Setting the stage

Some suggestions - Course-related:  

• How does it feel in the course?  
• What has been the best part of the course so far?  
• What aspect of the course is of most interest to you?

Some suggestions - general:

• What’s your favorite thing to do in the summer?
• Using only facial expression and body language, show how you feel now?
• What’s your number? 1 (not so good) – 10 (ecstatic)
• What was the last good deed you did?
• What one quality would you most like to see people exhibit?
• If you could be any other age, what would it be? Why?
• Finish the sentence: The best news I’ve had in the past week is…
• What is the biggest challenge you face in the first 10 minutes of your day?
• If you could interview someone for half an hour, who would it be?
• What one quality would you most like to see people exhibit?

How it works

• Hand out a Human Bingo grid to each participant. In each box is a heading.
• Tell the participants to find a person that matches the heading in each box. A person can only be named once in the grid.
• The person that complete all boxes first is the winner.

Consider having prices for 2nd and 3rd place if the group is large. Example of a human bingo grid is given below.

Find additional resource on human bingo on WikiHow

The participants sort themselves to form a line according to a chosen criteria.

Example of criteria:

• Height
• First name
• Birthday
• The furthest they have travelled
• Shoe size
• Distance to place of birth from current location
• Hand size
• Zodiac sign.

Could be varied by asking participants to do the exercise without talking

Why?

A bit of physical activity and communication can provide a good start of a meeting and/or energize tired participants in the middle of a SI-session.

How?

• Prepare a number of multiple-choice questions. For instance, regarding difficult concepts in the course or general (if used with check-in purpose)
• Designate the different possible answers to the question with different places in the room (corners).
• Ask a question to the participants and tell them to go to the part of the room that represents the answer they believe is correct. Ask them why they chose that alternative and let them discuss & change their mind if they want to by changing to a new place.
• Tell the right answer – and if the participants have questions – ask the group with the right answer if somebody can explain for the others
• Continue in the same way with the remaining questions.

How it works

• Divide the participants into small teams (2-4 persons)
• Hand out the same amount of paper and tape to each group
• Give them a set time (~5-10 minutes) to build the tallest free standing tower
• At the end of the exercise measure the height of each tower group.

A variation could be to hand out a set amount of spaghetti straws and marsh mallows to each group instead of paper and tape. The task is still the same – to build the tallest tower.

How it works

• The SI-PASS leader hand out postcards to each participant.
• Explain that they are going to write themselves a post card.
• Let them work in pairs and discuss two goals the want to achieve in SI-PASS sessions before the end of the course.
• Ask them to write down their goals on the postcard and hand it in to you.
• At the last session – hand it out to them (or post them a few days before) and let them review if they achieved the goals they set up.

Why?

It is a good way of combining learning with getting everybody to talk to each other in pairs.

How?

• Compose a number of short questions/tasks based on covered course material. If speed-dating is used as an ice-breaker the questions can be general or why not use riddles?
• Divide the participants in two groups and place them on chairs in an inner and an outer ring facing each other.
• Read out the first question and tell them to discuss in pairs. 
• After a set time ask the participants in the inner ring to move one step clock-wise and read the next question.
• Continue until all participants in the inner ring has moved a full circle.
• Conclude with letting participants share their answers and motivations for each question. 

One way to have a set agenda for your SI-PASS session is to ask the participants in the prior meeting what they would like to focus on during the next session. Either you ask them directly or let each participant write down one item they would like to focus on during the next meeting on a piece of paper and hand it to you, or have a vote on difficult topics you have identified that have been covered or will be covered until the next meeting. 

Keep in mind: What is perceived as interesting to work with during the coming meeting might change until the actual session. Check with the participants the day before if the agenda still is OK or be prepared with a plan B at the meeting. 

How it works

• Form a facebook group with your participants at the first session. Besides determining an agenda in advance it is often a convenient way to take up course related issues between meetings, to remind people of the coming meeting, and to notify people that the meeting is cancelled if you become sick.
• The agenda can be decided by simply asking them in the facebook group what toipcs they want to focus on during the coming meeting. However, it is likely that you will not get many responses. If so, it is probably better to have a vote in the group on topics you have identified as challenging. 

How it works

• Hand out pieces of blank paper to each participant.
• Ask them to write down a topic they would like to focus on during the session. Then ask them to hand over the note to the person sitting next to them. If the note they receive have the same topic that they had written themselves tell them to put a mark in the upper-right hand corner.
• Continue to pass on the notes between participants until all notes have passed through each person.
• Collect the notes and write up the agenda based on the topics with most votes.

How it works

Before the SI-PASS session - Write down a number of topics on covered course material you believe the participants will find challenging. Ask for the teachers input and edit the list if necessary.

• Write up the list on the white board at the start of the session.
• Let participants have the opportunity to add topics.
• Thereafter, let the participants vote on the topic they would like to focus on the most.
• Decide the agenda based on the votes.

How it works

• Meet with the teacher and identify challenging topics in the course material that you can focus on during the next SI-PASS session. 
• Use an online poll instrument (for instance, surveymonkey, easypoll, doodle online voting) and mail out the link to participants before the session.
• Remember to have an option in the poll where participants can add their own choice of topic to focus on during the meeting.

The K W L technique helps students to activate prior knowledge and link to new information to make connections with what is already known.

How it works

• Title 3 columns: What I Know; What I Want to know and What I Learned.
• Ask students to fill out the first two columns individually, if there is any over lap then this can be the base for discussion.
• Towards the end of the session, have students go back to the K column to see if any info needs to be corrected, then see if there are any questions left unanswered and then complete the L column.
• K W L can also be used over a longer term to track development across sessions. Can be used to help focus the session on particular concepts that students are having difficulties with.

Reference

Ogle, D. M. (1986). K-W-L: A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. Reading Teacher, 39(6), 564-570. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20199156 

How it works

• If it appears as two or more topics are of equal interest to participants you will need to establish a priority order.
• This can be done in a rather quick and easy manner.
• Draw up a 2D-graph on the whiteboard.
• Let one axis denote the degree of difficulty of a topic and the other the degree of importance in the course, see figure below.
• If you should order four suggested topics (A, B, C, D), let participants determine the degree of difficulty while you help them with the degree of importance in the course – example given in the figure.

How it works

• Ask the participants to on their own go through the lecture notes/presented course material since the last SI-PASS session and mark topics they find unclear or hard to understand.
• Form pairs/small groups and let each team come up with 1-2 topics they would like to focus on during the session.
• Let the teams share their results and set up an agenda based on the most common topics.