The speaker and listener should switch roles after a while to allow each to practice both types of communication.
• Both partners should practice speaking and listening with patience and love, allowing their feelings for their partner to guide them toward true understanding rather than just reacting (Tasker, n.d.).

2. Sharing Emotions Freely

It can be tough to be truly open with our emotions, but it’s vital for effective communication and a healthy relationship. Try this exercise to work on this skill.

The couple should agree to try this exercise together and follow these instructions:

• Decide on a specific time and place to put this exercise into practice.
• Let your partner know what you need to feel safe sharing your feelings, and listen to what your partner needs to feel safe sharing his or her feelings.
• Be sure to also ask your partner what would make him or her feel more comfortable as you share your feelings, as it can be just as difficult to hear as it is to share.
• Share with your partner! If it helps, use a timer to limit how much sharing can occur and to ensure equal time to share feelings.
• Listen to what your partner tells you and discuss what, if any, concrete steps you can take based on the information you’ve both shared. Commit to using the information you gained to improve your communication skills and your relationship in general (Tasker, n.d.).

3. Use Positive Language

Another great exercise from Racheal Tasker is focused on using positive language with one another. It can be surprisingly easy to slide into a pattern of mostly neutral or even negative language with your partner, but you can use this exercise to counter that tendency.

Here’s what to do:

• Commit to using positive language when you communicate with your partner.
• Ask your partner to make the same commitment to positive language.
• Avoid being overly critical or negative when communicating with your partner.
• Use a positive and encouraging tone when you speak to your partner.
• Keep an eye on the words you use; try to incorporate words like “love”, “feel”, “appreciate”, and ditch words like “fault”, “never”, and “hate” (e.g., “I hate it when you do X!”).

As partners continue to practice this exercise on a regular basis, they will find that their communication style grows more positive with less effort, and their relationship will flourish (Tasker, n.d.).

4. Take a Trip Together

There’s nothing like traveling with someone to work on your communication skills! Making a trip successful requires tons of communication, coordination, and clear expectations, but it can also open you up to fun new experiences and relaxation. To practice communicating with your partner, try planning and taking a trip together.

Plan your trip with a focus on doing things you both like, going to a place you’d both like to visit, and trying new food, activities, and other experiences together. Getting out of your routine and into a novel environment can do wonders for your communication—not to mention your overall mood.

Use some of the other tips and techniques mentioned in this article when you are planning your trip and while you are enjoying your trip; you’re sure to see some improvements to your communication with your partner (Tasker, n.d.).

You can find this exercise at this link , second exercise from the bottom.

5. I Feel (Blank)

The final exercise from Tasker is called “I Feel _____” and it’s a simple one.

We often have trouble sharing our feelings, even (or especially) with those we are closest to. A great way to work on communicating your feelings more often—and more effectively—is to practice saying “I feel (blank).”

The next time you are experiencing strong emotions or discussing a sensitive or difficult subject with your partner, try beginning your sentences with “I feel…” and continue from there. So, if you’re upset with your partner for forgetting about an important appointment or canceling plans at the last minute, instead of saying “You don’t respect my time,” try “I feel like you don’t respect my time.”

Framing your discussion in this manner—as a statement of your feelings rather than a personal attack or blaming session—is not only conducive to greater understanding, it also shows your partner that you care about having a constructive conversation and that your intentions are not to hurt them but to help them see from your perspective.

According to researchers Peterson and Green (2009), family communication is so important because:

“…it enables members to express their needs, wants, and concerns to each other. Open and honest communication creates an atmosphere that allows family members to express their differences as well as love and admiration for one another.”

The benefits of high-quality communication make spending time on improving the way family members relate to one another a task that is well worth the time spent on it. If you’re interested in working on your communication skills as a family, give the following activities and exercises a try.

These 14 activities are great tools to use in family therapy, but you can also try them at home.

4 Group Exercises for the Family

These four group exercises are a great introduction to communication skill-building as a family. They’re fun, engaging, and good for all ages!

1. What If?

The best time to work on communication skills is when families take the time to just sit and relax together. This simple game is a great way to do that, allowing families to improve how they communicate with one another while laughing together and putting their imagination to good use.

You will need strips of paper, a pencil or pen for each family member, and two bowls.

• Get two slips of paper and something to write with for each family member.
• On the first slip, have each family member write a question off the top of his or her head; it can be silly, serious, or anywhere in between. Put all the questions in one of the bowls and give them a good mix.
• On the second slip of paper, have each family member write an answer to the question they came up with. Place these slips in the second bowl and mix them up.
• Pass each bowl around the room and have each family member take one question slip and one answer slip.
• Have each family member read the question and the answer that they have in their hand. The questions and answers might fit well together or they may result in absurd combinations!
• Continue the game with two more slips of blank paper. It may take a few rounds for everyone to get the hang of the game, but family members will get more comfortable with the game and enjoy it more as they go along.

Use the following questions to guide your discussion as a family:

• Did the activity spark your imagination?
• Why did the questions and answers get funnier after several rounds?

2. Expressing Individuality

Although families usually share values, norms, and beliefs, that doesn’t mean all family members will see things the same way. It can be hard for some family members to communicate their thoughts and feelings when they feel like the odd one out or a “black sheep” in the family.

To make sure your family is a safe space for everyone to share their thoughts and feelings, give the “Expressing Individuality” activity a try. It will help each family member understand that they are a valuable part of the family and that they are always free to share their unique perspective.

You’ll need about an hour for this activity, 15 minutes to make the dough and 45 minutes for the activity itself. Use one of the recipes below to make your own play dough as a family.

If you want to make reusable play dough, mix together:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup water (add food coloring to water if you want colored clay)
• 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1 tablespoon oil

After mixing these ingredients together, put over low heat and stir slowly. When the dough has formed into a small ball, remove it from the heat and knead while still warm. Store the clay in a sealed container.

If you plan on baking your designs at the end of this activity to preserve them, mix together:

• ½ cup water
• Food coloring (if desired—you can also paint the figures after you bake them)

Follow these instructions to encourage each family member to express their individuality:

• If you love Boy Scouts, you may want to mold the image of a person sitting on a log by a campfire.
• If you received an award as the “Employee of the Month,” you may want to mold the image of something that represents hard work, or dependability.
• If friendliness is a personal characteristic that you value, you may want to mold a face with a pleasant smile, or if you have a great love for animals, you may want to mold several of your favorite animals.
• After creating your unique design, you can preserve it by placing it on a cookie sheet and baking it in the oven on warm for several hours (until hard). This will harden the clay hard so that it maintains its shape. If you did not use food coloring to color the clay, or if you like to paint, you could paint the hardened figure. Once everyone has completed a mold, display these molds in the home.

To continue working on communicating your individuality as a family, ask these questions and discuss your answers together:

• Why did you choose to make what you did?
• What does it mean to you?

If the idea of creating a figure out of play dough doesn’t appeal to you, you can also try these two alternatives:

• You could draw pictures using plain white paper and colored pencils/crayons. Drawing may allow you to express more ideas than if you use clay. Make sure that you do not place an emphasis on artistic abilities. It is okay to draw simple stick figures that represent people or other objects.
• You could cut pictures out of old magazines and paste them on a poster board. After each person has completed a mold, picture, or collage, allow each family member to explain how their collage, picture or mold represents them.

3. Hints of Anger

Anger is a normal human emotion, and we will all get angry at some point. Instead of trying to avoid or deny anger, it’s vital that families learn how to manage their anger and communicate it to others in a healthy way. This activity will help family members identify their anger cues (the signs that indicate they are getting angry) and help them regulate their emotions to ensure they don’t say or do something they will regret.

Here’s how to do this activity as a family:

• Tell family members to think about a time when they were angry or upset, and consider how they felt.
• Were your hands relaxed or clenched in a fist?
• Was your heart rate normal or beating fast?
• Were your muscles relaxed or tight with tension?
• What kind of thoughts was going through your head?
• As a family, discuss any discrepancies between what you think about your anger cues and what other family members think.
• How did your body feel during this period of time?
• In which scenario did you feel more comfortable, angry, or happy?
• Discuss the importance of knowing when you are getting upset and might need to take a break and think.

After the activity, discuss these questions as a family:

• Why is it important to recognize the signs that you are angry?
• Why is it important to control your anger?
• What do you feel like specifically, when you are upset?
• What are the things you are going to do to manage your anger so it does not hurt your family relationships?
• Can recognizing anger cues help in managing your anger?

4. Family Meetings

Family meetings are a good idea for a lot of reasons, but yet another benefit of these get-togethers is the potential for building and developing better communication skills as a family. Regular family meetings can help family members learn how to:

• Make joint decisions
• Plan together
• Accept responsibility
• Show concern for others
• Spend some quality time together

Pick one night of the week when your family can consistently get together for a weekly family meeting that lasts 30 to 60 minutes, and make sure it’s scheduled on everyone’s calendar.

Here’s how to conduct good family meetings:

• Set a regular time. Setting a regular time and place gives the family council a position of importance and results in it becoming a permanent part of family operations. If everyone knows that the family is meeting together regularly, they find that most problems can wait a few days to be discussed. For this reason, some families like weekly meetings.
• Use an agenda. Post a paper during the week where family members can list concerns they want brought up (possibly, the message center). Discuss things in the order listed. This also reduces problems between meetings when parents can say, “List it on the agenda and we’ll discuss it at the meeting.”
• Attendance is voluntary . All members of the family are invited to attend — but attendance is voluntary. However, if a member is not present, he/she is still expected to abide by any decisions made by the family council.
• Each person has an equal voice . Everyone should be encouraged to contribute ideas and suggestions. All members must be treated the same, regardless of age. Using the steps of negotiation to (1) introduce the problem, (2) discuss solutions, and (3) vote on a solution. This gives everyone a chance to be involved. Councils do not always run smoothly. Teenagers are often suspicious that the new program is just another way for parents to gain compliance with their demands. In the first council meetings, rebelliousness may be exhibited to deliberately test whether parents are sincere about including them in family decision-making.
• Use rules of order . If participation is to be equal, then some type of order must be maintained. If a person has the right to express himself, then he also has the right to be heard — which implies that others have the obligation to listen. Rules of order help this situation.
• Rotate chairmanship . If the same person conducts all meetings, that person eventually begins to assume an air of superiority. To help maintain a feeling of equality, family members should take turns conducting the councils. This allows each person to experience the privileges and the responsibilities of this position.
• Accentuate solutions . Family council should not be “just a gripe session” — a time to get together and complain. In order to prevent this, you may decide that the person presenting a problem must also suggest one possible solution. Family members could then discuss alternate solutions or modify the one presented. In practice, some solutions do not work as well as anticipated. As family members begin to live with a decision, they may decide it needs to be changed. This change, however, must wait until the next regular meeting. Children soon recognize a need for better solutions and they learn by experience to make wiser choices. When family council is held regularly, each member learns to project ahead and anticipate problems. When this occurs, the emphasis at council meetings shifts from problem-solving to problem prevention and planning. Family council can also be a time to plan fun things like vacations or family outings. Families can talk about different places to visit and how they want to spend the time available.
• Decide on the authority level . The family council can be the final authority for the family, or a family can have a modified version of decision making. For it to be effective, however, most decisions made by the council need to be binding. If parents always overrule the council, children will soon lose interest.
• Keep a record . There sometimes develops a difference of opinions as to who conducted the last meeting, what matters were discussed, and what plans were agreed upon. For this reason, a secretary to record minutes is most helpful. The secretary can rotate with each meeting.

After your first family meeting, discuss these questions as a family:

• How did your first family meeting go?
• What about the meeting was good? What was bad?
• What do you want to incorporate in future meetings?

4 Active Listening Exercises

Active listening is a vital part of communication and can greatly improve relationships between family members. These four active listening exercises are a great way to boost your skills.

1. Precision Communication

Another activity that can help your family build and continue to develop good communication skills is called “Precision Communication.” It’s focused on active listening, which is a vital part of communication and conducive to better understanding and stronger, healthier relationships.

Here’s how to put this activity into practice:

• Set up a maze in your home using furniture, such as kitchen chairs or other pieces of furniture that can act as a barrier.
• Tie string or yarn between the furniture to create a clear path through the maze.
• Select a family member that will try to walk through the maze blindfolded. This person must not see the maze prior to being blindfolded.
• Have someone give voice instructions so the family member can be directed through the maze.

This activity’s aim is to see if the family member giving instructions can help the blindfolded family member get through the maze without bumping into the furniture, walls, or string. This means that not only must the speaking family member communicate clear and detailed instructions, but the blindfolded family member must also use their active listening skills to receive the instructions and implement them effectively.

Use these discussion questions to debrief and maximize this learning opportunity:

• Why was clear detailed communication necessary for this exercise?
• How important was it to listen carefully to the one giving instructions? Why?
• What were some of the difficulties associated with helping a family member complete this exercise?
• Using some of the ideas from this exercise, how can you, as a family, improve your communication skills?

If you want more from this activity, try this follow-up:

Draw a simple picture or pattern on a piece of paper. Without letting family members see the diagram, tell them what they need to do to make a copy of your picture that matches as closely as possible. After giving detailed instructions, see how accurately the pictures match up.

2. End of the Word—Beginning of the Next

This is a fun game on the Encourage Play website that can keep your kids actively engaged in building their listening skills.

Here’s how to play:

• One person (probably an adult) starts the game by giving out one word—it can be any word, it just needs to be one that every family member knows how to spell.
• The next family member must listen to the word the previous person said, then come up with a word that starts with the letter the last word ended with.

This is an easy game to play since you don’t need any materials, just a few minutes and the ability to hear one another! That makes it a great game for car rides, waiting in restaurants, or standing in a long line. To make it more challenging, give it a bit of complexity by limiting the words to a category, like animals or cities.

3. Red Light Green Light

Another exercise from the Encourage Play website is a familiar one. It’s based on the classic “Red Light, Green Light” game in which the leader gives instructions by color: saying “red light” means stop and saying “green light” means go.

To make the game a bit more challenging and really emphasize the importance of active listening, incorporate these three variations to the game:

• Different colors refer to different types of movement; for example, yellow light could mean skipping, purple light could mean crab walking, and blue light could mean hopping.
• Pretend to be a different animal for different colors (yellow = lion, green = bunny, purple = frog, etc.).
• Use words that rhyme with red or green to see if the players catch the difference (e.g., “Bread Light! Teen Light!”).

4. Tell a Group Story

Group stories are a great way to practice active listening with the whole family. It also gives kids a chance to be creative and silly, which helps to keep them engaged in the activity.

• The first person (probably an adult) starts a story with just one sentence (e.g., “Once upon a time, there was a very curious brown bunny”).
• The next person adds onto the story with just one sentence as well (e.g., “This bunny lived with her mother and father in a cozy little burrow under a willow tree”).
• The story continues until everyone has contributed at least a couple of sentences to the story.

This activity boosts active listening skills because it requires careful and attentive listening to what has already been said in order to make a good contribution to the story.

3 Assertive Communication Exercises

One of the best skills to teach your kids is how to be assertive instead of aggressive or passive (or passive-aggressive). Use these three assertive communication activities to help them learn this important skill.

1. Assertive Communication Worksheet

This worksheet is a great way to help older kids understand the difference between types of communication and to learn how to communicate assertively.

The worksheet first provides a good working definition of assertive communication:

“A communication style in which a person stands up for their own needs and wants, while also taking into consideration the needs and wants of others, without behaving passively or aggressively.”

It also outlines the traits of people who are assertive communicators, including:

• Clearly state needs and wants
• Eye contact
• Listens to others without interruption
• Appropriate speaking volume
• Steady tone of voice
• Confident body language

Next, it shares four tips on communicating assertively:

• Respect yourself—your wants and needs are as important as everyone else’s.
• Express your thought and feelings calmly rather than using the silent treatment or yelling and threatening.
• Plan out what you’re going to say before you say it.
• Say “no” when you need to, say it clearly, and do it without lying.

After some examples of assertive communication, we get to the active part of the worksheet. It’s geared toward adults, but the scenarios can be tweaked to fit kids as well.

There are four situations presented and space to write out your own assertive response to each. These situations are:

• Your partner says, “ I know you have plans for the weekend, but I really need you to watch the kids. I have a friend coming to town, and we made plans .”
• Situation: You’ve just received your food at a restaurant, and it was prepared incorrectly. Your sandwich seems to have extra mayo, instead of no mayo.
• Your friend says, “ Hey, can I borrow some money? I want to buy these shoes, but I left my wallet at home. I’ll pay you back soon, I swear. It won’t be like last time .”
• Situation: Your neighbor is adding an expansion to their house, and the crew starts working, very loudly, at 5 am. It has woken you up every day for a week.

Working through these scenarios as a family can help your kids see what healthy assertive communication looks like and show them that it’s okay to say “no” sometimes.

2. The Aggressive Alligator

The Aggressive Alligator is a great tool from Kristina Marcelli-Sargent, for teaching assertiveness over-aggressiveness or passiveness. It makes what can be a dry and boring subject more interesting and engaging.

Start by giving simple definitions to the terms “passive,” “aggressive,” and “assertive.” Next, show them a list of animals or a bin of small stuffed animals and allow them to choose an animal that they feel represents each definition. The aggressive animal doesn’t need to be an alligator, it can be anything that makes sense to your children.

After your kids have chosen an animal for each term, describe some social situations and instruct your kids to act them out with their animals. Each animal should act according to the definition it represents (e.g., the aggressive alligator should act aggressively, the passive panda should act passively, and the assertive anteater should act assertively).

Once all scenarios have been acted out, talk to your kids about how the outcomes differed between the three animals. Point out which one(s) resulted in a positive outcome and which one(s) should probably be avoided. In the future, you can refer back to the assertive anteater to remind your kids to be assertive instead of passive or aggressive (Sargent, 2015).

3. Keeping Cool

A great lesson for kids to learn is that assertive communication is about being firm and direct without being angry or upset. This activity will help you teach healthy assertiveness to your kids or students.

Here’s how to go about it:

• First, ask your kids how people might feel when they are bullied. If they have trouble coming up with answers, talk about how people might feel angry, scared, sad, upset, embarrassed, or confused.
• Next, ask your kids what kinds of things people want to do when they feel this way. If they can’t think of things people might do when they feel upset, angry, or sad, mention that they might yell, throw something, hit something, hide, cry, or do something else to make another person feel as bad as they feel.
• Ask your kids if they think these are good or helpful things to do. Explain how everyone has strong, negative feelings like this sometimes, and that it’s okay to feel them. These feelings have a purpose; they tell us that something is wrong or that something needs to be fixed, but they can also encourage us to do the wrong thing unless we learn how to keep a cool head.
• Close your eyes and take several slow deep breaths
• Count to ten
• Relax the muscles in your face and body
• Talk silently to yourself and repeat a soothing phrase, such as “Keep calm” or “I control my feelings”
• Get a drink of water
• Go sit by a person you trust

Discuss these options with the whole group and decide together on what the best techniques are, then practice using them together.

Click here to read about this exercise from the Education Development Center’s Bullying Prevention program.

3 Nonverbal Communication Exercises

Finally, although verbal communication is generally the focus of skill-building exercises and activities, nonverbal communication is also a vital skill to develop.

Use these 3 exercises to help your kids build their nonverbal skills.

1. Understanding Non-Verbal Communication

Things like tone of voice, facial expressions, body posture, and hand gestures are all non-verbal, but they are hugely important in our communication with others. If we say one thing with our words and another with our face or body, we can end up giving mixed messages and confusing others.

To make sure we are saying what we want to say with our words and our face, body, and tone, help your kids learn how to understand and “speak” non-verbal communications.

Here’s s description of this activity:

“As a family, make a list of different non-verbal actions. For example, folding your arms, snorting, frowning, etc… Select a TV program or a segment of a video. Watch about 5 to 7 minutes of the program with the volume off. While watching the program without volume, identify the different non-verbal messages, especially the feelings that are expressed. After 5 to 7 minutes, turn off the TV and discuss what you observed. You could even carry on the discussion as the program continues.”

To get the discussion started, use questions like:

• What were the non-verbal messages that you observed?
• How important do you think the non-verbal messages are in helping you to enjoy the movie and understand what was going on in the movie?
• Did you observe any confusing non-verbal messages?
• What feelings were expressed through non-verbal communication?
• What were some of the difficulties of this activity?
• What can you do to be more aware of non-verbal messages?
• Did everyone think the non-verbal message meant the same thing?
• Are non-verbal messages always obvious in real life?

If you want more from this exercise, try this follow-up activity. Seat two family members away from each other and have them carry on a conversation about giving directions to somewhere or explaining how to do something. As they talk, they should focus on trying to understand the other person’s feelings.

After doing this for a few minutes, the two should turn around, face each other, and continue the discussion—they will likely find it much easier!

Use the following questions to guide your discussion after the follow-up:

• When you had your backs to each other, did a lack of non-verbal communication affect your ability to communicate with the other person? If so, how?
• What feelings did you experience as you communicated with your back to the other person?
• When you spoke to the other person face-to-face, did this improve your ability to communicate and understand the other person’s feelings? If so, how?
• Did face-to-face communication improve your ability to understand the other person’s feelings?
• How can you increase your awareness of non-verbal messages you do not mean to be sending?
• How can you be aware of how we may misinterpret someone else’s non-verbal messages?”

2. Charades

Charades is a popular game with kids since it’s fun, easy to play, and can result in some seriously silly situations.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Animals: Monkey, dog, cat, rabbit, kangaroo, snake
• Activities: brushing teeth, playing cards, shining a flashlight, fishing, playing frisbee
• Emotions: scared, sad, bored, angry, happy, wary, proud

Acting out these prompts will give kids an opportunity to practice communicating non-verbally, a skill that they can easily build over time (Simmons, n.d.).

This nonverbal communication activity  is available from Sue Simmons at Equinox Family Consulting.

3. Silent Snack

Finally, another activity from Sue Simmons is called “ Silent Snack ” and it gives young children a chance to have fun while building their nonverbal communication skills.

Follow these instructions to give it a try:

• Put out a few different snacks in individual bowls.
• Tell everyone it’s “Silent Snack Time,” meaning there’s no talking allowed!
• Offer each person a taste of each snack.
• Each player should take turns sharing their opinion on each snack. They can use indicators like thumbs up and thumbs down or facial expressions to communicate their opinions.

It’s a simple activity, but an effective one! Give it a try at your next snack time.

17 Exercises To Develop Positive Communication

17 Positive Communication Exercises [PDF] to develop help others develop communication skills for successful social interactions and positive, fulfilling relationships.

Created by Experts. 100% Science-based.

I hope you leave this piece with a treasure trove of new resources you can use to improve your own life or the lives of your clients.

Communication skills are one of the most important skills a person can have, making it well worth your while to devote some time and energy to develop them.

What are your favorite ways to work on communicating with your spouse? Do you schedule a time to talk about how your relationship is doing or do you just let it flow naturally? What do you think are the best ways to build, enhance, and maintain your communication skills? Let us know in the comments section.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Don’t forget to download our three Positive Communication Exercises (PDF) for free .

• Abass, S. (n.d.). 3 benefits of effective communication in a relationship. Lifehack. Retrieved from https://www.lifehack.org/509189/3-benefits-effective-communication-relationship
• https://defeatingdivorce.com/communication-exercises-for-couples/
• Fleming, G. (2018). 4 helpful nonverbal communication activities. ThoughtCo. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/nonverbal-communication-activities-1857230
• Heitler, S. (2010). What does communication have to do with a good relationship? GoodTherapy. Retrieved from https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/what-does-communication-have-to-do-with-good-relationship
• Lee, T. R., & Pyfer, T. (n.d.). Helping youth succeed: Strengthening family ties: A workbook of activities designed to strengthen family relationships . Utah State University Extension. Retrieved from https://www.families-first.net/uploads/userfiles/files/FL_Youth_02.pdf
• Mendler, A. (2013). Teaching your students how to have a conversation. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/teaching-your-students-conversation-allen-mendler
• Norman, B. (2018). Trainers’ tips: Active listening exercises. Training Zone . Retrieved from https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/develop/cpd/trainers-tips-active-listening-exercises
• Peterson, R., & Green, S. (2009). Helping Youth Succeed: Keys to successful family functioning: Communication . Virginia Cooperative Extension. Retrieved from https://www.pubs.ext.vt.edu/content/dam/pubs_ext_vt_edu/350/350-092/350-092_pdf.pdf
• Reichmann, D. (n.d.). 5 communication games guaranteed to bring you closer. Engaged Marriage . Retrieved from https://www.engagedmarriage.com/5-communication-games/
• Rosenberg, M. B. (1999). Nonviolent communication: A language of compassion. Del Mar.
• Sargent, K. M. (2015). The aggressive alligator: Fun ways to teach assertiveness to children. Art of Social Work . Retrieved from https://kristinamarcelli.wordpress.com/2015/10/21/the-aggressive-alligator-fun-ways-to-teach-assertiveness-to-children/
• Simmons, S. (n.d.). Nonverbal games: 10 simple activities . Equinox Family Consulting, Ltd. Retrieved from https://equinoxfamilyconsulting.com/communication/nonverbal-games-10-simple-activities/
• Stanfield, J. (2017). 8 tips to teach effective communication skills. James Stanfield. Retrieved from https://stanfield.com/blog/2017/11/8-tips-teach-effective-communication-skills/
• Sott, A. (2018). Teaching communication skills. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/article/teaching-communication-skills
• Tasker, R. (n.d.). 6 amazing couples therapy exercises for improving communication . GuideDoc . Retrieved from https://guidedoc.com/couples-therapy-exercises-for-improving-communication
• Victoria Department of Health & Human Services. (n.d.). Relationships and communications . Better Health Channel. Retrieved from https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/healthyliving/relationships-and-communication

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15+ Exciting Conversation Activities that will Boost Student Participation

One of the most valuable skills a student can acquire is communicating effectively. Fostering classroom conversations is an essential step in nurturing this skill in education. In this blog post, I present over fifteen exciting conversation lesson ideas to boost students’ participation and promote this skill. Whether you’re an elementary school teacher looking to grow your students’ confidence or a high school educator aiming to stimulate critical thinking, various conversation activities can help you achieve these goals. I’ve divided them into different levels, but you can adapt them to your teaching level.

Conversation activities for elementary school

Conversation activities for middle school, conversation activities for high school, conversation activities for language courses.

💡 Digital Tips Explained ! As you will see, I’m sharing some BookWidgets tips for our widgeteers or some ready-to-use digital alternatives to the conversation lesson ideas below. These are interactive lesson ideas (= widgets ) you can duplicate for free ( open the activity and make a copy in your account ) and use in your classroom. After duplicating, you can even make changes to the activity. If you’re new to BookWidgets, let me shortly explain: BookWidgets is a content creation and evaluation tool for teachers .

In elementary school, students are at a stage where they are developing their basic communication skills. Here are a couple of activities designed to encourage them to speak in front of their peers and express themselves:

1. Show and Tell

This classic activity invites students to bring an object from home and share it with the class. It’s an opportunity for young learners to describe the thing, its significance, and why they chose to share it. “ Show and Tell ” helps young learners practice speaking in front of their peers and develop the confidence to express themselves.

💡 Digital tip : Instead of bringing an object from home, students can draw the object they want to show. They can do this on paper or digitally using this whiteboard widget in BookWidgets you created for them. You can also ask them to upload a picture of the object and write a few keywords that will help them with telling about their object, the next day in class. This activity is also a fun classroom icebreaker for the first day of school!

2. Storytelling Circle

Sitting in a circle, students embark on a collaborative storytelling adventure. Each student adds a sentence or two to continue the narrative. This dynamics fosters creativity, listening skills, and the art of taking turns as students collaboratively weave a story together. This activity can be challenging, especially for shy students, who might need some input.

💡 Digital tip : Consider having some visuals ready to be included in their story. You can bring realia or use a digital random picture album . The teacher click the “ random ” icon in the upper right corner, and a new picture appears! The fun is guaranteed when unexpected elements need to be added to the story.

3. Picture Cards Discussions

Utilizing picture cards depicting various scenes, objects, or emotions, students choose a card and describe what they see or feel. This activity helps improve vocabulary and encourages young learners to express themselves.

💡 Digital tip : Using a Padlet board with several pictures for students to pick from saves time and paper in the preparation of this activity.

4. 20-question game

One student thinks of a person, place, or animal. The rest of the class asks yes/no questions to try to determine what the person is thinking of. The idea is to help students build their critical thinking skills by asking questions in a logical order that will help them guess the item.

💡 Digital tip : Here’s a fun alternative to the activity, called: Mystery Video-Conference. A vetted speaker or other class is invited to meet (digitally) with your classroom. Students ask questions to try to guess the location of the speaker/class or the secret animal/number the class is thinking of. After both classes have taken a turn, follow up with a classroom discussion.

As students progress into middle school, their communication skills should also mature. They should gain more confidence and practice considering different points of view before giving their opinion. Here are some activities suitable for this level:

5. Agree/Disagree/Discuss

Draw a line on the board to divide the classroom into two. Write “agree” on the left side of the board and “disagree” on the right one. Have all students lined up in the center. Pose a prompt with which students should move left or right in order to show if they agree or disagree with the statement. Have students pair up after each statement in order to give their arguments in favor or against it.

💡 Digital tip : You can read the prompts out of a list or make it more interactive by having students take turns spinning the wheel of this randomness widget . Depending on the subject you teach you can have questions related to the topic to make it more interesting. Go check out this blog post with more ideas with BookWidgets’ randomness widget . Here’s another digital tip! Ask ChatGPT to “ create 20 prompts (about topic xxx) students have to agree or disagree with to spark a classroom discussion ”.

6. Would you rather

This popular party game can also be played by your middle school students to bring some fun and give input to interesting group conversations. Gather students in a circle or a group and take turns posing thought-provoking dilemmas, beginning each with “Would you rather…” Participants must then choose one of the two options presented, and it often leads to classroom discussions and debates.

Encourage students to explain their choices, creating an engaging and fun environment for sharing opinions and getting to know each other better. The game fosters critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills while also providing a light-hearted and enjoyable way for students to connect and bond. Here are some ready-to-use examples:

Would you rather have the ability to time travel to the past or to the future?

Would you rather be an expert musician but unable to read or write or a brilliant writer but unable to play any musical instrument?

Would you rather always tell the truth but hurt someone’s feelings or tell a white lie to spare their feelings?

Would you rather have the power of invisibility or the ability to fly?

Would you rather be a famous celebrity with no privacy or an ordinary person with complete anonymity?

Would you rather live in a world with no television or no mobile phones?

Would you rather have unlimited access to your favorite food but never be able to travel or travel the world but only eat broccoli?

Would you rather be the best student in a mediocre school or an average student in a prestigious school?

Would you rather have the ability to speak and understand all languages or be a master of every musical instrument?

Would you rather have the power to change the past or the ability to predict the future?

7. Back-to-back game

This converation starter activity for high school students encourages not only speaking but also creativity and active listening. Have students sit in pairs and ask them to sit with their backs to each other so that they cannot see what the other person is doing. One student describes something like a drawing or picture that is not easily replicated. The other student attempts to recreate the drawing based on this description. It encourages the first students to give clear instructions and the other must listen carefully and replicate the instructions. It’s a good lesson to learn what can go wrong in communication when your students failed to replicate the picture.

💡 Digital tip : Give the student that has to draw and replicate the picture a smartphone or tablet to draw on. Provide them with a quiz widget with a whiteboard question so they can draw by listening to the instructions. When the drawing is done, ask your students in a follow up questions to analyse the drawing and write down where they went wrong or what happend when they couldn’t replicate the drawing. The same goes for when your students finish the assignment pretty good. They can reflect on what went well in their communication.

On this level, it’s essential to encourage critical thinking and foster argumentative skills. For students in high school, I like bringing thought-provoking questions and providing activities that will allow them to speak their minds.

8. Critical thinking circles

Assign different articles around the same topic to small groups of students who read and discuss the assigned material. They can then share their insights, interpretations, and reactions with the entire class. This kind of activity promotes in-depth analysis and critical thinking. Some ideas for critical thinking circles include:

Media Literacy and Fake News : Explore how to discern between credible and unreliable sources of information, discussing the impact of fake news on society and how to fact-check.

Ethical Dilemmas in Technology : Discuss ethical concerns related to technology, such as privacy, surveillance, and the responsible use of social media.

Climate Change and Sustainability : Analyze the implications of climate change, debate potential solutions, and consider individual and collective responsibilities for a sustainable future.

Social Justice and Equality : Examine issues of social justice, such as racism, gender equality, and economic disparities, and discuss strategies for promoting a more just society.

Artificial Intelligence and Automation : Consider the impact of AI and automation on the job market, ethics, and society as a whole. Discuss potential challenges and opportunities.

💡 Digital tip : Provide them with a digital mind map to take notes during their small group discussion. They can add boxes with keywords, insights, interpretations on the topic. It will help them sturcture their thoughts when they are sharing their findings with the whole class.

9. Philosophical Chairs

Set up a debate-style discussion where students take positions on a controversial topic, and they can switch sides based on the arguments presented. This activity encourages students to explore different perspectives and engage in meaningful dialogues. You can give each group a list of controversial topics to choose from, and they can defend their actual positions.

💡 Digital tip : To make this activity more challenging you can use a randomness game . When students click on the “spin” button, they will be assigned a topic and either the word “agree” or “disagree.” They will have to defend their assigned point of view even if their actual opinion is the opposite of that. This is good for practicing argumentation and switching viewpoints.

10. Video-Based Discussions

Bring videos related to topics of interest or social issues. Encourage your high school students to express their opinions, debate, and analyze the events from multiple angles.

Using video in class is a nice change of pace and promotes student engagement. Here’s a video quiz with a provoking video for discussion and some comments that are good input for discussion.

You can change the dynamics to make this activity even more engaging. Divide students into groups and have each group, at home, choose a video from YouTube that they find touching, provoking, or interesting. They should prepare questions for discussions based on the video but not answer them. Then, in class, each group assigns their chosen video with the questions to another group.

Each group watches a different video and discusses the questions. After this initial activity, a discussion in plenum can take place so all the topics can be discussed by everyone.

11. Structured debate

Organize debates on relevant topics, allowing students to research, form arguments, and present their views in a structured discussion format. Debates encourage critical thinking, persuasive communication, and active listening.

This activity is the perfect opportunity to introduce or review useful phrases used for debates. Prior to the debate itself, give students an activity to have them categorize the different types of useful phrases, which they will then need in their discussion. If you have time to spare, you can create flashcards with each useful phrase, draw a table on the board, and hand in a card to each student, which they can then categorize in class.

💡 Digital tip : If you prefer to use a ready-to-use digital activity, click here . You can duplicate the activity and edit it if you want to include more phrases or delete some.

12. Make a Commercial

Encourage students to practice the art of persuasion to convince their classmates or others to purchase a product. Students (individually or in groups) select an item and create a one-minute commercial about it. Use the recording platform of your choice, such as Flip , Adobe Express , mmhmm , or your phone/computer. Students should make sure to include the following in their recording:

• What makes their product special? = Unique selling proposition
• How can it enhance the consumers’ life?
• Why does the consumer need this product?

Classmates can vote for the best commercial.

No access to recording? No worries, this can also be accomplished live in class. This is a great activity to focus on listening, speaking, and writing skills.

Whether you teach English, Spanish, French, or German, or are a teacher of any other foreign language, having effective and fun classroom conversations is essential for students of all ages. Of course, you can use any of the ideas above with your language groups as well, but the ideas below are taught specifically for language learners.

13. Role-Playing Scenarios

Create real-life scenarios or dialogues that students might encounter in the target language. Students role-play these situations, fostering practical language use and communication skills. Here are some common scenarios for adults:

Airport Scenario : Practice travel-related vocabulary and communication by role-playing airport scenarios, including check-in, security checks, and asking for directions.

Hotel Check-In : Simulate the check-in process at a hotel, with students playing the roles of guests and hotel staff, focusing on reservations, room preferences, and services.

Doctor’s Office : Practice medical vocabulary and communication by having students play the roles of patients and medical professionals, discussing symptoms, prescriptions, and health concerns.

Job Interview : Simulate job interviews to help students practice professional language, discussing qualifications, strengths, and job-related questions. This is also a good topic for high school students.

Real Estate Agent : Explore the language of property transactions by role-playing scenarios where students act as real estate agents and clients, discussing housing options and preferences.

Grocery Shopping : Role-play a trip to the grocery store where students act as shoppers and store clerks, discussing items and prices, and making purchases.

Restaurant Review : After dining out, have students write and present restaurant reviews in the target language, discussing the meal, service, and overall experience.

Travel Agency : Role-play travel agency interactions, with students as travel agents helping clients plan vacations and discussing destinations, accommodations, and itineraries.

💡 Digital tip : Provide this assignments as homework so students keep practicing their language skills. Ask them to record a dialoge using the audio recording question in BookWidgets. Here’s a video quiz lesson example to practice dialogues and newly learned vocabulary.

14. News Analysis

Bring in news articles or reports in the target language. Students read and discuss these articles, summarizing the key points, sharing their thoughts, and debating various aspects of the news.

This activity enhances language proficiency and cultural awareness. When using authentic material, it’s important to make sure that the language of the source is suitable for the level you’re teaching.

💡 Digital tip : What I do when preparing this kind of material for my groups is using ChatGPT to adapt the text. So, for instance, I copy an article I find interesting into ChatGPT and ask the AI tool to: “ simplify the text for a group of 4th grade students ”. I then create a split worksheet with the text on one side and questions on the other side. These serve as input for analysis and will get the students talking. Click here to see an example.

15. Language Exchange Partners

16. Celebrity Interviews

This activity is a fun way to have students practice question words and use simple present, simple past, and present perfect. Students are divided into pairs, in which one is the interviewer and the other one a celebrity. You can have students choose who they want to pretend to be freely, or you can give them a list for them to choose from, in case you want to avoid inconvenient choices.

💡 Digital tip : Alternatively, you can have two celebrities interview each other. For this, it’s fun to have students leave it to faith which celebrity they will pretend to be.

17. Untranslatable?

If you have students in your classroom who speak different native languages, chances are they’ve encountered words that don’t have direct translations in English. You can leverage their knowledge of their own languages to foster discussions within the classroom.

Form small groups of students, ideally including members from two or more native language backgrounds. Even if the group shares a common native language, there are often distinct dialects, regional expressions, and unique experiences that can lead to discussions about these “untranslatable” words and their potential English interpretations. Each student compiles a list of five to ten words that they find challenging to translate directly into English (or any other target language). In turn, students explain the meaning of the words on their list using the target language. Then, following the word presentation, the other students can ask questions and seek clarification regarding the word’s meaning and usage.

💡 Digital tip : Provide students with a digital mind map to indicate their 5 words and their potential English interpretations. Students can submit their mind map to the teacher. This way, the teacher can gather all the native words and meanings and present them in a list to all the students. You can even make a wall poster out of it using Canva as a design tool!

In conclusion, effective communication is a skill that holds immense value in the realm of education. The ability to articulate thoughts and engage in meaningful conversations is not only essential for academic success but also for personal and professional growth. In this blog post, we have explored a wide range of conversation activities, discussion starters, and debate topics tailored to different educational levels, from elementary school to high school and language courses. These activities are designed to nurture students’ communication skills, boost their confidence, and stimulate critical thinking.

You can find all ready-to-use activities used in the examples here and duplicate them to your own account in order to edit them and share them with your students.

I’d like to know which of these activities is your favorite and what other ideas you have, so do share with us. Let us know on Twitter - X - and join our Facebook community to share your first history BookWidgets activity with other teachers.

Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn . I’m looking forward to hearing from you.

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6 Communication Skills Activities for High School Students

If your children perform well on their language tests but still struggle in public speaking, it may be because you place too much emphasis on their academic performance rather than their overall development. In the modern world, books might not be sufficient to learn something new, particularly if your child needs to improve their communication skills. There are a variety of ways for kids to communicate besides books and lessons that can be more effective for them.

• Telephone. Have students gather together in a circle. …
• Emotional Charades. Write-out scenarios that might provoke emotion in participants. …
• Audio Book Interaction. …
• Internet Resources. …
• Role-Playing. …
• The Follow All Instructions Activity.

What are communication skills activities for high school students?

High school teachers can use communication skills activities to help their students learn how to communicate clearly, practice active listening, think critically, and interact with others in appropriate ways. These activities frequently give students the chance to practice different communication modalities, such as written, nonverbal, and verbal modalities, in low-stakes situations to improve their skills. Outside of traditional academic assignments that are typically graded, communication activities give students a safe space to hone and apply their skills.

Through these activities, students can learn how to have civil conversations with others, what standards for speaking and listening are appropriate in various contexts, and how to conduct introspective thought exercises. Students may improve their ability to listen intently, take turns, act sympathetically, and use precise, succinct vocabulary. These fundamental skills can aid students in having more positive interactions with others, both in the classroom and once they begin working after graduation.

6 communication skills activities high school teachers can implement

Teachers of high school students can use a range of communication skills exercises in their lessons. These exercises range in difficulty and take a variety of forms, including games and academic exercises. Consider these six different exercises to aid your students in improving their communication skills:

1. Guide the blindfolded

A game called “Guide the blindfolded” involves one student wearing a blindfold while the others direct them using only verbal instructions to complete a specific task in a set amount of time. To play, arrange the students in pairs, divide the class into teams, and give each team a task. Give a blindfold to each pair of students, and have them alternate wearing it. Students can carry out the activity and come up with inventive ways to communicate so that they can successfully guide their partners through the unfamiliar space.

2. Back to back

Back to back is a listening and instruction exercise that can aid students in understanding and identifying key details. Divide the class into pairs, and have them sit back-to-back for this activity. The students can alternately take on the roles of drawer and describer. Start the activity by having one person describe a difficult drawing to their partner, who then tries to recreate their partner’s description on a piece of paper. You can review all of the students’ drawings after their allotted time has passed, compare them, and decide which drawing best represents them.

3. Team debate tournament

Team debate competitions can aid students in enhancing their capacity for cooperation, information analysis, and expression of diverse viewpoints. Assign students to teams and provide them with a topic to research and gather information about before the debate competition begins. Give each team a side of the debate to debate after they finish their research, and give them a five-minute window to prepare their speeches. Once the allotted time has passed, begin the debate by serving as the judge and letting the students present their viewpoints and refute the claims of the opposing team.

4. You dont say

Students can practice reading nonverbal cues through the activity You Don’t Say, which can improve their ability to empathize with others and communicate more effectively. Divide your class into groups of five to seven students to begin this activity, and then provide each group with a list of nonverbal cues, such as:

Pose these behaviors for the groups to interpret by jotting down what they each communicate. Ask the class to reconvene once each group has completed the activity and share what they learned about nonverbal cues during the activity.

5. Charades

Students play the game of “charades,” in which they are given a clue and must pantomime it in order for others to guess what it is. This can help them hone their own nonverbal communication skills. Divide the class into two teams and have them come up with clues using book titles, celebrity names, movie or song titles, etc. Students should choose one clue at a time to pantomime to their team, who must correctly guess the clue within 45 seconds. Allow the other team to guess the clue if their team is unable to do so within the allotted time.

6. Emoji awareness

Emoji awareness is a task that can assist students in growing their capacity for reflection and empathic thought. Give students a worksheet containing a range of emojis expressing various emotions to begin this exercise. Next, divide the students into groups and give them scenarios that could potentially elicit particular emotions. Ask your students to identify the possible emotions that the characters in those situations might feel and then match those emotions to an emoji. In order to practice expressing their emotions and comprehending others, have the students share the emojis they selected in a full group setting after their discussions and explain why.

Improve COMMUNICATION SKILLS in Children with HIGHLY EFFECTIVE Games | Early Childhood Education

Which are the activities used to develop communication skills?

• Telephone Exercise. …
• Stop Listening Exercise. …
• Listener and Talker Activity. …
• Memory Test Activity. …
• Just Listen Activity.

What are the 5 oral communication activities?

• Role-play. Role-playing is a classic method for teaching communication skills.
• Group games. To teach verbal and nonverbal communication, persuasion, collaboration, and relationship-building skills, group games are an interactive, engaging method.
• Films. …
• Introspection. …
• Turn-talking. …
• Asking questions. …
• Record and reflect.

How can students practice communication skills?

• staff meetings, business meetings and other face-to-face meetings.
• personal discussions.
• presentations.
• telephone calls.
• informal conversation.
• public presentations such as speeches, lectures and conferences.
• teleconferences or videoconferences.
• interviews.

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• How To Measure Training Effectiveness in 5 Steps
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Communication Skills Lesson & Activities

• Is it possible to not communicate?  Explain
• Finish the phrase “Communication is…”
• Projector & Screen
• Laptops or Electronic Devices
• Individual white boards & markers (optional)
• Ask students how easy it is to communicate effectively and to brainstorm a list of things that could go wrong.  Students can add to their lists as they view this YouTube clip . Discuss their answers before going over the characteristics of effective communication which include eye contact, active listening, feedback/responses and a clear message.
• Practice identifying whether communication is effective or not by viewing Clip #1 and Clip #2

• Next, we discuss the types of communication but focus on non-verbal communication.  Here is a short YouTube clip to introduce it and one to learn more about it before engaging in the activities.
• Students then take an emotional intelligence quiz to see how well they can read other people by their facial expressions.  Students then practice with pictures found within the PPT below.
• To learn more about the levels of communication students complete take notes using the notes slide found in the Communication Skills attachment below and they practice applying the information by sorting the examples and placing them on the magnetic board.  We discuss and correct card placements as a class.
• At this point we discuss the Do’s and Don’ts of communication skills and practice identifying as such by playing Kahoot  (search Communication Do’s and Don’ts in public Kahoots) and identifying and discussing the do’s and don’ts as they appear in Clip #1 and Clip #2 .
• The last part of this mini-unit is to discuss “I-messages” and look at what the key phrases are and how they are used at the workplace as well as with parenting.  Students then refer back to the pictures used for non-verbal communication practice (in the PPT) to practice writing “I-messages” based on what they wrote was happening in the picture.  Students then trade “I-messages” with a class mate and they peer edit each other’s “I-messages” by making sure all the parts are present.
• This worksheet can be used for more practice or as an “I-message” quiz.
• Finally, a test is given on all communication information.

Attachments

• Communication_Skills_updated 2018  (PDF)
• Communication Skills Notes  (PDF)
• Level of Communication Sorting Game  (Word–editable)
• Communication Drawing Activity  (PDF)

Note:  If you are using the old Communication Skills PDF, you will need to use the below slide of notes in place of the web activity for the 3 levels of communication previously used as that link is corrupt and no longer working or just download the updated version above.

• Levels of Communication Notes  (PDF)
• Greater Good Website
• Therapist Aid  Website

Image courtesy of Ambro at Free Digital Photos

Digital Resources

• Communication Skills Slide Presentation (please make a copy) Updated for digital use 8-18-2020. The ability to social distance will determine if I am able to do the drawing activity.
• Communication Notes–digital (please make a copy) Updated 8-18-20 for use with updated slide presentation.

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4 Practical and Fun Interpersonal Communication Activities

We all know that authentic communication goes both ways, as an ongoing dialogue between two or more people.

But so often, we struggle to teach language in that way. That’s why it’s necessary to stress the importance of interpersonal communication.

Keep on reading to find out about 4 fun interpersonal communication activities that you can do with your students!

4 Effective Interpersonal Communication Activities

1. post-presentation q and a session, 2. conversation around the circle, 3. student-generated surveys, 4. random object improv, what are the 3 modes of communication, 1. interpretive communication, 2. presentational communication, 3. interpersonal communication, why your students need interpersonal communication activities.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

This is a clever way to inject some interpersonal flavor within the presentational mode.

Next time your students give a prepared presentation , follow up with a spontaneous question-and-answer session.

Provide some brief coaching on the vocabulary and sentence structure needed for asking questions, and then let the students ask whatever comes to mind related to the information presented. For this activity, make sure students know they will not be penalized in any way for incorrect grammar or pronunciation. If they feel free to make mistakes, it can lead to a truly uninhibited, two-way conversation.

Here’s a fun activity to do with your class.

Arrange your students to sit in a circle. Then, move the conversation in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction as each student asks a question. Depending on their level of proficiency, these questions may be improvised on the spot or prepared ahead of time. You can choose to have each student ask a question of the peer sitting next to him/her; or you can have 3-5 different students volunteer answers to the question, depending on the group and their comfort level.

This activity can be adapted to different seating arrangements, and works well in a game format (i.e., have students compete to see which ones give the most answers.)

This is a survey activity that encourages short, structured responses. It can be adapted to any level and gives students structured practice with two-way communication.

Students must create survey questions based on a topic that you’re covering in class. For example, questions about their favorite leisure activities work well if you’re working on a unit about hobbies and pastimes. These can be presented in:

• Open-ended questions: “What is your favorite sport?”
• Yes/no questions: “Do you like to draw?”

Students then circulate around the room, asking their peers questions and compiling the results. At the end, the class regroups so students can share these results, using the target language. Common results shared include sentences like: “Four students like to play baseball,” “Six students like to draw,” and so on.

Jot down the names of a few random objects (i.e., “guitar,” “tree,” “pencil,” etc.) on slips of paper and put them in a hat. Students then walk up in pairs or small groups, pick an object out of the hat, and then improvise a short dialogue around that item. This activity can be loads of fun, getting even the shyest students out of their shell.

It’s widely accepted that we use three different ways to express ourselves, depending on the situation. For a language learner to become fluent in their target language, they need to first understand the different modes of communication and when to use them.

So, what’s the difference between the three? Let’s take a look.

This is a type of one-way communication where students use their listening and/or reading skills to comprehend spoken and written language. Some examples would be listening to a podcast or reading a book  and answering questions.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with interpretive communication activities in the classroom. In fact, they are invaluable for providing language exposure that can lead to fluency. And reading and listening are both crucial skills for effective communication.

But the awkward fact remains that real-life encounters with the language are usually about holding conversations  rather than one-sided listening or reading activities.

This is yet another instance of one-way communication—but in the other direction.

Presentational communication occurs when your students use their writing and speaking skills to present information or knowledge on a topic. Examples include performing a prepared skit or dialogue, or presenting a slideshow.

This type of communication is also valuable to your students. They need to learn how to organize and express their thoughts clearly.

But real conversations are spontaneous. You don’t get a chance to prepare a speech ahead of time. Rather, it’s a give-and-take of listening and responding.

This is two-way communication in which both sides actively negotiate meaning through a process of observing, monitoring and clarification.

Needless to say, this describes most authentic conversations in daily life . All parties spontaneously build meaning together.

But it’s tough to achieve this level of spontaneity within the constructs of a classroom, among students who may only have a basic vocabulary at their disposal.

Despite the challenges, though, interpersonal communication is essential for your students to learn how to use the language effectively.

Below are some reasons why you should be adding interpersonal communication activities in your lessons.

But first, if you want to maximize classroom communication and help your language learners speak more naturally,  FluentU   can help.

FluentU offers a unique learning experience not found in most language-learning curriculum—authenticity.  FluentU enables educators to teach language using a mixture of tried-and-true exercises and real-world material. As a result, students learn the mechanics of a language and practice communicating like a native speaker.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, here are some reasons why language learners should be actively building their interpersonal communication skills.

1. Interpersonal communication helps them build confidence and overcome anxiety about speaking

Let’s be honest; many students find it terrifying to speak up in a language class. They’re accustomed to carefully phrasing their communication via social media comments or text messages. Spontaneous, face-to-face communication feels unnatural and scary.

But by providing plenty of opportunities for interpersonal communication within your classroom, you can build your students’ comfort levels so they can go forth and communicate with confidence.

2. It develops a more natural understanding of language and how it works

As we constantly express ourselves and negotiate meaning with others, we develop an intuitive understanding of the language.

One example is grammatical rules. You can teach grammar in your lessons , but it won’t really make sense until someone has a chance to hear the rule in action so that they can recognize when something just doesn’t sound right.

3. It taps into the emotional, affective side of learning

What makes knowledge memorable? Often it’s the emotions we associate with it.

That’s why we often use songs, pictures,  stories and literature to make a lesson stick in our students’ minds.

The spontaneous interactions of interpersonal communication force us to dig a little deeper for our responses—tapping into that rich emotional landscape where true learning happens.

4. Interpersonal communication is the whole reason for studying a language

You know your students are not in your class because they want to learn how to prepare scripted dialogues or to read passages from a text.

They want to be able to listen and speak in their target language.

How many people do you know who studied a language for years in school, yet are unable to speak it? How sad and disappointing. The students in front of you dream of being able to converse fluently in the target language. That’s the whole reason they’re in your class in the first place.

And guess what. Interpersonal communication is the only way to get them there.

By now, you’re probably sold on the benefits of interpersonal communication— that is, if you weren’t already.

But when it comes to incorporating spontaneous, two-way communication in your classroom, you may feel that your creativity is quickly stretched to the limit. That’s where we can help! Read further to learn how to prepare interpersonal communication activities that you can easily incorporate in your classroom routine.

Communication truly is a two-way street—and the foreign language activities above can help you walk down it.

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8 Engaging Listening Activities For High School Students

The biggest problem in communication is that we do not listen to understand, we listen to reply.  – Stephen Covey

Slowly spiraling towards an end, the fast-paced world’s impatience has led “listening” to a slower death. Research suggests that humans consume over 20,000 words a day. Yet, how much do they recall? While high schoolers are the foundation of an entire upcoming generation of adulthood, they are also already adults in more ways than one. It is essential we allow them mature ways to start focusing on listening – for the sake of nurturing more stability in their tomorrow .  

Importance of Listening for High Schoolers

Listening is an experience as much as a skill, which is appropriately justified by the audio data consumed by users around the world. However, when you stand by listening to somebody communicate, it could be challenging to remain on track for a long duration and not let your psyche float. 

High schoolers understand better when they hear words that they comprehend. Peruse or play fitting material that is appropriate for their ability level. Students ought to have the option to comprehend a large number of words and the overall idea of the material that they are paying attention to.

A few extraordinary activities and exercises to assist your curriculum with obtaining better listening abilities never hurt. Make sure you work on articulation, elocution, and normal progression of words.

The Art of Listening

Talking and listening are both basic to the outcome of mastering a language. For a high school student to have talking achievement, the individual must initially pay attention to the language being spoken.

Listening practice is basic since it supports understanding study material, adds more mettle to general learnings, and works on the expertise of normal elocution.

The Biological Aspect of Listening

Subsequent to going through jargon words and perusing perception, it’s vital to do an English listening movement to support what data the cerebrum is attempting to process.

The more times your cerebrum will experience the material, the better it will process it and remember it.

Effective Listening Activities for High Schoolers

Keep reading for a simple yet effective series of listening activities for high schoolers:

• Music – The Classic Listening Tool 

Individuals of any age and social foundations connect to music. High schoolers are already engaged in following music trends, so what better than a musical activity to get them to listen? 

Paying attention to music helps with jargon and word articulation. It likewise assists students with getting a more profound grip over word implications and is an incredible method for making sense of rhyming words.

A cool method for consolidating music in the homeroom is to have students parted into groups and compose basic tunes using words that they discovered that week. 

Using an old song and simply composing new words for the melody is really smart for the less-inventive people. Have them play out the tunes and ask everybody to chime in!

Give understudies tune verse sheets with a portion of the verses missing. Pay attention to the melody multiple times, and teach the students to fill in the spaces.

To check for the right responses, circumvent the room and have every individual sing out a line. 

They need to sing it, or it doesn’t count!

• “Drawing” to Attention

One method for getting high school students to listen is to ensure they know nothing about the fact that it’s a listening game. 

In “Draw This” your students will just think they are drawing. So how does it function? Give every one of your students a clear piece of paper. 

Then, give one drawing assignment, for example, “Draw a square”. Then, at that point, request that your students pass the paper to the following student so everybody has another paper. 

Then, give one more drawing assignment, for example, “Under the square, draw a triangle.” Keep giving guidelines in various directions, such as “to the right”, “to the left corner” etc. until the papers have made over 10 rounds around the room. 

Presently see which papers have ended up being correct. 

• Quizzing their Ears

To get your high schoolers to focus all through illustration, it’s smart to give them a listening test. You can make the inquiries engaging. For instance, in case you enlightened your students a quiz concerning your doggo, one of the inquiries could be “What was the dog’s name?” The test ought to just be 2-5 inquiries in length. The student(s) who find the most appropriate solutions get a gold star or any form of reward. 

Toward the end of every month, the students with the most gold stars or the most rewards get an award like picking a game to play, driving an action, or imparting to the class 15 minutes of his/her number one film. The prize framework removes the substantialness from the “test” yet keeps them motivated.

• Videos for Ears?

Everybody cherishes a decent film and a little TV, and both can be utilized for a wide range of exercises for high schoolers. You can constantly work out some questions for your high schoolers to reply to during a full-length film.

An extraordinary method for integrating this sort of media into the class is to pick short clips of motion pictures that fit with the example you are instructing that day.

Watching these clips toward the beginning of class isn’t just perfect for supporting the educational program, it additionally assists them with figuring out the culture and regular conversational language. It’s truly engaging as well!

In case you don’t know which shows to begin with, start with sitcoms that function admirably for English students.

Show a rundown of the names of the primary characters that are in the clips you will watch. Have every one of the high schoolers pick one person to pay an exceptional measure of regard for. Toward the end of the film or video cut, have understudies finish up a poll or give little details regarding the character they have picked.

Questions can include: What is his/her name? What is his/her work?    

• Hello. It’s “Phone” Time

This is quite possibly one of the most established games in the book, yet entirely it’s as yet a great one! Have your high schoolers get all around. 

One individual will begin the “call” by murmuring a mystery message in the ear of the individual close to him/her. 

That individual then murmurs it to the following, etc. The audience just receives a single opportunity to hear the message accurately; he/she needs to pass on whatever was heard. 

When the message goes as far as possible around the circle, the last individual rehashes the message without holding back. For the most part, it will be a mixed-up variant of the first message. Not only is it fun, but also engaging. 

• Heard the News?

Read out loud an exceptionally short report – 1-2 passages. Ask students to create their own set of questions about the story, utilizing the WH-question words. Compose the inquiries on the board. 

Put students two by two (or leave all in all gathering). Read out the story resoundingly once more. 

Request that students ask and answer the queries orally from the board. To give students work on understanding non-face-to-face discourse, record the article on tape and play the tape instead of reading the article out loud.

• Dictation for Memorization

Find a level-suitable text that is relevant to the topic being contemplated. You can compose the text yourself, track down a passage from a course reading, or track down a concise article in the paper. 

Using similar text, mark specific words, by the same token arbitrarily (every eighth or tenth word) or purposefully picked (key substance words or words frequently misheard), to make “holes”. (To assist students with recognizing action word tense endings, “hole” some or all the action words.) 

Make one hole for each line or each and every other line. Prior to distributing the gapped worksheet, read out loud the total text while students pay attention to get the substance. Then, hand out duplicates of the gapped text. Peruse the text resoundingly a second time while students fill in the “gapped” words as they hear them. 

Read the text clearly a third time so students can check their work. Use a characteristic speed each time you read clearly. Talk about the responses. The correspondence text might be recorded on tape to give students practice in understanding nonface-to-face discourse. 

• Hear it? Hit it. With a Flyswatter 

It is an indispensable method as it helps foster speed in aural word acknowledgment for high schoolers.

Set up a rundown of 12-15 jargon words students have been considering. Using many shades of board markers, and with the help of enormous content, arbitrarily disperse the words across the board. Make note of students into two groups. Line the groups up, every individual remaining behind, with the principal individual in the line confronting the board, some distance away from each other. 

Give the first individual of each group a plastic flyswatter. Read a definition or depiction of each word. The first individual to smack the right word on the load up with their flyswatter procures a point for his/her group. 

Students can smack the word when they sort out which word it is. Later each word, the students with flyswatters hand their flyswatters to the individual behind them and turn to the rear of the line.

Listening activities for adults are equally fun and engaging for the personal development and growth of adults.

Final Words

An average human being spends 45 percent of the time listening and 30 percent speaking, while reading and writing contribute to about 16 and 9 percent respectively. 

It is, thus, essential we make listening worthwhile for high schoolers. One would be surprised to know the amount of knowledge one can impart by providing essential aids to listening activities.

Accredited as one of the top content writers in the country, Harshita Dagha is Harvard certified in Persuasive Writing and Public Speaking.

Holding a Bachelors Degree in Engineering(Telecommunication) from the Mumbai University, she is a firm believer in the power of tech & digital and how it helps the world grow exponentially.

With over 2 million views on her author profiles digitally, the subject matter expert and empath believes that digital is the blackhole of infinite knowledge for the youth where they can both find the finest nectar and suck it in.

She feels it’s time for high schoolers to leverage on the open source, enriching, digitally available methods of learning and take on the world #LikeABoss.

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Making English Fun

50 ESL Conversation Topics for High School Students.

Today, we turn our attention to high school students, who are at a pivotal stage of their English language learning journey.

At this level, students are ready to explore more complex and nuanced topics, making conversations not just a learning tool, but a gateway to broader understanding and critical thinking.

This article presents a collection of ESL conversation topics and starters, specifically crafted for high school students.

These topics are designed to provoke thought, encourage debate, and provide a platform for students to express their opinions and ideas in English.

We also offer a downloadable list of these ESL Conversation Topics for High School Students, an essential addition to your teaching toolkit.

You can find the download links in the sections below.

The Role of Conversation in Advanced Language Learning

For high school students, engaging in discussions in English is about more than just practicing language skills. It’s about connecting with global issues, understanding diverse perspectives, and developing critical thinking skills.

Conversations at this stage are an opportunity for students to articulate complex ideas, debate viewpoints, and enhance their understanding of the world around them.

Strategies for Using Conversation Topics with High School Students

• Encourage In-Depth Discussion : Choose topics that resonate with their interests and current global trends. This encourages students to think deeply and express their views.
• Facilitate Debates and Group Discussions : Use conversation starters as a basis for classroom debates or group discussions, allowing students to engage with different perspectives.
• Incorporate Current Events : Linking discussions to current events makes conversations more relevant and engaging.
• Support Critical Thinking : Encourage students to analyze, evaluate, and elaborate on their responses, fostering critical thinking skills.

50 Conversation Starters for High School ESL Students

Ready to challenge and inspire your high school students?

We’ve assembled 50 stimulating conversation starters, covering a wide array of topics from global issues, personal aspirations, to societal changes.

These prompts are crafted to spark engaging and meaningful conversations among high school students.

You can access the complete list for download below, ready for implementation in your classroom or for home learning discussions.

High School ESL Conversation Starters

• What are your thoughts on the importance of education?
• How do you think technology is changing the way we live?
• If you could start a charity, what would it focus on?
• What career are you interested in pursuing after high school?
• What’s a global issue you feel passionate about?
• How do you define success?
• What’s the most challenging thing about being a teenager today?
• What role does social media play in your life?
• Discuss a book that made a significant impact on you.
• If you could travel back in time, what era would you visit and why?
• What’s your opinion on the importance of environmental conservation?
• How do you handle stress and pressure?
• What’s your favorite memory from childhood?
• If you could meet any historical figure, who would it be and why?
• What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned in life so far?
• Discuss a movie that you believe has a deep message.
• What qualities do you think make a good leader?
• What’s your favorite hobby or pastime?
• How do you think society will change in the next 20 years?
• What’s a skill you’d like to learn and why?
• If you could change one thing about your school, what would it be?
• What’s something you’ve done that took you out of your comfort zone?
• How do you think we can solve [a specific social issue]?
• What does a perfect day look like for you?
• What’s a piece of advice you would give to your younger self?
• What’s the most interesting place you’ve ever visited?
• How do you think the internet has changed human communication?
• What’s your favorite subject in school and why?
• What are your thoughts on [a current event or trend]?
• If you could learn one new language fluently, which would it be?
• What’s something you’re passionate about and why?
• Discuss a personal hero or role model of yours.
• What’s your favorite tradition or holiday, and how do you celebrate it?
• How do you think we can promote more tolerance and understanding in society?
• What’s your favorite form of artistic expression?
• Discuss a challenge you’ve faced and how you overcame it.
• What’s something you believe is misunderstood about your generation?
• What’s your opinion on the importance of space exploration?
• What’s your favorite family memory?
• If you could invent something, what would it be?
• What’s your opinion on the balance between privacy and security?
• How do you see the role of AI and robotics in the future?
• What’s something you’d like to achieve in the next five years?
• How do you approach making important decisions?
• What’s a book or movie that you think everyone should read/watch? Why?
• What’s an issue in your community that you would like to address?
• Discuss a historical event that fascinates you.
• What do you think is the key to a good friendship?
• If you could have dinner with any three people (dead or alive), who would they be?
• How do you think we can improve cross-cultural understanding and communication?

Promoting Engagement and Participation

Getting high school students to participate actively can be challenging. Here are some methods to encourage involvement:

• Create a Respectful Environment : Ensure that all opinions are respected and valued.
• Use Multimedia Resources : Incorporate videos, articles, or podcasts to make discussions more dynamic.
• Encourage Personal Reflection : Allow students to connect topics with their own experiences and views.

Preparing Students for the Future Through Conversation

Engaging high school students in sophisticated English conversations prepares them for future academic and career challenges.

These discussions are crucial for enhancing their language proficiency, critical thinking skills, and global awareness.

By integrating conversation into their educational routine, we’re equipping these young adults with essential skills for their future endeavors.

More ESL Conversation Topics

We have a selection of age / ability appropriate ESL Conversation Topics here on Making English Fun you can access below.

• 50 ESL Conversation Topics for Kindergarten ESL Students
• 50 ESL Conversation Topics for Grade School / Primary Students
• 50 ESL Conversation Topics for High School ESL Students
• 50 ESL Conversation Topics for Adult ESL Students
• 200+ ESL Conversation Topics for ESL Learners

There you have it—a guide to facilitating enriching English conversations with high school students!

Using these conversation starters, you’re not just enhancing their language skills, but also encouraging them to think critically, express themselves confidently, and engage with the world in a meaningful way.

We hope these resources empower you to guide your students towards greater linguistic and intellectual growth.

Enjoy your journey in teaching and inspiring these young minds!

Access the full list ready for download below, ideal for enhancing English learning experiences in both classroom and home environments.

Additional Resources

For more advanced and diverse resources for teaching English to high school learners, make sure to explore our website.

We offer a range of materials from in-depth discussion guides to interactive learning tools, all aimed at making English education engaging and effective for high school students.

Expand your teaching repertoire with these useful links:

• https://eflideas.com/2021/03/06/50-esl-conversation-questions-for-teenagers-and-adults/
• https://aloyanaraksya.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/50-conversation-classes-sample.pdf
• https://www.twinkl.co.uk/blog/50-conversation-starters-for-adult-esl-students
• https://allesl.com/esl-conversation-topics/
• https://www.learnenglisheveryday.com/conversation-questions-about-education/

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Making English Fun!

I have been a teacher of English for over 15 years, in that time i made hundreds and thousands of resources and learnt so much i think its worth sharing. Hopefully to help teachers and parents around the world.

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5 team-building activities for high school students, by: vocab gal.

In this article, you'll discover how team-building activities benefit high school students, ways to ensure team-building activities will be successful, and a variety of classroom-tested activities. Plus, download free printable team-building activities that can be used at the start of a new school year or new semester!

Benefits of Team-Building Activities for Students

Many students might groan and roll their eyes if asked to participate in these activities, but they do have significant benefits. Furthermore, many teachers might be loath to take the time to conduct these activities, although they bring with them enormous gains. Benefits of team-building activities for students include:

Provide a common experience among peers

Allow students to feel more comfortable in group settings

Require students to develop communication skills through conversations

Encourage students to learn academic content with and from one another

5 Fun Team-Building Activities for Students  

It’s critical to help develop students’ social interaction skills, which can easily be done in the classroom through team-building activities. When team-building activities are used routinely in classrooms, the classroom space becomes a shared, safe zone where students feel comfortable and ready to learn. These short games not only allow students to gain valuable skills but also develop empathy and often improve their self-esteem. 

Most activities should only take between five and ten minutes and can be used once or on multiple occasions. Classroom time is valuable, and these activities are designed to minimize time and maximize outcomes.

Activity #1– Make a Burger

Class time: 5–10 minutes, group size: 5–7 students, resources needed: burger template cut out into pieces, tape, skills focus: teamwork, trust-building.

This is a rather quick and silly team-building activity for high school students. Instruct the class that they are to work in groups to make a full hamburger that starts with a bun, and that has pickle, lettuce, tomato, cheese, meat, and another bun in that order. Tape one ingredient onto each student’s back and instruct students to work together to find all the necessary ingredients and then line up in order. The first group to do so correctly wins.

You can either play silently, or you can tell students to say what ingredient is on their backs, but instead only provide hints.

Academic Focus: Replay this game using vocabulary words and definitions, planet names, math problems and solutions, and so on.

Activity #2– Vocab Improv

Group size: any range between five students and a full class, resources needed: list of academic vocabulary to use, example video, skills focus: trust building.

Have students stand in a circle. The first student chooses a subject-related word and acts out a motion that corresponds with the word’s meaning in some way. The rest of the students in the group then echo the word and the motion together. The next student in the group chooses a new word and acts out a corresponding motion. The rest of the students then echo that word and motion, followed by the first student’s word and motion. This sequence repeats until all students in the group have their own word and motion and have reiterated everyone else’s word and motion.

To begin the game, the first student says his/her word and motion and then says another student’s word and motion. That student must say his/her word and motion and pick another student’s word and motion.

The game repeats until a called-upon student cannot recall another’s word and motion fast enough (three seconds) and is “out.” When only two people are left, both are winners.

Caveat: no student can reiterate the previous student’s word and motion.

Academic Focus: By creating motions tied to academic vocabulary and reiterating these words and motions numerous times, students develop deep connections to these words.

Try playing this game throughout the year, and have students use their peers’ previous words and motions to call upon them, as well as current words and motions.

Activity #3– Best Parts of Our School

Class time: 5–20 minutes (each part of this activity can take place on a separate day), group size: 4–6 students, resources needed: best parts of our school handout, skills focus: teamwork, leadership.

Often, students feel disgruntled about school, so this team-building activity for high school students encourages everyone to look for the positive, rather than the negative.

First, each individual should complete the top of the handout, listing three specific aspects of the school they like. Then, assign students to groups of approximately four to six, making sure that students work with people they do not know well, rather than simply working with friends. Have the students each share three ideas in their groups, and then work together to choose which ones to include in a group list of five positive aspects about their school. Next, each group selects a representative to go to the board to write down his or her group’s list.

Finally, the representatives work with the whole class in order to combine the top five lists into one class-wide top ten list. Try to post this list so students remember both working together and the positive aspects of school!

Academic Focus: Ask students to use academic vocabulary in their lists or to utilize strong writing techniques, such as action verbs or figurative language, when creating each point.

Activity #4– Create a Vocabulary Game Board

Class time: 10–60 minutes (each part of this activity can take place on a separate day), group size: 2–3 students, resources needed: activity directions, game board instruction sheet, two game board templates, game piece template, blank game cards.

Students love to play board games, so asking them to design their own provides them with a new and exciting challenge. Have students work together, possibly by formatively assessing their understanding of a concept and then grouping them in high-medium-low understanding groups. Alternatively, grouping them in like-understanding (all highs, all mediums, all lows) partnerships can also allow for thoughtful outcomes.

Have students discuss and agree upon an overall theme for the game, then complete each aspect of the board game including:

Activity Directions

Game Board Instruction Sheet

Two Game Board Templates

Game Piece Template

Blank Game Cards

Academic Focus: Take any unit that needs further review or understanding and ask students to create a board game that highlights various aspects of the concept.

Activity #5– Your Enigmatic Self

Class time: 5 minutes (spread out over multiple days), group size: 3–4 students, resources needed: enigmatic self handout.

Students write down three aspects of themselves that no one else knows. Assign students to groups of three or four and ask them to read their information to each other.

Each day, have one member of the group read all of the group’s fact sheets to begin the class and have the rest of the students guess which group member is which. Have students celebrate one another’s unique selves, and make sure to reiterate the need to respect each other.

Academic focus: Encourage students to use academic vocabulary when describing themselves.

How to Ensure Team-Building Activities Are a Success

In order for activities to be successful, classroom leaders must establish clear expectations.

INSIST ON A SAFE ZONE The most important aspect of team-building activities is that they demonstrate that the classroom is a safe zone. When working through the team-building activities with students, I emphasize my number one rule, which is mutual respect and acceptance. Students must remain positive and respectful toward their fellow learners, and that includes me!

ESTABLISH TRUST TO BUILD COMMUNITY In a classroom, a sense of community is vital in order for students to produce authentic writing, receive constructive feedback from peers, and have meaningful discussions. Emphasizing in each activity the importance of trusting one another, classroom leaders build a sense of classroom community.

EMPHASIZE EMPATHY AND ESTEEM These team-building activities encourage students to empathize with their classmates who may be different from them and will also help to build up their own self-esteem as they work with others. Classroom leaders must stress the need for students to learn from one another and to respect the similarities and differences that all of their classmates bring to each activity.

ENCOURAGE LEARNING I always like to ensure that there is an academic purpose to all aspects of classroom activities, so, as a classroom leader, I ask students to use academic vocabulary and utilize their prior learned knowledge during discussions.

(SOMETIMES) FRAME AS A COMPETITION Finally, if a classroom leader faces significant resistance from students, framing the activity as a challenge or competition can motivate them. Do remember to emphasize that the competition or challenge being carried out can be completed by everyone and that respect and ethical behavior are paramount, as some students may attempt to cheat in order to win.

The Best Time to Use Team-Building Activities

Team-building activities can happen throughout the school year. They can be used for a myriad of reasons and for a multitude of purposes.

Some classroom leaders may want to use these activities at the beginning of the school year in order to establish a classroom culture and then continue to use activities once or twice a quarter to re-establish concepts, review learning, or deepen rapport.

Other teachers may use them later in the year or at the start of the second semester in order to re-focus a classroom or for a specific unit of study.

Alternatively, classroom leaders can employ team-building activities at the end of the year to encourage more authentic peer review for assignments or as a new challenge for students.

In Conclusion

Team-building is fun and has a huge number of benefits, from developing classroom community to reinforcing academic concepts. Each of the five team-building activities allows students to learn with and from each other and deepens connections between peers.

As students become more and more disconnected from their peers and their learning because they spend much of their time on social media, team-building activities are a great way to reconnect students to their school and to their education and to have fun while doing so.

12 Fun ESL Speaking Activities for Teens or Adults

Every language teacher knows that speaking is a core skill to teach and practice, but sometimes it can be challenging coming up with creative or engaging ESL speaking activities and games. You can use them to improve the community feeling inside the classroom , too.

Let’s dive into nine quick, easy, and fun ESL speaking activities for teenagers and adults you can integrate into your lessons or use in speaking clubs.

They are designed to be high-quality and enjoyable – and mostly suitable for online lessons, too.

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They don’t need much preparation, but will get your students talking and help them to hone their conversational skills without even thinking about it.

1. Interview Pop

2. word racing, 3. guess who or what i am, 4. would you rather…, 5. how-to presentation, 6. living memory, 7. video talk, 8. talk about your weekend, 9. timed discussion, 10. debating club, 11. taboo words, 12. story chain.

Student level:  Pre-Intermediate to Advanced Type of Lesson:  Group or Individual

This is a great one for students to have fun and be creative. Put students in pairs, or you could also carry this one out in a one-one lesson.

Students choose one person they want to interview. It can be anybody of their choice, and the person doesn’t necessarily have to be alive still.

I tell students to choose someone they know a lot about or who they admire because then they’ll have more material to talk about when the speaking part of the activity comes around.

Give each student a list of ten to fifteen verbs. (Can be the same list or different) See the example:

Each student has to choose five verbs from their list.

They make a different question using one of their five verbs in each question; these questions are made for the person they want to interview.

Each question will have a different verb.

For example, let’s say a student chooses Barack Obama. They have to make five interview questions for Barack Obama, each question using a different verb from their list.

Here are some examples:

• How did you decide you want to become president?
• Did you want to continue being president after your term finished?
• What did you love about being the president?
• What would you change about the USA?
• What do you consider to be your greatest accomplishment as president?

While I usually just come up with the verbs myself, you can also find  some verb lists  online, along with a list of people for your students to choose from.

While the students are making their questions, go through the class and help students fix the grammatical mistakes.

This is a great activity if you are practicing  question formation  as a grammar topic with your students.

The students then give their partner the questions that they wrote and then assume the role of the person they wanted to interview, while their partner asks them the questions they just made.

So this means that each student answers the questions from the perspective of the person they wanted to interview, as their partner asks them the questions.

Go around and listen for mistakes.

You could also then have students report to the class the person their partner chose and how they responded to the questions.

Student level:  Pre-Intermediate to Advanced Type of Lesson:  Group

A very interactive and high-energy ESL speaking activity. Many students get so into it and excited that they won’t even notice they are speaking in a foreign language and won’t even have time to think about making mistakes.

All you need to prepare for the game is to write down 15-20 vocabulary terms you want to practice with your students, each term is written on a different small slip of paper. Give a stack of these slips to each group.

You can also let the students write down the vocabulary (for example on the last topic they’ve learned) but then some words might be double and they also might not think of the words you want them to practice.

Divide your students into groups of three or four and explain the rules of the game.

One player from the first group starts. This student then has one minute to explain or define as many words written on their slips to their own group as they can, without saying the word they have on the card.

They want their group to guess as many words as possible in one minute.

Each time the members of the group guess a word, they put the card down, which gets them a point, and then they take a new card and repeat the same thing.

Once the minute is over, the next group takes their turn.

After the minute is up, each group counts their points and the group with the most points wins that round.

If you have time to play more rounds, after all, words are guessed, put them back in the basket and let them play again, although this time they can only use one word to explain the word on the card, for example, a synonym or a word they associate with the word on the card.

An example might be that if the word on the card is ‘handcuff’ then they say the word ‘police’ and the other students have to guess the word ‘handcuff’.

Students only get one guess. Once a student guesses, the student must move on to the next card, whether the word was guessed correctly or not.

In the last round, they act out or pantomime the words on their cards.

Here’s a list with even more fun ESL vocabulary games for adults and kids.

While there are many other good vocabulary-charades type games that can be done with both younger and older students, this one has been my favorite.

Student level:  Pre-Intermediate to Upper-Intermediate Type of Lesson:  Group

This is a very simple but effective activity with no preparation needed and can be played in two versions.

It’s usually more suitable for lower-level students but can also be used in intermediate or upper-intermediate students, especially for the other variation of the activity described below.

In version one, one student thinks of a person – it could be someone in the class or a famous person, someone that everyone is likely to know – and the rest of the class asks them yes or no questions about the person until they can guess who it is.

The student who guesses the person with the least amount of questions wins.

In version two, one student goes in front of the door, while the rest of the class decides on a person. Then the student comes back in and has to ask the class yes or no questions until they can guess who the person is.

Another variation of this game is to put students in groups and describe themselves from the perspective of an object, and the other students must guess what that object is in the quickest time possible.

Each student in the group writes down an object and then speaks from the perspective of that object as if they were actually that object.

For example, if one student chooses ‘handcuffs’ they would say something like:

• “The police put me around somebody’s wrists when they break the law.”
• “I have two round rings with chains connected them.”
• “I am on a person on their way to prison.”

Students shouldn’t do any gesturing or acting on this one because that will give it away. The student who is able to guess the most objects correctly wins.

The reason I like this one more is that the students have to get a little bit more creative about expressing their ideas and they also tend to have more fun with this one.

Student level:  Intermediate to Advanced Type of Lesson:  Group or Individual

This is a great way to practice ‘would’ in the conditional form.

There’s a lot of different ways you can organize this one. One of the easiest ways is to just come up with some of your own ideas (5-10 should be enough), type them out, and cut them up into cards.

Go around the class and have a student draw a card, read it aloud, and then call on another student to answer it.

The goal is to make the “Would you rather”  questions funny, crazy, interesting, or controversial. Think about what kind of questions you think would be fun to discuss if you were learning a foreign language.

Bookmark our list of 110 “would you rather” questions, and you will never run out of great questions to discuss.

Here are a few examples:

• Would you rather give up your mobile phone or your pet?
• Would you rather have $50,000 that is legal or $150,000 that is illegal?
• Would you rather be the funniest person in the room or the most intelligent?
• Would you rather have your first child when you are 19 years old or when you are 45?

As stated before, you can make up your own. If you are doing a specific topic for your lesson, then you can try to make them as closely related to the topic as possible.

For example, if the topic for your lesson is  Meet the World’s Oldest Ice Hockey Player , then you might want to prepare some ‘would you rather’ questions about age or about hockey:

• Would you rather stop aging at 17 or 35?
• Would you rather date someone ten years older or ten younger?
• Would you rather be a famous football player or a famous hockey player?

Give each group or pair of students the same card and have each of them state their opinion about the topic on the card.

You can give them a few minutes to take notes on their opinion and what they want to say before starting. Then students go around and say their opinion and support their argument.

This is one is sure to bring some good conversations and even laughs in your class.

You can also teach phrases on how to express opinions, such as:

• “In my opinion…”
• “I believe that…”
• “In my eyes…”
• “From my point of view…”

In addition to this, you could also assign students to make their own “Would you rather…” topics for the class or other groups. Make sure they keep them appropriate!

Help facilitate the conversations and ask follow-up questions while students are speaking.

This activity is great for a number of reasons: it’s simple to assign and explain, effective for students to develop speaking, and fun because it’s on a topic they’re interested in.

It’s also practical because they’re teaching the class how to do something or how something works.

Basically, all you need to do for ESL speaking activities like this one is have students choose some topic. It can be any appropriate topic according to their wishes.

Then they give a five-minute presentation on that How-to topic.

In order to get students cooperating together, you could also put them in pairs and have them decide on and organize the speech together.

Here are some of the ones my students have done before and they turned out to be great:

• How to cook [a food]
• How to play [a sport]
• How to travel cheap
• How to do a magic trick
• How to live healthily

There are some  great tips  you can share with your students on giving a presentation in a foreign language.

Have students prepare the speech at home or during the lesson, and then have them present their topic during the next lesson.

You could take notes on their speaking or pronunciation mistakes while they present and go over them after the presentation.

Student level:  Pre-Intermediate Type of Lesson:  Group

This is a game based on the classic board game “memory” designed for lower-level students.

Two students go out of the room (Student A and Student B). The rest of the class gets together in pairs.

If you have an uneven number of students, one group can be in three.

Each pair chooses a word according to the learning objective.

For example, if your students are learning about food, then in pairs they will mutually agree on a meal or a food they both like. Then the two students come back into the classroom and these two students play against each other to gain points.

To gain points, Student A starts off and asks any student in the class “What do you like eating?” and that student answers “I like eating…”, and then Student A asks another student what they like to eat.

If the second student likes the same thing, then Student A gets one point. Then Student B goes and tries to match the pairs based on the food they mutually chose together.

This is a fun game to practice vocabulary and simple phrases.

You can make the game more interactive if students make gestures and movement demonstrating the type of food. For example, they gesture peeling a banana if the food they chose is ‘banana’.

Other good questions are:

• What is your favorite subject?
• What do you like doing in your free time?
• What time is it?

Student level:  Pre-Intermediate to Advanced Type of Lesson:  Group or Individual

Find a YouTube video topic that you think would be interesting for your students. I would choose a relatively short video (two to five minutes), or something like a TedTalk.

Make some preview discussion questions about the topic presented in the video, go through them with students before watching, and then watch the video together.

You can then have some questions prepared based on the video content and some post-discussion activities while going through some of the important vocabulary terms from the video.

Students tend to love working with videos and there are so many good ones out there nowadays.

Using video is effective because it brings the outside world to your students, and they can generate some great discussions in class, inspiring students to speak their mind and share their opinions and ideas.

Browse our full archive of ESL resources and printables.

Student level:  Beginner to Intermediate Type of Lesson:  Group

This activity is a better choice if your students are happy talking but maybe are a bit nervous speaking in front of a class:

Split the class into pairs.

Students need to discuss their weekend with their partner.

Use only English!

You need to be observant with this type of activity. Keep an eye on each student’s talk time. 

If you are finding some students are much more talkative than their partners, maybe set a time limit for how long each student can talk for before switching. This ensures that everyone gets a fair chance to practise.

Information gap activities are great to practice conversation; get more ideas here.

This is another simple yet great activity for building confidence in speaking!

Give the student a topic card, for instance, “Talk about your favorite place.” or “What’s your favorite band or artist?”

The student has a certain amount of time to prepare some ideas for what they will say.

The student then has to talk about that topic for a chosen amount of time.

When starting out with this activity, make sure to give more time for preparation and less time for the presentation. 5 minutes of preparation time and 1 minute of the presentation should be plenty. 

With time, you can reduce the preparation time or increase the presentation time.

Prepare a list of controversial topics, and two opposing views about each topic.

Split your students into pairs or small groups (each with an even number of students). Split each groups into two parties. Assign a topic to each group: each party has to hold an opposite view.

Give them some time to prepare arguments for their standpoint. 5 to 10 Minutes should be enough.

Then let each group debate their topic in front of the class. One party starts voicing their first argument, then the other answers.

Each statement shouldn’t exceed 30 seconds – use a stopwatch with a countdown, so students know when they have to stop.

The debate is over after a set time – for example 5 minutes – or when the parties stated all their arguments.

After each debate, the whole class votes which party was more convincing and won the debate.

If it’s an individual lesson, you and the student play the opposite parties – no final vote then.

Make sure to prepare topics according to the fluency level of your students. The topics can be rather serious and controversial, or fun and weird.

Here are a couple of examples:

Current and serious topics:

• Classroom instruction vs. Homeschooling
• Self-driving cars: smart or dangerous
• Buy local vs. buy online
• Death sentence: yes or no
• iOS vs. Android

Fun and weird topics:

• Vanilla vs. chocolate ice-cream
• Get up early vs. go to bed late
• Have no kids vs. have 5 kids
• Travel to Mars vs. to the earth’s core
• Sommer vs. Winter

Student level:  Beginner to Intermediate Type of Lesson:  Group

Finally, and absolute classic activity. Split your students into groups, each with at least 3 three students.

Prepare a list of words. For each word, think about 3-5 words which can be used to describe the original word. These can be synonyms, adjectives or any kind of related terms.

• Weather – rain, cloud, sun, forecast, outside
• hungry – food, stomach, eat, restaurant, thirsty
• to run – fast, quick, walk, race, legs

Write the words on cards.

Now, one student has to take one card and explain the word to the other in their group. Here’s the catch: He must not use one of the words on the card (also, no parts or variations of the words.). He must not use gestures, facial expressions or voices. He has to circumscribe the word using other verbal expressions.

The rest of the group have to guess the word. Set a time for each round, like one minute. One group has to guess as many words as possible within that time; each guess is one point.

When the explaining student uses one of the taboo words (or other taboo means), he has to skip the current word and continue with the next card.

Count the points after each round. Then, the next group has its turn. The game is over, when each student in each group had their turn to explain words. Sum up the points; the group with the most wins.

Other possible game modes: Let the groups guess one word alternating, and set a 30 seconds time limit for each guess. Or let a student explain a word to the whole class, and who guesses it first, gets a point.

Student level:  Intermediate to Advanced Type of Lesson:  Group

This activity does not only help students develop their speaking and listening skills, it also fosters critical thinking skills, creativity, and imagination.

Here’s how it works:

• Divide the group into small teams of 3–4 people each.
• Give each team a starting sentence, such as “Once upon a time, in a land far, far away.”
• Set a time limit, such as 5 minutes.
• Each team must take turns adding one sentence to the story, building from the previous sentence.
• The team that completes the most coherent story within the time limit wins.
• To make it more challenging, you can also include a specific vocabulary theme for the story, such as “animals” or “travel”, or you can include a twist, such as “the story must be a horror story”.
• After the activity, teams present their story to the class.
• Encourage the class to ask questions about the story to the teams.

6 thoughts on “12 Fun ESL Speaking Activities for Teens or Adults”

Thank you so much! Some of the suggestions I have already used with my students, but I did get new tips too! will try them out.

Great ideas to get my hgh school students speaking. Thanks so much

Great… These activities are really interesting ones and are helping me a lot. Thank You So Much for Uploading….

Great activities! Greeting from Mexico.

Thank you! This is very clearly written with a lot of additional ideas. Useful! :)

Thanks so much for sharing. Lots of new ideas for me.

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• Teaching Tips

21 Team-Building Activities for Students [Plus: Free List of 45+ Activities]

Creating connections in your classroom will ensure your students are engaged. Use these team-building activities to lay a solid foundation for learning.

Top Hat Staff

Team building isn’t just for the corporate workplace — it can also be used in the classroom to encourage collaboration, problem-solving and decision-making. And it doesn’t have to involve awkward activities such as a ‘trust fall.’ Engaging, relevant team-building activities for students can energize your classroom and take learning to a new level.

By accomplishing group tasks, students learn to listen, trust and support each other, while developing life skills such as communication and collaboration—skills that can’t be learned from a textbook, interactive or not. Learning to get along with peers, for example, isn’t something you can pick up through memorization.

Sara Keinath, Youth Leadership Educator at Michigan State University explains the value of team-building activities for students: “Guiding group members through intentional games can help them improve their communication skills with each other, which will transfer to their work or club projects later. Many team-building activities incorporate such skills as active listening, questioning assumptions, giving clear directions, problem-solving or learning how to ask effective questions.”

Facilitate your team-building games and activities for students over the course of a semester (rather than a one-off event). Here are 21 examples of fun team-building activities for students you can use in the classroom that won’t make everyone cringe.

Help your college students connect and collaborate. Download 45+ Team-Building Activities for College Courses and build community in any classroom.

Table of Contents

Fun leadership activities for college students.

• Group activities for in-person classes

Community-building activities for college students

Adding some fun and levity to your classroom helps your students build informal connections with peers.

1) Pub quiz

Group size: Groups of 3–7 students 

Course type: Online (synchronous), in-person

You don’t need to hang out in an actual pub for this team-building activity; the idea is to mimic a trivia pub night, fostering teamwork in a fun environment by encouraging participants to work towards a common goal. For online courses, instructors can make use of Zoom rooms to organize teams or groups. The ‘host’ asks a multiple-choice trivia question, and teams are given 60 seconds to discuss and agree upon an answer. You can use generic quiz questions (from the board game Trivial Pursuit, for example), or you could relate questions back to the course material. The team with the most points wins (consider giving bonus marks on a recent quiz as a prize).

2) Idea building blocks

Group size: Groups of 5–10 students

Course type: In-person

Divide the class into teams and present them with a problem related to your course material. One team member writes down a solution and passes the sheets of paper along to the next team member, who builds upon that idea and then passes it along to the rest of the team. The paper is passed around until each team member has added to the original solution. When their time is up, a spokesperson can present their ultimate solution to the rest of the group or to the class. This activity helps develop students’ problem-solving and collaboration skills, with learners working towards a common goal.

3) Spaghetti tower

Group size: Groups of 3–10 students

Divide students into teams and provide them with ‘building’ materials, such as dry spaghetti, marshmallows, string and tape. Set a time limit for designing and building a spaghetti tower (one that’s structurally sound, of course). When their time is up, the tallest freestanding tower wins. Prizes can range from bonus points on a recent assignment to a short extension for their next paper or report. There are several variations on this, such as building a pyramid with paper cups, but the idea is to promote communication and collaboration in a leadership exercise—and provide a little incentive as well.

4) Scavenger Hunt

Scavenger hunts aren’t just for kids. While this icebreaker game requires some preparation, it encourages students to be collaborative: planning a strategy, dividing up tasks and communicating progress. Split your students into teams and give them a time limit to find as many items as possible on a list you’ve provided. You can make this more challenging by offering clues or riddles rather than the names of items.

5) Newspaper fashion show

Group size: Groups of 6–8 students

While this team-building game is ideal for art and design students, it can be used in any classroom to get learners out of their comfort zones and allow for team bonding. Divide students into teams of six to eight, and supply them with newspaper, tape and scissors. Participants are given a time limit to design and create an item of clothing out of a newspaper, which requires group brainstorming and delegation of tasks. Bonus points if their article somehow relates to your course material. One person in the group could ‘model’ the finished product when their time is up.

Group activities for online and in-person classes

These activities are also great as icebreakers or retreat exercises.

6) Shark Tank

Split students into small groups and have them develop a product, logo, brand name and marketing strategy before presenting their idea to a panel of ‘sharks’ (those who will judge their ideas). Once each group has presented, the ‘sharks’ all vote on their favorite project with the winner getting a special certificate or an extension on their latest assignment. This activity gives students the opportunity to exercise creative thinking and work on presentation and public speaking skills.  

7) Pipeline

Group size: Groups of 3–5 students 

Teams are given the task of carrying a marble or ball from a start line to a finish line, without it ever touching the floor—or students’ hands. Here’s how it works: Each team member is given a PVC pipe (though they could also use paper and tape, or paper towel rolls). Allow five minutes of planning time, so teams can strategize how they will transport the object as a group; if it falls to the floor, they must start over. This helps to promote problem-solving, communication and great teamwork.

8) Classify this

Group size: Groups of 3–5 students

Arrange random objects on your desk—anything from paper clips to an umbrella to jewelry (aim for about 25 objects in total). Teams of students must then categorize these objects on a piece of paper or sticky note, even when no obvious connections exist. You can decide on the number of categories they must fit the object into or let each team decide. When their time is up, a participant from each group presents their list and explains the logic behind it. This team-building exercise helps students think outside the box.

9) Goodie bag skits

This might take some students out of their comfort zone but it encourages teamwork and collaboration. Divide the class into teams of up to ten people and provide each team with a ‘goodie bag’ filled with random items. Set a time limit (five-to-ten minutes) for each group to create a short skit tied to course content, based on the items in the bag. Teams then present their skits, and a group vote can be held to declare the winner. Winners can get bonus points for their grade on this activity or their in-class participation grade at the end of the school year.

10) Deserted island

Course type: Online (synchronous or asynchronous), in-person

In this icebreaker, small groups of students imagine they’re stranded on a deserted island. This activity can help students build on their leadership skills. After dividing students into teams, provide them with a list of items for survival. Students must prioritize and rank those items—first on their own, and then as a group. Not only does this test their problem-solving skills, but it also helps them differentiate between the needs of the individual and the needs of the collective. 

11) Think-pair-repair

Group size: 20 students (minimum)

Change up your usual think-pair-share activities by posing an open-ended question to your class and asking students to come up with their best answer. Next, pair peers up and encourage them to agree on a response. Combine two pairs and have a group of four accomplish the same task. Continue until half the class goes head-to-head with the other half, defending their stance. This way, students benefit from hearing their peers’ perspectives, as well as getting to practice their debate skills. If your students are online, breakout rooms on Zoom or Microsoft Teams allow you to replicate this experience with virtual team-building. 

12) Why am I here?

Group size: 15–20 students (maximum)

Have students draw a picture that represents why they enrolled in your course. Encourage them to think beyond the fact that they may need your course credit to graduate. They could think about wanting to learn more about your field or simply that their friends were enrolled in your class, too. After five minutes, have students share their picture with the larger group if they’re comfortable—a fun way to help students feel like part of one interconnected community, particularly in the back-to-school season.

→ Download Now: 45+ Team-Building Activities

13) Improv games

Group size: 20 students (minimum )

Improvisational (improv) games encourage students to think quickly and step outside their comfort zone to connect with their peers. Here are a few examples: Pair up students and ask them to figure out the most unexpected things they share in common (this can also be done online in breakout rooms). Or challenge your students to count to 20 as a group with one person saying each number—but no one is assigned a number, and if two people talk at the same time, everyone starts again at one. 

There are literally dozens of in-school activities for college students that can be used in the classroom—you can even ask students to create their own. By incorporating group activities into your teaching, you’re providing students with an opportunity to learn essential life skills they’ll carry with them long after they graduate.

14) Socratic seminar

Ask students to prepare for a discussion by reviewing a course reading or group of texts and coming up with a few higher-order discussion questions about the text. In class, pose an introductory, open-ended question. From there, students continue the conversation, prompting one another to support their claims with evidence from previous course concepts or texts. There doesn’t need to be a particular order to how students speak, but they are encouraged to respectfully share the floor with their peers.

15) Concentric circles

Group size: 20 students (maximum)

Students form two circles: an inner circle and an outer circle. Each student on the inside is paired with a student on the outside; they face each other. Pose a question to the whole group and have pairs discuss their responses with each other. After three-to-five minutes, have students on the outside circle move one space to the right so they are standing in front of the next student. Pose a new question, and the process is repeated, exposing students to the different perspectives of their entire team.

16) Absurd questions

Group size: Groups of 5 students

Course type: Online (synchronous or asynchronous), blended, in-person

Pose a fantastical, outrageous or fictitious statement to the entire group. Statements can be tailored to your discipline such as “what if everyone lived to 150” for a developmental class or “what if there was no such thing as evolution” for a biology class. Students are asked to develop as many answers to the question as they can by considering all political, social, economical and psychological angles. They can then share the answers out loud or, if you’re teaching remotely, on a discussion board, which is a great option for introverts as well.

17) This or that

This activity allows students to see where their peers stand on a variety of different topics and issues. Instructors should distribute a list of provocative statements before class, allowing students to read ahead. Then, they can ask students to indicate whether they agree, disagree or are neutral on the topic in advance, using an online discussion thread or Google Doc. In class, use another discussion thread or live chat to have students of differing opinions share their views. After a few minutes, encourage one or two members in each group to defend their position amongst a new group of students. Ask students to repeat this process for several rounds to help familiarize themselves with a variety of standpoints.

18) Snowball discussions    

Group size: Groups of 2–4 students

Assign students a case study or reading to discuss with a partner, then have them share their thoughts with the larger group. Use breakout rooms in Zoom and randomly assign students in pairs with a discussion question. After a few minutes, combine rooms to form groups of four. After another five minutes, combine groups of four to become a larger group of eight—and so on until the whole class is back together again.

19) Make it personal

Group size: Groups of 2–8 students

After you’ve covered a topic or concept in your lecture, divide students into small discussion groups (or breakout rooms online). Ask the groups questions like “How did this impact your prior knowledge of the topic?” or “What was your initial reaction to this source/article/fact?” to encourage students to reflect on their personal connections to the course concepts they are learning, which is particularly beneficial to educators around the first day of school.

20) Synthesis

Course type: Online (synchronous), in-person 

This discussion activity can help students connect course concepts by leaning on prior knowledge and other learning experiences. Consider asking questions such as “How can this idea be combined with ________ to create a more complete or comprehensive understanding of _________?” Then, students can discuss these questions in their small teams (or online breakout room) in order to learn more about one another’s experiences inside and outside the classroom. 

21) Gallery walk

Start by setting up stations or posters in a few locations around the classroom (like on the walls or on tables). For online classes, students can complete this activity in breakout rooms. Divide students into small groups and have them rotate between each station together, performing some kind of task like sorting their observations into categories. Ask them to write down a list of questions about the source material they are viewing or respond to a discussion prompt related to the course material to generate conversation.

Recommended Readings

Educators In Conversation: How to Help Students ‘Do’ Sociology

A 6-Step Exercise for Discussing AI In Education

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Home » Blog » General » Building Bridges: Effective Communication Strategies for High School Students

Building Bridges: Effective Communication Strategies for High School Students

Effective communication is a crucial skill for high school students to develop. It not only helps them succeed academically but also prepares them for future personal and professional endeavors. In this blog post, we will explore the importance of effective communication skills in high school and discuss various strategies that can help students overcome communication challenges.

I. Introduction

A. Importance of effective communication skills in high school

Effective communication skills are essential for high school students as they navigate through various social, academic, and personal situations. These skills enable them to express themselves clearly, understand others, and build positive relationships. Whether it’s participating in class discussions, presenting projects, or resolving conflicts, effective communication plays a vital role in their overall success.

B. How effective communication can benefit students in various aspects of their lives

Developing effective communication skills can have a profound impact on high school students’ lives. It can enhance their self-confidence, improve their problem-solving abilities, and foster empathy and understanding towards others. Additionally, strong communication skills can open doors to future opportunities, such as college admissions, job interviews, and building meaningful connections.

II. Understanding the challenges faced by high school students in communication

A. Peer pressure and social dynamics

High school is a time when students are highly influenced by their peers and social dynamics. The fear of judgment and the desire to fit in can hinder effective communication. Students may feel hesitant to express their thoughts and opinions, leading to a lack of active participation in discussions and activities.

B. Technology and its impact on communication

In today’s digital age, technology has become an integral part of high school students’ lives. While it offers convenience and connectivity, it can also hinder face-to-face communication skills. Constant exposure to screens and social media can lead to reduced attention spans, difficulty in maintaining eye contact, and reliance on abbreviated and informal language.

C. Emotional and psychological factors

High school students often face emotional and psychological challenges that can impact their communication abilities. Stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem can make it difficult for them to express themselves confidently. Additionally, conflicts and misunderstandings with peers or teachers can further hinder effective communication.

III. Key communication strategies for high school students

A. Active listening

1. Importance of listening skills

Active listening is a fundamental communication skill that involves fully focusing on and understanding the speaker’s message. It helps students gather information, show respect, and build stronger relationships. By actively listening, students can also avoid misunderstandings and respond appropriately.

2. Tips for active listening

– Maintain eye contact and nod to show engagement – Avoid interrupting and allow the speaker to finish – Ask clarifying questions to ensure understanding – Reflect on the speaker’s message before responding

B. Nonverbal communication

1. Understanding body language and facial expressions

Nonverbal communication plays a significant role in conveying messages effectively. High school students should be aware of their body language and facial expressions, as they can influence how others perceive them. Maintaining an open posture, using appropriate gestures, and displaying genuine facial expressions can enhance communication.

2. Using appropriate gestures and eye contact

Gestures and eye contact can reinforce verbal messages and show active engagement. Students should use gestures purposefully to emphasize key points and maintain eye contact to demonstrate interest and attentiveness. However, it is essential to strike a balance and avoid excessive or inappropriate gestures.

C. Assertiveness

1. Importance of assertive communication

Assertive communication involves expressing thoughts, feelings, and needs in a respectful and confident manner. It allows students to stand up for themselves, set boundaries, and assert their rights without being aggressive or passive. Developing assertiveness skills can help students navigate conflicts, advocate for themselves, and build healthy relationships.

2. Techniques for expressing thoughts and feelings assertively

– Use “I” statements to express thoughts and feelings – Practice active listening and empathy to understand others’ perspectives – Maintain a calm and composed demeanor during discussions – Practice assertive body language, such as maintaining eye contact and using a confident tone of voice

D. Conflict resolution

1. Understanding different conflict styles

Conflicts are inevitable in high school, and learning how to resolve them peacefully is crucial. Students should be aware of different conflict styles, such as avoidance, accommodation, competition, compromise, and collaboration. Understanding these styles can help them choose the most appropriate approach for resolving conflicts effectively.

2. Steps for resolving conflicts peacefully

– Identify the issue and communicate openly about it – Listen actively to the other person’s perspective – Seek common ground and explore possible solutions – Collaborate to find a mutually beneficial resolution – Reflect on the experience and learn from it

E. Empathy and perspective-taking

1. Developing empathy skills

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. High school students can develop empathy by actively listening, showing genuine interest, and practicing perspective-taking. Empathy helps students build stronger connections, resolve conflicts, and foster a supportive and inclusive environment.

2. Understanding others’ perspectives

Encouraging high school students to consider different viewpoints and understand others’ perspectives can broaden their understanding of the world. It promotes open-mindedness, tolerance, and respect for diversity. Students can engage in activities that expose them to different cultures, beliefs, and experiences to enhance their perspective-taking skills.

IV. Implementing effective communication strategies in high school settings

A. Creating a supportive environment

1. Fostering open communication

Teachers and school administrators play a crucial role in creating a supportive environment that encourages effective communication. They can establish clear expectations, provide opportunities for student input, and promote open dialogue. Creating a safe space where students feel comfortable expressing themselves without fear of judgment is essential.

2. Encouraging respectful dialogue

Respectful dialogue is the foundation of effective communication. Teachers can encourage students to express their opinions respectfully, listen to others without interrupting, and engage in constructive discussions. Modeling respectful communication and addressing any disrespectful behavior promptly can help foster a culture of respect and open communication.

B. Role-playing and practice

1. Engaging students in communication exercises

Role-playing and other communication exercises provide students with opportunities to practice their skills in a safe and controlled environment. Teachers can create scenarios that reflect real-life situations and guide students through the process of effective communication. This hands-on approach allows students to develop confidence and refine their communication abilities.

2. Providing feedback and guidance

Feedback is crucial for students to improve their communication skills. Teachers should provide constructive feedback that highlights strengths and areas for improvement. They can also offer guidance on specific communication strategies and techniques, helping students develop a deeper understanding of effective communication principles.

C. Collaborating with teachers and parents

1. Involving educators in promoting effective communication

Teachers can collaborate with other educators to develop a comprehensive approach to promoting effective communication skills. This can include integrating communication strategies into the curriculum, organizing workshops or seminars, and sharing resources and best practices. By working together, educators can provide consistent support and guidance to students.

2. Encouraging parental support and involvement

Parents play a vital role in supporting their child’s communication development. Educators can communicate with parents about the importance of effective communication skills and provide resources and suggestions for fostering communication at home. Encouraging parents to engage in open and respectful communication with their child can reinforce the skills learned in school.

V. Conclusion

A. Recap of key points discussed

Effective communication skills are crucial for high school students as they navigate through various aspects of their lives. Understanding the challenges they face, such as peer pressure, technology, and emotional factors, is essential in developing strategies to overcome them. Key communication strategies, including active listening, nonverbal communication, assertiveness, conflict resolution, empathy, and perspective-taking, can empower students to communicate effectively.

B. Encouragement for high school students to practice and develop effective communication skills

High school students are encouraged to practice and develop their communication skills regularly. By actively engaging in communication exercises, seeking opportunities to listen and understand others, and reflecting on their own communication style, students can strengthen their abilities and build meaningful connections.

C. Importance of ongoing support and guidance in building strong communication abilities

Building strong communication abilities is an ongoing process that requires support and guidance. Teachers, parents, and mentors can play a vital role in providing continuous encouragement, feedback, and resources to help students refine their communication skills. Ongoing support ensures that students have the tools they need to succeed in high school and beyond.

Start your EverydaySpeech Free trial today and empower high school students with effective communication strategies that will benefit them throughout their lives.

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New Data Reveal How Many Students Are Using AI to Cheat

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AI-fueled cheating—and how to stop students from doing it—has become a major concern for educators.

But how prevalent is it? Newly released data from a popular plagiarism-detection company is shedding some light on the problem.

And it may not be as bad as educators think it is.

Of the more than 200 million writing assignments reviewed by Turnitin’s AI detection tool over the past year, some AI use was detected in about 1 out of 10 assignments, while only 3 out of every 100 assignments were generated mostly by AI.

These numbers have not changed much from when Turnitin released data in August of 2023 about the first three months of the use of its detection tool, said the company’s chief product officer, Annie Chechitelli.

“We hit a steady state, and it hasn’t changed dramatically since then,” she said. “There are students who are leaning on AI too much. But it’s not pervasive. It wasn’t this, ‘the sky is falling.’”

The fact that the number of students using AI to complete their schoolwork hasn’t skyrocketed in the past year dovetails with survey findings from Stanford University that were released in December. Researchers there polled students in 40 different high schools and found that the percentage of students who admitted to cheating has remained flat since the advent of ChatGPT and other readily available generative AI tools. For years before the release of ChatGPT, between 60 and 70 percent of students admitted to cheating, and that remained the same in the 2023 surveys, the researchers said.

Turnitin’s latest data release shows that in 11 percent of assignments run through its AI detection tool that at least 20 percent of each assignment had evidence of AI use in the writing. In 3 percent of the assignments, each assignment was made up of 80 percent or more of AI writing, which tracks closely with what the company was seeing just 3 months after it launched its AI detection tool .

Experts warn against fixating on cheating and plagiarism

However, a separate survey of educators has found that AI detection tools are becoming more popular with teachers, a trend that worries some experts.

The survey of middle and high school teachers by the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit focused on technology policy and consumer rights, found that 68 percent have used an AI detection tool, up substantially from the previous year. Teachers also reported in the same survey that students are increasingly getting in trouble for using AI to complete assignments. In the 2023-24 school year, 63 percent of teachers said students had gotten in trouble for being accused of using generative AI in their schoolwork, up from 48 percent last school year.

Despite scant evidence that AI is fueling a wave in cheating, half of teachers reported in the Center for Democracy and Technology survey that generative AI has made them more distrustful that their students are turning in original work.

Some experts warn that fixating on plagiarism and cheating is the wrong focus.

This creates an environment where students are afraid to talk with their teachers about AI tools because they might get in trouble, said Tara Nattrass, the managing director of innovation and strategy at ISTE+ASCD, a nonprofit that offers content and professional development on educational technology and curriculum.

“We need to reframe the conversation and engage with students around the ways in which AI can support them in their learning and the ways in which it may be detrimental to their learning,” she said in an email to Education Week. “We want students to know that activities like using AI to write essays and pass them off as their own is harmful to their learning while using AI to break down difficult topics to strengthen understanding can help them in their learning.”

Shift the focus to teaching AI literacy, crafting better policies

Students said in the Stanford survey that is generally how they think AI should be used: as an aid to understanding concepts rather than a fancy plagiarism tool.

Nattrass said schools should be teaching AI literacy while including students in drafting clear AI guidelines.

Nattrass also recommends against schools using AI detection tools. They are too unreliable to authenticate students’ work, she said, and false positives can be devastating to individual students and breed a larger environment of mistrust. Some research has found that AI detection tools are especially weak at identifying the original writing of English learners from AI-driven prose.

“Students are using AI and will continue to do so with or without educator guidance,” Nattrass said. “Teaching students about safe and ethical AI use is a part of our responsibility to help them become contributing digital citizens.”

AI detection software actually uses AI to function: these tools are trained on large amounts of machine- and human-created writing so that the software can ideally recognize differences between the two.

Turnitin claims that its AI detector is 99 percent accurate at determining whether a document was written with AI, specifically ChatGPT, as long as the document was composed with at least 20 percent of AI writing, according to the company’s website.

Chechitelli pointed out that no detector or test—whether it’s a fire alarm or medical test—is 100 percent accurate.

While she said teachers should not rely solely on AI detectors to determine if a student is using AI to cheat, she makes the case that detection tools can provide teachers with valuable data.

“It is not definitive proof,” she said. “It’s a signal that taken with other signals can be used to start a conversation with a student.”

As educators become more comfortable with generative AI, Chechitelli said she predicts the focus will shift from detection to transparency: how should students cite or communicate the ways they’ve used AI? When should educators encourage students to use AI in assignments? And do schools have clear policies around AI use and what, exactly, constitutes plagiarism or cheating?

“What the feedback we’re hearing now from students is: ‘I’m gonna use it. I would love a little bit more guidance on how and when so I don’t get in trouble,” but still use it to learn, Chechitelli said.

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International students cry foul on possible Utah high school sports restrictions

MIDVALE, Utah — The Utah High School Activities Association's board of trustees has voted to move forward with new rules that will put restrictions on international student-athletes.

The organization will look to limit international students from participating in state championships.

 "It appears that some elite academies outside the country are using Utah schools to advance their own interests and sending their students here so they can play in Utah high schools, and maybe be seen and get scholarships," claimed USHAA attorney Mark Van Wagoner.

According to the new rules, schools have three private options:

• Go independent and create their own schedule
• International students play varsity games, but not participate in playoffs
• International students play sub-varsity games only

"It's not a ban," said Van Wagoner. "It's not a ban on coming here, it's not a ban on being a great academician, it's not a ban on playing the sport." Private schools say the new rules put them in a difficult situation.

"Schools will ban the international students instead of the association because they'll be putting that awful position of saying we want to play in the state tournament, but to do so, we cant allow international students to play," argued Dr. Galey Colosimo, principal at Juan Diego Catholic High School.

During public comment at Wednesday's meeting, administrators and students from various private schools explained to the board why the restrictions hurt students.

Gabriel Ambrose is an international student from Malaysia who moved to Utah on an F-1 student visa and picked up a lacrosse stick, never looking back.

"I don't look like anyone else on my team, but I feel so welcome and its so incredible," he explained. "I think we just need to make sure that anyone who is in my position in the future, especially being away from home, being away from everything you've ever known."

The board says the changes are to help reduce the chances for schools or agencies to recruit student athletes, and puts the decision in the hands of the private schools.

"If they want to bring 500 F-1 visa students, they can do so, but they can't do that within the confines of our association," said Van Wagoner.

The rule will now go to all member schools for a vote, and will go into effect if a two-thirds majority approves.

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Utah high school removes class assignment on student essay titled ‘It Is So Hard to Be Trans’

The essay, published in the new york times, contained no explicit or “pornographic” content that would have required its removal under utah law..

(Google Maps) Herriman High School, as shown in a 2021 Google Maps image, in Herriman, Utah. Jordan School District officials ordered that a class assignment at the school involving a transgender student's essay be removed.

Jordan School District officials ordered that an assignment involving a Texas student’s essay published in The New York Times titled “It Is So Hard to Be Trans” be removed from a Herriman High School class’s curriculum after it was brought to the attention of administrators.

“We apologize to any student offended by a Herriman High School classroom assignment involving a New York Times student essay and the disruption to learning it may have caused,” district spokesperson Sandra Riesgraf said in a statement Monday.

The district investigated the assignment, “which asked students to break down parts of speech in the essay,” after school administrators were notified, Riesgraf said. The assignment was ultimately removed and is “no longer part of the class.”

“Appropriate administrative action will be taken,” the statement continued, though the statement did not specify what that action would entail.

The district also did not specify why the assignment was removed. The content does not seem to violate Utah’s sensitive materials law .

But it did seem to prompt outrage after photos of the printed-out, stapled essay made rounds in conservative social media circles as early as last Thursday, with some posts claiming students were required to write a response to the essay explaining why being transgender “isn’t a choice.”

Riesgraf said that claim was false. “Students were not required to take a stance or form an opinion on why being trans isn’t a choice,” Riesgraf said. “The assignment was to review the writing, not the subject.”

Sen. Dan McCay, R-Riverton, weighed in on X , formerly Twitter, arguing that he didn’t see how the essay would “fit into any curriculum that is state approved.”

“I’ve asked the district to investigate,” he wrote.

McCay did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Salt Lake Tribune.

The assigned essay had been selected as one of the Top 11 winners in a 2023 student editorial contest through the The Learning Network, a free resource for teachers curated by The New York Times.

It was written by then 16-year-old Callisto Lim, a student at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Texas. The essay details why Callisto felt scared for their “right to exist,” citing several states that had passed anti-transgender legislation.

“I am scared that if I stay in Texas I will be denied the health care that I need because of people like Governor Greg Abbott,” Callisto wrote.

Callisto’s essay contains no explicit “pornographic or indecent material” that would make it illegal under Utah’s current sensitive materials law.

Utah law also does not explicitly prohibit classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity, though lawmakers have made attempts to pass legislation banning such topics in the past.

Earlier this year, Rep. Jeff Stenquist , R-Draper, proposed a bill that would have prevented school officials from “endorsing, promoting, or disparaging certain beliefs or viewpoints,” building upon existing restrictions meant to uphold “constitutional freedom” in Utah public schools.

The bill would have specifically added “gender identity,” “sexual orientation,” and “political and social viewpoints” as restricted topics, but it ultimately failed to pass .

A year prior, Stenquist also ran a bill that would have prohibited any discussion of sexuality, sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. HB550 took language directly from a controversial Florida bill that became more widely known as the “Don’t Say Gay” measure.

But after pushback from the LGBTQ community, Stenquist revised his draft , lifting the proposed ban on sexual orientation and gender identity but keeping the prohibition on sexuality. The bill failed to pass.

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More California High School Students Want Career Training. How The State Is Helping

Budget uncertainty could imperil career pathway expansion

‘once in a lifetime opportunities’, from vocational ed to career ed, pathways in marine transportation and global logistics, a film studio at hollywood high, higher graduation rates, better employment outlook, challenges with accountability and communication.

A school without steers? Unthinkable, said Mason Tucker, a 10th-grader at Madera South High School north of Fresno.

“When I found out there were all these animals here, I thought, I can do this in school ? I have to be here,” said Tucker, who commutes 40 minutes each way to attend the school’s agriculture program. “Why hate school when you can love it?”

Steers, sheep, horses, pigs, rabbits, chickens, a sweet-smelling tangerine grove and acres of rotating crops are part of Madera South’s agriculture pathway for students — one of thousands of career-focused courses in California high schools that are part of a renaissance in career and technical education. Aimed at preparing students for skilled, high-wage jobs, the pathways are a step beyond the vocation ed courses of generations past.

Since 2015, California has invested well over $3 billion to expand career and technical education in high schools, making it a leader nationwide . That money has translated to state-of-the-art robotics labs, welding shops, film studios and other career-preparation programs intended to spur the economy and offer students more options for their futures, whether it includes college or not.

Students seem to appreciate the opportunities. Enrollment in career pathways has jumped from 18% of all students six years ago to 23% last year. Native American, homeless and low-income students had the highest rates among student groups.

More expansion is on the way, unless the initiative falls victim to upcoming state budget cuts. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget , released in January, calls for career education to stay intact, although that could change as negotiations continue. Last August, Newsom signed an executive order creating a Master Plan for Career Education , intended to link K-12 programs to those in community colleges and 4-year universities and streamline the dozens of career training pathways and funding sources.

Despite the surge in funding, Newsom is still a ways off from achieving his goal. While thousands of high schools in California have added or expanded their career education courses in recent years, some high schools still have scant — if any — offerings. Some courses don’t include academic content or lead to meaningful careers.

And while more students are enrolling in career preparation courses, the number should be higher, education advocates said. Ideally, all students should be taking college preparatory classes as well as career education courses, so they have the widest range of options after they graduate.

At Madera South, nearly all students are in a pathway, one of the highest rates in the state. And most of them are enrolled in the agriculture pathway, a mix of academic classes like biology and chemistry and hands-on courses such as animal science, floral design, welding and engine repair.

The school includes a 20-acre farm with ample space for livestock and raising crops. Much of the program is self-supporting, as students sell eggs, produce, floral arrangements and animals to their classmates and the community. State grant money has allowed the school to invest in field trips to local nurseries, processing plants and farms, and new equipment, such as a pair of ultrasound machines for students to see how many babies a sheep is carrying.

“It used to be, money was tight,” said Kristin McKenna, the district’s director of college and career readiness. “We couldn’t do a lot of things we wanted to. But now we have state-of-the-art equipment that’s comparable to what’s actually being used in the industry. … It gives students once-in-a-lifetime opportunities they’re not going to get elsewhere.”

Why hate school when you can love it?

Tucker and his classmates spend hours a day, even in the summer, tending to livestock and growing pumpkins and corn. Brianna Ramirez, a sophomore, said she’s motivated by the gratitude from community members.

“When I see the families line up for our corn, and they tell us how good it is, it’s just an amazing feeling,” Ramirez said. “People say I’m crazy for being out here at 6 a.m. pulling weeds all summer, but I love it.”

Ramirez, who aspires to be a horse trainer or veterinarian, said her grandparents were farmworkers for years and were initially baffled by her interest in agriculture.

“At first they were like, why is she always with the sheep? Now, it’s ‘Damn, that girl is always busy,’ ” Ramirez said. “My goal is to always make them proud. … I want to keep the ag part of my family going.”

Career programs, once known as vocational education, have been in high schools for at least a century, but were often criticized for tracking students — particularly those who were low-income – into auto shop, for example, rather than college preparatory classes.

In the 1980s, employers started pushing for stronger academic preparation in high schools so workers would be better equipped to tackle fast-changing technologies. In 1990, the federal government updated the Carl T. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act to require schools to integrate academic and vocational programs in order to get grant money.

These days, high-quality career preparation pathways are supposed to include academic courses as well as reflect the local job market, with input from industry leaders. In the Bay Area, that means lots of computer science pathways. Los Angeles high schools are replete with entertainment pathways to prepare students for careers in Hollywood, from acting to camerawork.

At least two schools in the Los Angeles area focus on global logistics, with support from the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles . In Long Beach, Cabrillo High School, which is in a largely low-income area, has a global logistics pathway where students take courses in supply chain management, international business and other topics to prepare them for careers at the port.

In one project, students analyze a country’s imports, exports and biggest trade partners. In another project, students examine a hypothetical solar panels company – where it manufactures the panels, how it ships the panels across the globe, and how logistics impact revenues.

More than 425 students are enrolled in the program, making it one of the district’s most popular.

“Students see the cranes at the port, now they know the story behind them,” said teacher Jim Dowding. “You see students’ eyes get big and you know you’re changing lives. Not just their lives, but their family’s lives and the entire community.”

In San Pedro, a charter school called Port of Los Angeles High School offers several pathways that can lead to port jobs. Among them is a marine transportation pathway that includes classes in sailing, boat-building and navigation. Pathways in welding and construction also prepare students for jobs in the maritime industry. Partnerships with local unions allow students to enter apprentice programs after graduation.

The school is in high demand. Last year 420 students applied for 250 spots in the freshman class. Winners were chosen through a lottery.

You see students’ eyes get big and you know you’re changing lives. Not just their lives, but their family’s lives and the entire community.

Danica Nelson, a senior in the welding pathway, said she’s grateful to gain practical job skills. Her primary interest is theater, but she’s been able to merge the disciplines in a way she thinks will lead to a meaningful career in set construction. At school, she welded a table for a production of “Clue” and a counter for “Little Shop of Horrors.”

“I wanted to study theater but those jobs are hard to get and don’t pay that well,” Nelson said. “But with welding, I can make a good living and still be involved in theater. It’s a perfect fit for me.”

Across the county at Hollywood High, a $1 million state grant allowed the school to transform an abandoned auto shop into a state-of-the-art film studio. Students in the performing arts and media academies learn everything from animation to documentary filmmaking to stage design. One recent graduate, Cheyenne Williams, won an Emmy in 2021 for a short children’s program she directed, “Girls’ Voices Now.”

The academies are a way to guide Hollywood High students — the vast majority of whom are low-income and Latino — toward lucrative careers in the entertainment industry. Surrounded by Hollywood landmarks like the Walk of Fame and the El Capitan Theatre, the high school offers a natural training ground for future actors, lighting designers, key grips and other film set staples.

“Our students see (the entertainment industry) every day, it’s literally right in their backyard, but they don’t know how to access it,” said teacher Ali Nezu, who coordinates both academies. “We try to open those doors, give them opportunities and skills they’d never have access to otherwise, whether they decide to pursue entertainment or not.”

Research has shown that students in career education programs have higher graduation rates, improved academic achievement and higher rates of employment and enrollment in community college, said Miya Warner, a senior principal researcher with the research firm SRI.

Another benefit of high school career pathways is that the stakes are low if students change their minds. It’s relatively easy to change pathways in high school, while changing majors in college is more complicated and can cost thousands of dollars in extra coursework.

She also pointed out that college enrollment has been declining in California since 2019, as student loan debts climb and completion rates remain low. For many students, going straight from high school to a career is an appealing option.

“People are questioning college in a way they did not previously,” Warner said, adding that is happening in spite of projections that an increasing share of jobs over the next decade will require a college degree. “I think (career education) is definitely having a moment right now. It has bipartisan support, and there’s a lot of good research showing its benefits.”

She cautioned, though, that not all career education programs have the same positive outcomes. The most successful programs are tied to the local labor market and offer a sequence of linked classes, not “a la carte” offerings. Pathways should also link to high-wage careers in growing industries, not low-paying jobs with little future.

Another hurdle with career education is accountability, said David Stern, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley who’s extensively studied the topic. Currently, the state’s main accountability measure, the California School Dashboard , uses a “college/career” indicator to count the number of students who meet the state’s college admission standards or finish a career pathway, not both. In 2023, only about 11% of students met both criteria, according to the state .

“To really reach the golden age of (career and technical education), every student should be prepared for college and career,” Stern said. “It shouldn’t be one or the other.”

He also questioned how well schools are communicating with students about their options. Most schools have skeletal counseling staffs, and some students undoubtedly sign up for a pathway because their friends are enrolled, or because someone picked it for them.

At Madera South, Tucker enjoys his time outdoors tending to animals on the campus farm, but he also loves another class in the ag pathway: welding. He recently built a steel table in six hours for a class competition, emblazoned with intricate “Madera FFA” lettering.

In addition to working on farm machinery, welding students learn to make barbecues, fire pits and other metal items. Tucker hopes to continue welding at the local community college after he graduates.

“This program is what I look forward to every single day,” Tucker said. “I feel like I’ve accomplished so much. It makes me think, what else can I accomplish in life?”