Say Goodbye To The Post Lunch Slump

Lunch is over and it’s time to begin the afternoon of the workshop. You know your learners will have enjoyed a good lunch, but you also know that it’s just the time when they would enjoy a good nap.Here are 3 ideas to ensure that when your learners return, you:

• Break any pre-occupation they may have eg what is happening in the office, what’s on TV this evening etc.
• Reconnect them to each other.
• Reconnect them with the content of their workshop.

And, that gets them active, building up their energy levels.

Anagram Challenge (ideal for any content)

(An anagram is word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase)

• Produce a handout of 10-12 anagrams from some of the key content of the workshop so far eg for a ‘Make Meetings Work’ workshop you could create DNAAGE (agenda) or TRACEINVITE (Interactive).
• Print enough so that each learner has their own handout.
• Ask learners to form teams (2-6 learners per team).
• Challenge the group by letting them know the winning team will be the first team to find all key pieces of content.

3 Twists

• As above, but when teams find the content from the anagrams they have to tell the group one key thing about the word/phrase.
• Challenge the whole group by creating a flip chart (including colour and a boarder) for each anagram and post them around the room (or even outside of the room). Have the whole group move to each flip chart, working together to try and find the key content.
• Form teams and ask each team to generate 5-7 anagrams to challenge another team. If you have an even number of teams, you can ask teams to swap anagrams with another team to see who can find all the content first. If you have an odd number then the anagrams can rotate to the next team and it will be the first team to find all the content.

Commonalities

(ideal for workshops such as ‘induction’, ‘team building’, ‘diversity’)

• Ask learners to form teams of 2-6.
• Challenge teams to generate as many things they have in common as possible within a 3-minute time limit (ie people couldn’t guess by looking at them). Let teams know that commonalities such as ‘we are all in training today’ will not be counted.
• After 3-minutes, ask each team to say how many commonalities they found. The winning team is the one that find the most.
• Ask the winning team to share their commonalities.

Twist

Change ‘things in common’ to ‘uniqueness’ eg a uniqueness might be if only one person in the team has bungee jumped. If 2 people have done this, it is not a uniqueness.

Tie this into their workshop eg with an induction workshop, you could tie in by saying “although you feel a little lost in your new environment, you have more in common with the people around you than you may think”, with diversity use the uniqueness and say “even with all our uniqueness we can still work together and share ideas yet still hold on to what makes us ‘us’”.

Pass the pen

(ideal for any content)

• Bring some ‘rousing’ music to the workshop for this activity.
• Hand out a sheet of blank A4 paper to each learner.
• Ask each learner to draw a 6 cell grid that fills the page (each cell being roughly the same size ie 1 vertical lines and 2 horizontal lines).
• Ask learners to review their workbooks etc and write 6 key ideas they have uncovered during their workshop so far, writing or drawing each one in a different cell of their grid.
• Once all learners have completed this, ask them to bring their grid and form a circle at the back of the training room.
• Ask learners to place their grid on the floor in front of them.
• Give a flip chart pen to one of the learners.
• When the music starts, each learner can pass the pen either to their left or right. The learner receiving it can either pass it back to the person who gave it to them or pass it on to the next learner.
• When the music stops, the learner who currently holds the pen must offer one of their key learning points to the rest of the group ie something from their grid in front of them. (Let learners know this prior to the activity starting and watch how quickly they will pass the pen.)
• After the first round, add an extra pen, then a third.
• Let the activity run for about 5 rounds after which time your learners should be ready to uncover more content from their workshop.