I have always hated workshops where you had to do “active stuff”, moving around to music and the like, because the facilitator wanted to “get everybody active!”. But recently I’ve come to appreciate the value in that (better late than never, right?).

So what I occasionally do these days, sometimes after a break or when the workshop starts early in the morning or right in my post-lunch-I-need-a-nap-time and participants seem to have low energy levels, but mainly when I realize that I’ve been talking for too long and need to re-focus everybody’s attention, are two small activities.

I forget where I first learned about the first one (I was talking to a friend, but can’t remember who that was! If it was you, let me know and I will happily credit you here!), but this is what I started out using: I asked participants to put two fingers towards the camera and move them up and down, drawing lines. When they are doing that, I ask them to move on to the next level of difficulty: Drawing triangles. Then squares. Then … no, not pentagons! … one hand does the triangle while the other one does the square. At this point people try, struggle, laugh, and are awake again so I can move on to some engaging activity related to the actual topic of my class.

(In my teaching prep, this method is called |Δ▢ , in case you need a name for it :-D)

The second method I learned from Kjersti when talking about liking the first one. In this method, you are drawing circles with your fingers in front of your chest, with the axis of those cicles parallel to your shoulders. But: the hands are drawing the circles in the opposite directions! When the fingers move apart at the top of the circle, one hand moves towards you while the other hand moves away from you. They meet up at the bottom of the circle, where then the other hand moves towards you and away from you. Sounds complicated? Try doing it! The effect is the same as in method one.

What other methods are you using when you need to “wake people up” so you can re-engage with them?