Community Building Activities

The Jam Comic

Getting students to engage in low-stakes, collaborative storytelling can be a good way to strengthen bonds between learners. The “Jam Comic” is a comic strip drawn by multiple people; each has a limited amount of time to weave something into a grand tapestry. They’ll draw the first panel of their own comic, the second panel of somebody else’s, and the third panel of another person’s comic. The activity culminates in a group reading where students show off their comics, in small groups or, preferably, as an entire class. 

Students should move at a quick pace, but there should be enough time for some thoughtful decisions; depending on how much time is available, comic strips could be anywhere between three and twelve panels. Scaffolds, like templates with panel borders already drawn, or some discussion about how stories have beginnings, middles, and endings, might be employed for younger students. 

The Jam Comic has the explicit goal of challenging students to think on their feet and develop some light fine motor skills; the implicit goal of the activity is to create opportunities for humor and generate some camaraderie between learners. 

Courtesy to Doug Savage

The Drum Circle

There’s always a place for low-stakes performance in the art classroom; with the group standing in a circle, one student starts a beat, and one-by-one the whole class builds on the rhythm. This collaborative piece is like an auditory variation of the Jam Comic, only it allows for movement and noise, which might not be common in the art room. 

Sign Language

Names are an important part of creating a positive learning environment; teachers should be respectful of students’ names, but they should also provide opportunities for students to create school-appropriate pseudonyms and aliases as more discrete ways of affirming their individual identities. Opportunities like tasking students with creating their own name signs in American Sign Language.

A name sign consists of (1) the first letter of their name and (2) a hand motion that represents something important to them; an activity, a physical characteristic, or an aspect of their personality. This kind of meaning-making is personally relevant and meaningful to students, as well as the thinking strategies of a visual arts course. 

 

The Beach Ball

The beach ball— divided, puzzle-like, into many sections— is a classic icebreaker activity. Thrown into the air, whoever catches it must answer the question that the thumb of their dominant hand landed on. It allows for physical movement and creates a chance to develop hand-eye coordination, both of which are important for younger learners. It also gameifies the icebreaker activity, which makes something that might be mundane or intimidating for most students into an engaging task. 

    The actual beach ball itself is important, as well. Students should create it themselves, designing individual elements and choosing questions to ask each other. Primary students may need some scaffolds, but secondary and postsecondary students could handle the responsibility of creating the ball in a series of structured steps given by the instructor (e.g. suggesting ideas for questions or discussio prompts, deciding how to create the different sections, and adding design elements.). 

Dicebreakers

Similar to the Beach Ball, “Dicebreakers” gameifies the get-to-know-you process for students. The mechanics of the game are variable— each side of a die can have a different question, or there can be a more complex system for determining the outcome of each roll, where students partner up and roll in different “columns” based on some fact or characteristic. (e.g. if your favorite color is blue and your partner’s favorite color is red and you roll the same number, you’ll answer different questions.) 

    Questions can be along the lines of “What’s your favorite movie,” but a permutation for an art classroom might be prompts for different drawings or design challenges. For example: “Design a superhero whose power is your favorite subject in school.” 

    Similar to the beach ball, creating the dice, or a table of outcomes, is also an opportunity for students to infuse their aesthetics into an artifact for the classroom; students should be able to design the dice and come up with their own prompts or questions for the results of a roll. 

The Superlative Game

Conversing as an entire class should be a routine in the art classroom and the superlative game is competitive, structured practice at large-group communication. Students form two lines, and— with varying degrees of verbosity— must arrange themselves into a specified continuum: tallest to shortest, youngest to oldest, etc. 

Icebreaker Bingo

The bingo card: another game, another artifact. The game itself should be predicated by a large-group discussion on what items should be on the card. The typical bingo card has 25 spaces— 24 regular spaces and one free space— so every student should be able to contribute at least one idea. The instructor procedurally generates a random set of bingo cards, and the game begins. Students should also collaborate on the aesthetic of the bingo card, and the cards should be kept and displayed in the classroom. 

Here's a link to a bingo card generator. 

Frien-Diagram

Besides clear and efficient communication, another important aspect of large-group conversation in the art classroom is trust; pairing students up and tasking them with creating “Frien-Diagrams” can help learners find commonalities. In addition to building relationships, this activity also develops thinking skills like comparing and connecting. 

Students start the diagram by making two separate lists— favorite artists, movies, etc. — and after an amount of time specified by the instructor, they compare the two and search for common items or themes. 

Would-You-Rather

The list hastens towards silliness! 

Discipline-based art education (DBAE) is an approach that integrates art with different content areas, like math or science. While a game of “would-you-rather” isn’t rigorous DBAE, it demands students to engage in an arguably interdisciplinary task: writing proofs. 

The question— “Would you rather be sixty feet tall or six inches tall,” for example— should be the focus of the entire activity. Students should break into small groups and, together, organize arguments that use evidence and some degree of logic to argue for what they believe to be the correct answer. 

This activity demands problem-solving skills, persuasive writing/speaking, and— like improv comedy— an ability to set seriousness aside for a moment. 

The Rock Paper Scissors Tournament

There’s not much academic value in a bracketed, whole-class rock-paper-scissors tournament, but from personal experience, I can say that it’s fun and generates a good deal of energy, both of which belong in every art classroom. The tournament actually aligns with Christopher Emdin’s “battles” framework, which posits that community, relationships, and trust in the classroom are fueled by healthy, high-energy, and ritualistic competition between students. 

Every student is paired up and plays a game of rock-paper-scissors; the winner of each pair plays against another winner until there are two champions, with two sides of the class backing their respective candidates. The job of the class: to hype up their candidate. The “hype” can look like anything— raucous shouting or reserved clapping— and, in keeping with Emdin’s “battles” framework, there should be some tangible prize for the winner of the tournament. 

(Special thanks to Michael Tuccini, Desiree Tinsler, Liam Madell, Kate Horling, Anne Liskey, Kacey Westenbroek, Emily Dudling, and Chloe Cavalli for sharing their CBA ideas.)