First-day activities & icebreakers

First-day activity: Writing & following instructions on how to build a paper airplane

Contributed by Nancee Mancel

"...An excellent ice breaker.   It is most appropriate for an English class; I saw this done on the first day of a technical writing class.   The students greatly enjoyed it."
-Nancee Mancel

Give each student 3 sheets of paper: a pink one, and blue one, and a yellow one.   Ask them to make a paper airplane out of the pink sheet.   Make sure they put their names on the plane.   Have them test the airplanes to make sure they fly.   Allow 10 minutes.

On the yellow sheet, ask the students to write detailed step-by-step instructions on how to create their airplane.   Give them 10 minutes at least to accomplish this.   Make sure each student puts their name on the instructions.    Pick up the yellow sheets, shuffle them and hand them back out to students.   If anyone gets their own instructions back, trade them with another student so that no one is following their own instructions.

With the blue sheet, have them follow the instructions they have to make someone else’s plane.   Have them write the name from the instructions on the plane they just made.

Match up the original planes with the planes made by following instructions by matching the names on the planes.

This exercise shows us how poorly we write instructions, how poorly we follow instructions, and it is an excellent ice breaker.   It is most appropriate for an English class; I saw this done on the first day of a Technical Writing class.   The students greatly enjoyed it.