[Kevin]

Goals:
1. To focus on the importance of encouragement within a team in order to successfully complete a task.
2. To encourage proper planning.

Materials Needed:
A large jump rope (15-20 ft. long)

Optimal # of participants -- 4-25

Directions:
(Do not tell them what the goal is at the beginning. After a while, tell them their goal is encouragement).

1. Get 2 students to swing the rope.
2. Tell the group that their task is to get everyone to jump the rope without missing a beat. If there are 17 people, all 17 people have to jump the rope consecutively. If someone misses, the group has to start from the beginning. The people that start off swinging the rope also have to go through.
3. As each person jumps the rope, the entire group has to count. Each person represents a number.
4. Challenge them to increase the number of people that they can get through without missing a beat.

Process Questions (asked after activity)
1. Did you achieve the task?
2. What was the most frustrating or difficult thing about this exercise?
3. How did you approach the task? Act first, think second? The other way around?
4. What was important for the task to be completed?
5. Ask the participants who felt they were not great at jumping rope how they felt during this exercise.
6. Themes that you could use in processing the activity include encouragement, planning, roles in a group/chapter, listening.