Skills Converged > Team Building Exercise: The Punch Line

:: Leadership, Exercises, Team Building , Communication Skills, Creativity, Exercises for Kids, Decision Making

Purpose

This is a creative and energizing exercise which encourages thinking on the spot and also allows them to compete with each other. Delegate must complete a story based on a number of given punch lines in a competitive environment.

Objective

Delegates to compete within groups with each other to complete a story given pre-assigned punch lines.

What You Need

Cards with sentences written on them as explained below.
Prizes!

Setup

Divide the delegates into groups of 2, 3 or 4 depending on the number of participants.
Randomly assign a number to each group.
Get all the groups to sit around a table or in a way to face each other in order of their allocated number.
Distribute one Mission Card (described below) to each group and tell them not to reveal its contents to other group.
The groups will be competing with each other. Each group has a Mission Card that has a sentence on it. The sentence is a punch line of a story. The group that finishes the story with their punch line wins.
Ask a group to volunteer to start the story. Give them the Starting Story Card with the following sentence:
- “Once upon a time, a man lived in a castle in a far away land…”
Ask the group next in the sequence to add a sentence to the story.
They should carry on until a group can finish the story with their own punch line and win the game.
Give prizes to the winner.
Some examples of the punch lines include:
- “…and that is why a ride on the London Eye is called a Flight.”
- “…and this was how RT205, the robot that saved humanity, stepped into the capsule that was about to be launched from Mars.”
- “…and finally, the most famous actress of the century stepped into the same car that brought her here 24 years ago on that fateful rainy night that went on to become legend.”
- “…and this was how, the invention that came to change the world beyond recognition came to its eventual termination.”
Once the exercise is finished, follow with a discussion.

Timing

Explaining the Test: 5 minutes.

Activity: 20 minutes

Group Feedback: 10 minutes.

Discussion

What did you think when you first saw your punch line? How did you feel when you heard the first line of the story? What was your strategy? How did you work as a team? Did you have any conflicts? How did you manage to resolve them? If you are given a chance to repeat this exercise, what would you do differently?