Friday, July 20, 2012

Anyone here busy?

This is an example of a short activity that I used with a Kinesiology class to build rapport.  I gave the prof a "heads up" before the session so she would not be surprised.  I knew that I would be speaking with 120 students in an amphitheatre-style room so I had to try something a little different than my usual session.  To start, I took between 5 and 10 minutes to do this little exercise.  In my opinion, it went really well.

First, I baited them by asking the class to put up their hand if they were busy.  Everyone--including me--put up one hand.  I told them they were in luck because I had with me "Exercises for Busy People", printed on a card created by the YMCA around 100 years ago.  I held up the original while the ppt slide showed the digital version.  The students laughed when the read the exercises created for a healthy liver, kidneys, bowels, and more!

They had already admitted that they were busy people, so I told everyone to stand up because we needed to exercise.  I passed the card to the prof and asked her to pick an exercise and read it out loud.  The students and I all performed the selected exercises.  Everyone laughed while they did the 100-year-old examples.  Then, I told them to sit down and I continued with the session.

This example not only built rapport with a large group of students whom I had never met before, it set the tone for the rest of the session.

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