A Cooperation Game for Children With Special Needs: Problem Solving Activity
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What You Need
Learn how to play this fun cooperation game! Problem solving activities will require each student to have a copy of the notes and instructions shown below:
Welcome to the Communication Challenge Game! Your challenge is to find someone who fits with each of the items in the list. The rules:
- You may only record a name once.
- You must talk to each person before you write their name down.
- You can use people from within your own class, or outside the class group.
- Scoring is based on one point for each name, two bonus points for no repeating of names, five bonus points for the first person to finish, and three bonus points for the second person to finish.
The challenge:
- Find someone who is left handed
- Find someone who can name five songs
- Find someone who has a bath instead of a shower
- Find someone who has a middle name starting with T
- Find someone who has a first name with more letters than their last name
- Find someone who is wearing red socks
- Find someone who had a hot lunch today
- Find someone who has the same star sign as you
- Find someone who plays hockey
- Find someone who can swim butterfly
- Find someone who can count to ten in French
- Find someone with a birthday in June or July
- Find someone who has an older sister
The Benefits
The benefits of playing this game in a special education context is that it:
- encourages students to talk to others in a one to one situation, on a set topic
- encourages students to get up and move around, therefore talking to others they may not normally converse with
- encourages students to solve problems in a social situation - if one person is already talking to someone, I can move on to talk to another person and come back later
- helps students plan and predict how a conversation will progress
- builds literacy skills in a safe, success focused manner
- is aimed at a limited literacy level, as students have a common sentence starter and the modelling of other students completing the same task at the same time to help them along
- gives practise at a simple question and answer form of conversation
- can be easily modified by adding or deleting questions, or changing the focus to suit your student population
- can be supported by adaptive technology such as speech recognition software, mini recording devices, note taking etc. to suit the abilities of individual students
- requires very little teacher preparation (always a bonus) and leaves the teacher free to step back and observe, take notes, intervene, role model or prompt as needed during the activity
Your students are bound to have fun and learn a lot using this cooperation game. Problem solving activities will give them the skills they need to be successful.
