Learning Game: Ball Game a la Waterfall

Timing: 5 minutes.
Ingredients:

  • People and space
  • about 30 balls (ping pong balls will do )
  • Stop watch
  • Flip chart to write down scores.

Directions:

  1. Form one big team
  2. Facilitator assigns a Starter.
  3. Facilitator assigns  a Finisher
  4. Take 1 minute to tell the team how they will organise (choose the most ineffective layout).
  5. Inform the team that they will have 5 minutes to score (number of players X 20 points e.g 8 X 20 = 160).
  6. Play for 5 minutes (following the rules below).
  7. Do not Repeat.
  8. Make a big deal of the team not meeting its objectives

Rules:

  • Ball must have air time (a throw)
  • A player cannot pass to anyone directly beside or in front
  • Player can have only ONE ball in possession at a time
  • Dropped balls are discarded and returned to the container
  • Ball must go round all players and returned to the container to score a point.

Learning Points:

  • Demonstrates command and control.
  • Illustrates the inherent shortcoming of a system that does not encourage inspect and adaption.
  • Demonstates the effect of unreleastic goals set by those who are not engaged in actually doing the task.

Variation Proposed by: Mike Sutton

Based on an original game byBoris Gloger