I recently invested in “Jenga”, the game in which you have to pull a wooden block out of a pile without the tower falling over.  To be honest, I’d been thinking about it for a while, but finally found one within my budget (2.99 from a toy shop in Ashford).

I put one of four symbols on each of the bricks – a star, box, circle or squiggle – and used it in my first classes this week with teens and adults.  Each symbol related to a topic and so when a student pulled out a block, they had to say something about themselves on that topic.

Students enjoyed the activity as it was something different and there was a sense of competition/togetherness as nobody wanted the tower to topple on their turn, but were also very encouraging towards other players.

I’ll be using it again – I even had students requesting it in the second lesson!