Building Relationships 3 – Trust Falls

Write the word “Trust” on the board.  Ask your students to take a minute and reflect on what trust means to them, where it’s important, and if it’s important in the classroom.  You can have them write down some ideas on paper if you wish.

Tell them to share their ideas with a partner.

Now ask the class if they trust you.  Hopefully, they say yes .  Tell them that you trust all of them and that you are going to prove it to them.  Ask them to volunteer a couple ways in which you might do this.

Ask a volunteer to come to the front.  Tell them that you are going to fall and that they have to catch you.

Do a practice run so they get a feel for your weight and so they can get the positioning down right.  The volunteer should place their hands firmly on your shoulder blades with the fingertips points up (this is very important because the wrists are weak and if they do it the opposite way they could drop you), bend their knees in a tripod fashion, and get themselves squarely under you.  See the above picture (although this example has two people supporting which is a good idea for heavier individuals).

Lean backward into them and have them take you farther and farther down each time.

Now tell them you will do it for real.  You need to keep your eyes closed, your legs straight, and cross your arms in front of you like the guy in the picture.  Then just tip backwards.  It’s a bit scary, but the volunteer will catch you.

Now switch positions and do the same with them.

Each student now grabs a partner and they start of with some practice runs and then do the real thing.  Warning:  Make sure partners are of about equal weight.  If there is a really big person in the class, you can do it with two people supporting, one at each shoulder blade.  Have them change partners a few times.

You can now do a reflective writing or a round table discussion on how they felt during the exercise.  What did they learn about themselves and each other?  Is it easy to trust others?  Why or why not?  In what ways do we need to trust each other in the classroom?

This activity is great for building up relationships in the class and fostering trust.  I highly recommend it for any class.

Related Posts:

Building Relationships 1: Tank Game

Building Relationships 2:  Human Knot

Building Relationships 4: Circle of Trust

Building Relationships 2 – The Human Knot

This activity works best with between 8-15 people.  If there are too few it goes really quick.  If there are too many it simply takes too long or just doesn’t work.  You can split your class into groups and make it a race if you have a larger class.

Participants need to form a circle.  Then everyone needs to reach across the circle and lock hands with someone else, grabbing the hands of two different people.

Now tell students that they have to untangle themselves without breaking their grips.

This is a great trust-building exercise.  Most people don’t believe it’s possible at first but the vast majority of groups untangle themselves successfully.  In the end, all participants should be facing outwards, forming the original circle.

If participants get really stuck you can allow one unclasp and reclasp.

The sense of accomplishment when the knot is untangled is fantastic.

Obviously this activity brings out a lot of language related to body parts, prepositions of movement and place, directions, and imperatives.

Here’s a video of the activity being done (apologies for the religious theme):

Related Posts:

Building Relationships 1: Tank Game

Building Relationships 3:  Trust Falls

Building Relationships 4:  Circle of Trust

Building Relationships: War & Peace

Not too long ago Marisa Constantinides posted a piece that discussed building trust and relationships in the classroom.  I think this is probably one of the most important things you can do to create a positive classroom environment.  This series will look at a number of different ways to build relationships in the classroom between you and the students as well as between the students themselves.

I think relationship building is often overlooked in the classroom.  How many lesson plans list “to build bonds” or “to establish trust” in their objectives?  Activities designed to build relationships and a positive environment are extremely beneficial for lowering the affective filter.  By doing such activities we are in fact laying the groundwork for a constructive environment in which learning can occur. It’s well worth the time to think about and plan for.  Isn’t teaching really about relationships after all?  The learning of a language really comes second to this.  I think we have all seen teachers who do everything right, but if they don’t have a connection with their students, the lessons still fall flat.

Luckily for those of us in Turkey, one of the greatest things about Turkish students is how quickly they bond with each other.  Despite the many differences that exist, they will quickly form a cohesive whole without a whole lot of prompting by the teacher.  This is a strength you can exploit to the fullest.  Often classes will go to great lengths to stay together and adding or taking away students can be quite disruptive.  Although, again, new members will quickly be accepted into the group given a little time.  I think the most common positive feedback I get from my classes is that they “made some good friends.”

One way to build up bonds between students and get them to learn to rely on each other is to use pair or group work situations where they have to work together to complete the goal.  Of course, any goal-oriented group activity accomplishes this, but something with a physical element and an element of challenge can get much better results.

When I worked in domestic violence we did all kinds of trust-building exercises and I decided to modify one of them to fit an ESL context.  First, let’s look at the lesson plan and then let’s highlight some important aspects of it.  Here’s the lesson plan:

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Tank Battle!

Level: Elementary & Up

Objectives:

• Build up trust in the class
  Imperatives
  Direction vocabulary
  Prepositions of place & movement

Plan: Walk into the class and draw a big bull’s-eye up on the board (I like to tape a picture of a tank in the center).  Draw a line on the floor where people have to throw from.  Then throw a crumpled up paper ball on the floor.  Point to the ball to indicate that you want it.  You also might want to tell students not to touch it.

Leave the classroom and put on a blindfold.  Enter the classroom and start stumbling around as if you’re searching for something.  The students should catch on immediately that you want the ball.  If not, ask where the ball is.

The students should guide you to the ball using whatever language they have.  Then indicate that you want to hit the target.  Again, students will guide you to throw it using whatever language they know.  You can scaffold by asking.  For example, “should I throw it (mime throwing)?”

After you have successfully thrown the ball at the target, ask the students how close you were to the bull’s-eye.  Then put up on the board any language they used and try to elicit some more and add your own.  Students will need language like, go forward, move your hand to the right, bend down, , turn to the left, throw it hard, etc.

Depending on the level of the class you might want to do some TPR with this.  Play a quick game of Simon Says to familiarize them with the necessary vocabulary. Or you could set up 3 chairs at the front of the class and have students come up in groups.  The person in the middle gives commands while the other two follow.  Work through a couple groups this way.

Once you are sure people are fairly familiar with the necessary language, point to the tank and ask them what it is.  Ask them when tanks are used.  Tell them that they are going to learn to fight a war in English!

The Rules of War are:  1) No touching , 2) Stay behind your tank at all times, 3) Commanders cannot touch the balls, and 4) if you get hit with a ball, you are out.

Split the class off into pairs.  One person in each group is the tank.  They will be blindfolded.  The other person is the commander.  They will give the directions.

Scatter a bunch of tank balls on the floor (crumpled pieces of paper).  Explain to the students, by way of demonstration, that the tanks must pick up a ball and try to hit another tank with it. Once a tank is hit, they are out until the next round.

Blindfold the tanks and spin them around.  Keep track of who hits who.  The first round the teacher should monitor the game, but the 2nd round should have the teacher participating with someone else monitoring.  If a group uses L1, they are automatically out.

Probably after round 1 you will need to revise some of the necessary commands and directions.  Play the game for as many rounds as the students are interested in.

Get feedback on the lesson and tell students they are now ready to fight a war in English

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The first thing to notice is that the teacher demonstrates the activity themself.  When building trust, we can never ask the learner to do something we don’t do ourselves.  We can model the activity and create an atmosphere where students feel comfortable copying us.

Simon Says is your typical TPR.  All the students perform the same actions and so nobody really feels embarrassed (well, too embarrassed anyway )and it helps foster group bonds, especially as they see the teacher joining in.

The blindfold activity is great because students really have to trust one another to guide them and there is a competative element that makes it really fun.  You could also split the class up into teams, one with blue blindfolds and one with red, to foster more comraderie.

In the end everyone gets a laugh and they really start to rely on each other.  It’s a good way to get classes working together.  They really learn to trust each other and the element of putting yourself out there and taking risks creates an environment that encourages further risk-taking in the class when it comes to language use.

Here is the downloadable lesson.

What do you think?  Do you ever focus on relationship-building as a lesson objective?  What other activities can you think of that build group cohesiveness, relationships, trust, and/or a positive atmosphere?

On another note, I did a humorous guest piece over on TEFLTastic with Alex Case on what managers look for in their teachers here.

Related Posts:

Building Productive Classroom Relationships

Building Relationships 2:  The Human Knot

Building Relationships 3:  Trust Falls

Building Relationships 4:  Circle of Trust