Difference between revisions of "Practice group exercises"

Revision as of 13:06, 26 January 2006

The exercise: I call it "The day of needs" (or something like that)

The intention of this exercise is 1. to bring some fun and relaxed learning 2. to make people realize that the motivation of our actions is grounded in our needs. With everything we are doing we try to fulfill a need.

Let the group imagine, that you all represent ONE person, going through a day.

Every person says in turn one thing that she/he does in the day. You follow the time of the day.

Example: I begin: "It is 6 am and I get up, going to the toilette and fulfilling my need for evacuation."

Next person: "Oh, then I enter the kitchen and am starting to make a coffee, because... for me it´s a kind of ritual, starting the day with a coffee. So I fulfill my need for celebration and ritual."

Next person: " Now I go to the bathroom. I have an extensive shower, brush my teeth and do this kind of body care, because...well, I have a need for physical wellbeing?

and so on. Each person contributes an activity during the day.

You can do this game with small and large groups, with beginners and advanced.

Isabell Peters from cold and sunny North Germany

1. Jackalaplooza Practice responding to these situations: - blame (especially when in agreement with some of the content) - victim language - jackal humor - praise - responding when triggered (giving self emergency empathy)

2. Don't Diss the Jackal Observe and and translate. Practice screaming and BS in giraffe. (Some young g's think giraffe has to be 'nice', this practice theme encourages expressing full range of feeling.)

3. JackalJam: people collect jackal stuff from the culture (song lyrics, ads, movie dialog) and bring it in. What is the need behind these?

All of these deal with "jackal"- might be because young giraffes so easily slide into 'jackal is bad/wrong'.

Will appreciate any comments and seeing others' contributions. - Kathleen Conway

OFNR Says Taken from the children's game, Simon Says.

Participants stand at the end of a room and OFNR reads a sentence. The participants decide if they think the sentence is a giraffe communication; i.e. clear Observation, Feeling, Need or Request. If they decide it is, they take one step forward. If not they stand stationary. Then the discussion. If the consensus is "no, it isn't", then anyone who has taken a step has to return to the beginning. First person to reach OFNR celebrates.

I imagine starting simply and then increasing the complexity of the sentences as the game progresses.

Feedback?

P.S. I started with the desire to have more physical movement in exercises. Then I wondered what childhood games had activity. Then how to make it relevant to NVC. Hide and Seek Giraffes? Haven't figured that one out yet. I would enjoy your creative contributions. Jim Hussey

Jim, I appreciate your contribution of OFNR Says (support) and want to share my experience of using it last night in my Intermediate NVC class and also to get further clarification from you. In regard to the sentence that OFNR reads, do you instruct participants to make up one of their own? I provided "hard to hear" statements like, "You never listen to me" and instructed the group to either translate the statement into OFNR or not use the card and make up their own OFNR from a personal situation. As we went along with the game we varied the stepping forward by taking one component at a time - i.e. OFNR reads the whole OFNR and then breaks it into four parts, again reading only the observation and the group either steps forward or "discusses" it, then the feeling, etc. At the end of the agreed upon OFNR we all did a "victory dance" to celebrate. My group was quite alive with the discussion part and wanted to contribute to figuring out needs that seemed "to fit" and/or street language. Although this met needs for learning and exploring, it did not meet needs for movement, which some of us thought was a main piece of the game. Any suggestions or further clarity of how you play it differently? SECONDLY: I have been meaning to offer my idea of "Putting it Together Game" which has generated a lot of excitement and celebration in the groups I have offered it. It actually has two parts: Part One (this game was created by Miki and Inbal Kashtan): Materials are: Six categories printed on 81/2 by 11 cards - 1 Observation, 2 Feeling, 3 Need, 4 Request, 5 Demand or Non-doable Request, 6 Judgment, Thought or Evaluation. 60 cards with examples of ten each of the 6 categories (one on each of the cards, i.e. 10 observation cards, 10 feeling cards, etc.). Depending upon the number of players - I[ve had over 100- you can make sets of the 60 cards. (Each set can be the same or can be different)

The players get into groups of 4 or 5 people.  Each group receives a set

of 60 cards. The Category cards are posted on the walls around the room. The groups are instructed to have one person read a card and the group as a whole decides which category fits the statement. The cards are placed in six piles in the middle of the group and when the 60 cards have been read, the individual cards get posted under the category card. The group is instructed that if they are not in agreement about a particular statement on one of the cards, after a couple of expressions of non-agreement, it is requested that they put the card in a seventh pile entitled "Don't Know" pile. Further clarity is that if they are struggling with it, the understanding about it could probably benefit the group as a whole and we will go over those cards first when all the groups have completed their cards. Note: 60 is an arbitrary number and can be minimized or expanded depending upon your time frame. Part Two: If you only have one trainer, you can do this in whole group or divide up with a trainer in each group. You can also use a group of volunteers to sit in the middle and have the remainder of the participants watch as in a Fish Bowl.Take the OFNR cards from the group of 60 (or you can make up new ones) and put them in individual envelopes - first omitting 5 feelings and 5 needs. Give one envelope to four different people sitting next to each other in a circle of all the folks who are playing. Person holding Observation envelope picks a card at random and reads it out loud, person holding Feeling envelope, picks a card randomly and reads out loud, etc. After an OFNR has been read as a complete sentence (it seems to take a few practices to get a rythym going), the envelopes are passed one to the left, so that there are always some people in the group who are not reading. After the fifth round, the feelings and needs are voiced impromptu by the player holding the now empty envelope. And after the tenth round the entire OFNR is impromptu. VARIATION: Prepare additional Observation cards, so you would start with 20 O's, 5 F & N's & 10 R's. This can be quite hilarious, especially with the requests when someone says something like "would you be willing to stand up and turn around 3 times right now? for the request. It provides a structure for play and less focus on "getting it right". Blessings, Carol Chase, Santa Rosa, CA