Top 5 STEAM Team Building Activities
/As a STEAM Teacher, I’m a huge believer in getting students to work together. In fact, I rarely have a project where my students don’t at least work with a partner. I want them to be comfortable sharing ideas, finding their strengths, and building one another up.
However, being a strong team player may not come easy for all students. If we think about any of our classes from the past we can probably immediately identify students who are strong leaders, quiet leaders, students who would rather just blend in, and others who have no interest in working on the project at all. If we reflect on the varying personalities, we can help identify ways to help these students. And one of the best ways is to help students LEARN how to work together. Honestly, working with others doesn’t come naturally for many students. They don’t understand how to both share their ideas and handle the fact that their idea might not be chosen. If we’re all honest with ourselves, as adults, we can probably empathize with our students. So it’s up to us to help our students get to a point where they are strong team players.
In order to do this, we must focus on team building activities, and I don’t mean just doing a random “fun” activity to pass the time at the beginning of the school year. I mean actually working with your students to identify skills that are needed to provide feedback to teammates, how to offer ideas, and how to compromise as a team.
So I want to help YOU. Here are my top 5 STEAM team building activities that I love to do with my students!
Lego Communication - Split students into groups of 2 or 3 and give each group a bucket of LEGOs. Students will sit back to back, while one person builds a LEGO design in about 30 seconds. Once the timer goes off, the other student must build a replica of the first design without ever looking at it. The first student is the eyes as they have to describe exactly what needs to be built. This helps students recognize that they need very specific communication when working together as a team.
Can You Lift It Challenge - One of my students’ favorite challenges because they all work together as one big group. Each student has their own string and they must balance an object on top of a binder ring. You can watch a video and see details about the challenge in the link at the beginning.
Finger Tip Hula Hoop - Ah, yes, the simple, yet hard team building challenge! I split students into groups of 5, and each group gets one hula hoop. They must work together to lower the hula hoop all the way down to the ground, but they can only use 2 fingers each. As they are working the hula hoop must stay balanced the whole time and cannot tilt in anyway. This will definitely take communication and a sense of calm in order to be successful.
Cup Stacking - Gather 6 - 10 cups, string, and a rubber band. Tie one string around the rubber band for each person on the team. For example, if you want teams of 3, you should only have 3 strings tied to the rubber band. The teams work together to stack the cups into a pyramid shape.
Minute to Win It Games - I’m not sure who loves these games more - me or my students! The gist of these types of games is that they are quick, easy games that require communication to complete the task in under 1 minute. Sometimes, I will have students continue to work until they finish the task, other times I will time them to see who completes all of the games in the quickest time, and other times I will not time them at all. It’s whatever I think the class needs at the time. The best part is that the Minute to Win It Games require minimal materials, such as, spoons, cups, shoes, toilet paper rolls, and more. You can check out more of the specific games I do by clicking the link at the beginning!
Remember, as students are doing team building activities, like the ones above, they are going to fail! And that is OK! Students learn more from failure than doing everything perfectly each time. I love to do these activities at the beginning of the school year and randomly throughout the year when I find a group is struggling. It really helps students to focus and reflect on what is needed to work together as a team and to be a great teammate.
