Practicing time management doesn’t have to be boring. Gamification has widened the scope of learning in today’s world. You can find several online games to give you a chance to work on your time management skills. These casual online games require the player to utilize resources and complete specific tasks within a set time frame. 

Online games for refining time management skills can be enjoyed by everyone. In this write-up, we will share with you a few interesting online games to challenge your time management ability.

How do time management games benefit the player?

Playing games is a great alternative learning method. It engages people more than traditional methods of classroom learning. These games offer a way to unwind and relax while allowing people to work on their skills. 

By trying their hands at time management games, players not only work on improving their time management skills but also reap other benefits like– 

• Improved critical thinking ability 
• Increased concentration 
• Improved problem-solving skills
• Better teamwork skills
• Reduced stress level

Exciting time management games you can play online

In this section, we have listed a few of our favorite online games for time management that you can play during your break or after a long hectic day. Pick one that interests you the most, and get started!

Web-based time management games

1. Ice Cream Bar

This is a time-bound game in which you have customers coming to your ice cream stall to place their orders. As the timer starts ticking, you must take orders, prepare them according to the customer’s choice, and serve them on time. If you fail to do so, you upset your customers and miss out on earning money. 

As the level progresses, you will have more customers coming to your ice cream store. And that makes the game more challenging than before. Ice Cream Bar is a colorful online game you can play on your PC or laptop. It is a free game that kids and grownups can enjoy in their free time.

2. Emily’s New Beginning

It is yet another time management game where you must handle customers. This time in a restaurant. Emily and Patrick are married and have a cute little daughter named Paige. Emily decides to reopen her restaurant business. All you have to do is play her role in the game and effectively manage your time to juggle between work and the baby’s needs. 

As Emily, you will have to take orders, and prepare, and serve food to customers. A happy and satisfied customer can leave you a tip for good service. You can also earn rewards and have someone look after the baby while you are attending to customers. 

3. Carrie the Caregiver

Carrie has graduated nursing school and is ready to work as a caregiver with Caregivers International. Her role as a caregiver involves taking care of people in a friendly and loving way. In this classic time management game, you will take on the responsibilities of Carrie and manage people who need special care. 

Besides being a web-based game, Carrie the Caregiver is available on the App Store as well. The game has several levels and an endless shift mode to allow you to refine your time management skills. It is a super cute game with beautiful artwork that will teach you to manage time and discover your caregiving side.

4. Traffic Controller

Wonder how traffic controllers manage vehicular traffic on roads? If yes, you must try Traffic Controller. It is a fairly challenging game in which you have to manage vehicle movement by controlling traffic lights. As a traffic controller, you need to think quickly and make decisions on when the signals go red or green. 

As the game starts, the timer starts ticking to give you the exact idea of the length of time you need to manage traffic. You earn points in the form of currency to maintain a smooth flow on the road. One small distraction, and you’ll have an accident causing the game to end.

App-based time management games

1. Disney Magic Kingdoms

For all Disney fans, here is a tycoon-style simulation time management game. The game is built up on the theme that the kingdom is under the control of an evil spell. You must work to release the kingdom from the effects of the spell so that visitors can have a good time at the park. 

As a player, you spend your precious time assigning specific tasks to different Disney characters. As the game’s progress is measured in “happiness,” every character gains some of it, when it reaches a set location in the park. You can also collect “magic,” the game’s currency, to move their tasks to another level. 

App link: Play Store | App Store

2. Big Farm: Mobile Harvest

This game is a good choice for adults who love the idea of farming and for kids who wish to learn about farming and related vocabulary like growing, harvesting, etc. The backstory of this game is that Uncle George has given you the responsibility to look after his farm in his absence. 

Your responsibilities include maintaining the farm, growing produce, harvesting it on time, and selling it to customers. Players win stars and currency to complete tasks within a set time frame. These can be used to buy more resources while proceeding in the game. 

App link: Play Store | App Store

3. Sally’s Spa

It is a fun and colorful game to help you unwind while working on your time management skills. The game revolves around Sally, who runs a spa for her customers. Players must prioritize their tasks, which involve welcoming and seating customers, moving them to their seats after their wait time is over, hiring employees, stocking resources, and performing spa services. 

This single-player game constitutes several mini-games making it even more enjoyable. Sally’s Spa is a free lifestyle time management game that you can install on your iPad, iPhone, or any Android device to have a good time. 

App link: Play Store | App Store

4. Diner DASH Adventures

Diner DASH is one of the most popular online games that can help you level up your time management skills. While in the game, you play the role of Flo, who has bought an old diner and wants to work hard to earn enough to run and expand the business. 

As Flo, you must seat the guests, take their orders, serve them on time, and present them the bill when they have finished their meal. All of this must be done smoothly and on time so that there are no delays in service. The game is available for download on Google Play Store and App Store.

App link: Play Store | App Store

5. Burger Shop

Burger Shop is a fast-paced game where you have to assemble burgers and fulfill customer orders as fast as you can. Apart from time management, the game also requires you to use your quick-thinking skills. In between, you also find stuff on the conveyor belt, which you must separate for recycling. The game is available online through app stores like Google Play and App Store. 

Players get to choose between four modes, namely, story mode, relax mode, challenge mode, and expert story mode. Delivering each order perfectly rewards you with in-game currency and sometimes even a tip if you provide extraordinary service. 

App link: Play Store | App Store

6. Farm Frenzy

This single-player game is based on the concept of farming, where you have to run a farm without having to wake up early every single day. As a player, you will have to perform all farm-related tasks like looking after farm animals, producing milk products like cheese and butter, etc. 

The game has different levels, and each level is more difficult than the previous one. Through this time management game, you can earn money, invest it to buy new equipment and purchase buildings to grow your farm business. 

App link: Play Store

7. Heart’s Medicine – Hospital Heat

Here is a time management game with a medical twist. You play the lead as Dr. Allison Heart who works at a hospital. As a doctor, your job will be to provide timely treatment to patients arriving at the hospital. The work can range from administering a simple medicine to assembling one for treating patients.

The main challenge in the game is to attend to as many patients as possible. It helps you earn rewards for doing a satisfactory job as a doctor. You can even buy new hospital equipment or move to a better apartment using your rewards. Heart’s Medicine – Hospital Heat is a good choice for those who love the medical genre.

App link: Play Store | App Store

Wrapping up

Managing time effectively is a skill that one can acquire through regular practice. A study^[1] reported students’ perception of time management. Students believed that effective time management and preplanning studies helped them improve their academic performance.

So, students must take some time out of their regular schedules to practice time management skills. And what could be a better way than indulging in some fun online games that give you a break from your studies and also help you get better at using your time effectively?

Reference

1. Al-Yami, A. A., Abdulwahed, A., Azhar, A., Binsaddik, A., & Bafaraj, S. M. (2021). Impact of Time-Management on the student’s Academic Performance: A Cross-Sectional Study. Creative Education, 12(03), 471–485. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2021.123033

Priyanka Sonkushre

I am Priyanka Sonkushre, a writer and blogger. I am the person behind “One Loving Mama,” a mom blog. Equipped with a Bachelor’s degree along with an MBA, my healthcare background helps me deeply understand learning difficulties. I know how challenging it can be for parents to find the right resources to help their children excel in life. So, here I am to blend my healthcare expertise with my parenting experience to create valuable and helpful resources for parents and teachers supporting children with learning differences. If you wish, you can follow me on Facebook and LinkedIn.

onelovingmama.com

The post 11 Cool Games That Will Put Your Time Management Skills To Work appeared first on Number Dyslexia.

Things like losing track when adding or subtracting numbers, inability to group things together, lacking number sense, or simply having a difficult time reading clocks could all be alarming signs. 

Difficulties with numbers and time are common among dyscalculic children. One by-product of these difficulties is time management. It’s hard to grow up with a learning disability, let alone mismanaged time. Not having appropriate skills to manage time only adds to the pre-existing anxiety around mathematics. 

Time management is crucial for maximum health and personal effectiveness^[1]. It is crucial to surviving in the modern world. In spite of the consensus, some of us don’t become good at it. Life gets busy, we lose pace and then never find the opportunity to develop organizational skills. And most of it starts in childhood.  

We want our children to be well equipped, especially with managing time. But what does it mean to be good at it? What level of understanding of mathematics do we expect from an individual? 

What’s being ‘good’ at time management mean?

Look around. Children are surrounded by the challenges and opportunities that require them to manage time. Be it showing up to classes in time or keeping track of their schedule. Or simply calculating how much time it takes them to get to the school bus, so they could get a head start. 

Being good at time management could mean different things to different people and it may vary as per your function and where you are located. Today, children prove their competency in math and their ability to manage time by going through the schooling system. In school, they are introduced to time management and basic mathematical concepts and tested through basic arithmetic exams.

The general agreement is that if you could get through the schooling system, which teaches you to maintain a schedule and syllabus, you’re capable enough to manage time. 

However, there are numerous dyscalculic children who clamber through the schooling system, carrying their time management difficulties to life after school. The good news is that most of these children could improve their condition through suitable support and intervention^[2] and get better at the understanding time and even successfully manage it. 

If your child is struggling with time management, there are ways to approach the problem. But first, let’s understand how could we could introduce time management to someone struggling to understand time? Shouldn’t we start by introducing them to the basics of time and calculation first? Let’s find out. 

Introducing time to dyscalculic children 

Time is an abstract concept. Specific hours and minutes could be meaningless for a child who doesn’t understand clocks. Some of these children may also struggle at understanding at what pace time moves because the passage of time is tricky. It’s difficult to translate to a child how a season or a month passes between our daily lives.

Apart from the general understanding of time, your child may also struggle with reading patterns and remembering sequences. Understanding time has many components to it. For example, a child has to learn the format of the time, both the twelve-hour and twenty-four hours to understand the clocks the way we use them. Likewise, it’s important for them to be familiar with analogue and digital clocks. There is so much to learn around time.

Once the child understands the concept of time and how to calculate it, we could introduce them to more advanced skills, like organizing time. However, in the initial stages, you may not be confident on how to approach a child with something as complicated as time. 

Here are some suggestions on how we can demonstrate the concept of time to a child in their initial developmental stages: 

• Use a stop-clock to introduce them to a single unit of time. Give them a demo on how to calculate how many units of time were spent in a given activity. 

• Help them with counting. Encourage them to use their fingers. And ask them to go beyond the last number they were stuck at. Note down the numbers they have difficulty with. Practice them in writing. Ask them how many finger counts would it take them from one room to another. 

• Use clapping to show how fast a second passes and count with every clap, as to show the connection between the number of seconds with the number of times you clap. Ask them creative questions like how many claps would it take to make a cup of tea? 

• Use homemade pendulums to measure how much time the swing takes to go back and forth. Ask them to measure how many swings it may take them to make their bed. 

Time-related difficulties in children with dyscalculia

Seeing patterns and making connections between objects and language is something we start in childhood. We use our working memory, a tiny percentage of information, to plan cognitive tasks and to perform them successfully.

Children with time management difficulties struggle with their working memory. We could make that out by observing unusual signs in their daily activities. Like not being able to sit still or not being able to stay focused on one task. They may even have difficulty reading clocks or calculating the distance between two points.

Time management difficulties in children could both be subtle as well as obvious. For example, the child may find it hard calculating time or finishing school assignments, or estimating their location on a page while reading. They come in all variants. 

Life after school in general is a little overwhelming for children. There isn’t much of the day left to fit in their schedule after they return from school. Between homework, tuition and plays, you may find children puzzled about our expectations from them. With only a few short hours to themselves, they may engage themselves in inconsistent or immature methods to calculate time. But what else they can do? 

Teaching them how to schedule and prioritize their tasks could be an effective way to help them from their time-related difficulties. 

Different children learn to plan their day differently. Some kids like to plan ahead. They timely complete their assignments, while others may need some support to catch up with their classmates. 

Early introduction to time management is the key. It may help them prioritize, plan, begin and finish tasks. These are executive functions and appropriate guidance can help kids develop these functions. Encouraging them early on how to schedule and finish their tasks is crucial. This will help them get better at planning their days and finishing what they do start.

Time management could set children for lifelong success^[3]. However, its importance may not be so apparent to a child. A child may continue to struggle for years without being noticed by their parents or teachers. 

How does a child who is struggling with time management look like in everyday life? Let’s find out. 

How does the lack of time management skills Impact day to day lives of children? 

Lack of organization skills could translate itself into many difficulties in day-to-day life. An unequipped child may constantly be in a rush and struggle with his punctuality. They may regularly miss the school bus or forget when their homework was due. This may drop the quality of their assignments. They may miss their deadlines or have inadequate planning for tests or forget them altogether. And it wouldn’t be too far when all the things they need to do would be put off until tomorrow. As the saying goes, tomorrow never comes. This leads to procrastination. 

Procrastinating on important school assignments could be one of the glaring signs that your child has time management issues. They may constantly get distracted from trivial things, spending days chasing to complete the task and then failing at it. As a consequence, you may witness your child get burned out. They may work themselves to the bone, merely to play catch up with other children. 

When we combine all of this, we would find a child with diminished assignments, low creativity, and relationship problems. 

We may notice that these initial errors in their approach with time persist through, even after mastering other academic skills.

As a parent or teachers, what can we do about it? 

Strategies to help children with time management 

We could bring improvements to a major proportion of children with time management problems if we identify their point of difficulties early on and put appropriate interventions in place. Having a pragmatic plan to approach once you discover a child with a problem is crucial. 

For example, special classes ^[4] for at-risk children before they enter the school system could play a key role in prevention. The idea is to make their first mathematical learning experiences successful.

There are strategies and skill training interventions to help these children. Let’s take a little closer look at answering how we could help children with time management difficulties. Following are some strategies:

Screening procedure: The first step to fix a difficulty is to get it diagnosed by a professional. We have learned that identifying problems early on and then putting appropriate interventions in place helps growing children with time management skills. The child should go through a screening procedure as early as possible. Ideally, an educational psychologist or assessor should carry out the screening procedure, which should include an in-depth interview. The history and the current situation of the child should be taken into consideration. 

Improving instruction quality: Often the initial difficulties around time management are correlated to insufficient or low-quality instructions. Improving the quality of instruction could alleviate mathematical anxiety. Teachers and parents of early years children need effective knowledge of both the concepts they are teaching as well as the children they are dealing with. Proactive training on concepts as well as making time for children to know them better could help.

Reading Clocks: All our activities in life are time-based. To do things in time involves calculating, for which one needs to know how to read clocks. Reading clocks requires an understanding of numbers and spatial clock movements. Start by pointing at the clock hands. Introduce the child to different lengths of time. Start with 1 minute and guide them to recognize 1 hour. Prefer digital clocks over analogue in the beginning. Let them pick the format they are comfortable with; a 24 or 12-hour clock system.  

Learning support: Since each child could have a unique set of difficulties related to time, they need customized learning support. An educational psychologist could plan the lessons and assign them a weekly and monthly plan. Once the child is comfortable with the basic concepts of time, we could introduce them to managing time. Avoid pushing too much information at once. 

Simplifying schedule: Time management problems could be addressed by simplifying daily, weekly and monthly diaries. Dyscalculic children may seem like they are lost between their school life and life at home. Maintaining a schedule in different diaries could help them visualize what their upcoming days and schedule looks like. They could also use the diaries to document their activities and plans for upcoming weeks. You could improve it further by introducing color coding for different diaries. 

Additional insights 

Essentially, there could be three components to help children with dyscalculia and its subordinate issues; teachers, mathematics, and the child. 

What’s required is an understanding of how these three components are connected. As we mentioned in improving instruction quality strategy, a good parent or a teacher needs to closely know the child who is struggling with math as well as be equally knowledgeable about the topics they are teaching. Any gaps between these three components may lead to an ineffective approach. 

Getting good at time management requires a constellation of abilities that are attributed to different concepts of mathematics. A proper diagnosis through screening measures by a child psychologist could help us successfully intervene using the proven strategies.

It is important to understand the nature of the difficulty the child is facing around time management and the barriers it is creating. We also need to acknowledge that the progress children make with managing time largely depends on the culture, circumstances, and choices.

Conclusion

Improving time management skills could lead to gains in academic functioning. Essentially being good at math is being good at logical thinking, pattern finding, and problem-solving. And time management requires a similar set of skills. 
There is enough information on ways we could manage time. All we need is to make sense of it and follow the strategies recommended by experts. As we have learned, we can address dyscalculia and difficulties in time management through appropriate education.

References:

1. Tracy, B. (2019). Time Management (The Brian Tracy Success Library) (Reissue ed.). AMACOM.
2. Kuhn, J.-T. (2015). Developmental dyscalculia: Causes, characteristics, and interventions [Editorial]. Zeitschrift für Psychologie, 223(2), 67–68. https://doi.org/10.1027/2151-2604/a000204
3. MacCann, C., Fogarty, G. J., & Roberts, R. D. (2012). Strategies for success in education: Time management is more important for part-time than full-time community college students. Learning and Individual Differences, 22(5), 618–623. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2011.09.015
4. Butterworth, B. (2003). Dyscalculia Screener [E-book]. NferNelson Pub.

Manpreet Singh

An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having  just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’, 

The post Time Management Skills In Individuals With Dyscalculia appeared first on Number Dyslexia.

As students grow older, their academic and social life become increasingly convoluted. This convolution can make it difficult for these young minds to navigate through, resulting in poor academic performance, lack of sleep, anxiety, and stress. Students need to strike the right cord between all the aspects of their student life by curating time-based schedules depending on requirements and priorities.

Why is time management essential for college students?

College students are exposed to various activities and exercises daily that help them hone their skills. Concepts such as algebra and trigonometry are introduced at an early level and advance through the college years. Between all these activities, hobbies, interests, co-curricular activities, and academics getting more complex with time, it is natural to mismanage. However, it must be rectified. 

In the previous era, time seemed to pass by slowly. While many of us still yearn for it, the participation of each individual in the contemporaries of the western and revolutionized world demands skill full people. It is natural to feel burdened. The question here is, what distinguishes successful students from the rest of the lot? Not just time management but most importantly, effective time management. Managing time well remains one of the most valuable skills ever. Improvising this skill can make room for many other things that students may not pursue otherwise. 

What is effective time management? 

Time management is the process of effectively organising, scheduling, and managing time. You are the sole controller of how you spend your time regulating your energy amidst several essential activities. Mastering this will help in avoiding procrastination and get the best results. Set small deadlines for yourself to complete day-to-day activities. 

Here are some more benefits of being able to manage time effectively:

1. Stress-free student life

Nobody performs well under excess pressure or at the nick of a deadline. Students must accustom themselves to manage the stress and also be highly productive at the same time. When the workload is enormous, time management skills come in handy. This skill dictates the path, ensuring reasonable productivity rates with no stress to mental and physical health.

2.  Time Freedom

If you can tackle your time effectively, you can prioritize your tasks based on their importance and that way; you are left with time to commit to more meaningful and long-term goals. Effective time management catalyzes the completion of enormous tasks in lesser time. It leaves you with surplus time, thus improving your focus and allowing room for recreational activities or hobbies.

3. Better focus

Good time management teaches you to work smarter. You begin focusing on the results rather than the process, thus effectively increases your focus. A better focus yields better productivity. You also learn the art of prioritization; wherein, you segregate tasks based on the importance of completion. The ability to make such decisions is what most students lack. 

4. No more procrastination

Procrastination is directly linked to incompetent time managerial skills. When you lack clarity, your focus disperses, leading you to procrastinate even the simplest of things. Your excess workload begins controlling you, and when it is the peak, you tend to procrastinate. Although, if you learn the art of time management, you automatically gain the ability to control the workload.

5. Builds teamwork

When working in a team, students with different abilities come together and strive towards achieving a common goal. Besides the skills that each individual possesses, the time management skills of all team members must sync. These play an essential role. To achieve their purpose, they must manage working within the deadline, for which they have to collectively manage their time and workload. Since time management is directly linked to productivity, any group must fasten their belts and work smartly.

How to inculcate time management skills within college students?

Time management is also one of the crucial parts of most academic curriculums. 

There have been several theories around time management in the past. For instance, the Pomodoro Technique emphasizes on completion of tasks in intervals of 25 minutes. On the other hand, Parkinson’s Law exclaims setting proactive deadlines boosts productivity by nearly 40%.

Although this skill can be taught to college students in several ways, games and activities remain the most popular. Through games and activities, not only will they learn the skill, but they will also retain it. 

Here is a list of six activities that will teach time management skills to college students.

1. Time squared

This game gives your students a reality check on how they spend their day. It is a creative way to give them a heads up about their time allocating and prioritizing abilities. Prepare three sheets of 24 squares each. These 24 squares each represent an hour of the day. 

Give the students the first sheet and ask them to mark their routine on the sheet. Say, for example, sleeping consists of eight hours to draw sleeping emojis in four squares. Next, please give them the second sheet and ask them to fill out their leisure hours like movies, video games, etc. Hand them the last sheet, which is the summary of the first two. The squares that remain uncolored are their unproductive hours. 

Takeaways:  Focus on re-analysing their schedule, increasing productivity

2. What I did yesterday

This game narrows down the efforts that students put into various activities. By the end of the game, they will know if their efforts are worthwhile or not. 

Hand over two sheets of paper to each student. In the first sheet, ask them to note down a list of ten activities they regularly did in the last two years that would value designing their future. Next, in the second sheet, ask them to fill in five things that they want to see in their future. It can be academic-related things or non-academics. 

Now, ask them to compare both the sheets and establish a link between the two. Students will learn of some activities that have little or absolutely no importance in their near future. 

Takeaways: Modifying daily schedule, increased efficiency.

3. Time wasters

Divide your students into groups of four. Prepare a list of some chores that are deemed as ‘time-wasters.’ For example, your list can contain ‘watching youtube videos of funny animals.’ 

Now write these time-wasters behind each envelope and place cue cards inside them. Hand the groups one envelope each and ask them to figure out a solution for the time waster and write it on the cue card provided. Circulate each envelope among all the teams, and at the end of the game, read out all the solutions and decide the best one. 

Takeaways: Learning to deal with distractions, increasing focus on mental health.

4. The Mayo Jar lesson

Divide the students into groups. Allocate each team with a mayonnaise jar, pebbles, golf balls, and sand. Ask the teams to fill the mayo jar with all the items they are provided, such that no item is left out. Now, the correct order to do is to start by filling the jar with golf balls, pebbles, and lastly, sand. If any other order is used, there shall be no room for all items. 

After the game, explain to the students that the golf balls represent the most critical and high-priority tasks. The pebbles represent tasks that can take a back seat for the time being. And lastly, the sand represents everything else, including leisure. 

This activity is best favored by the Pickle Jar Theory of time management. 

Takeaways: Learning to prioritise tasks, categorising tasks based on their importance

5. The race to the ace of space

This activity is handed over to students individually. Bring in two decks of cards. You have to organise one of the decks with all cards facing one direction and arranged from Aces to Kings. The other deck of cards is relatively unorganised with no uniformity. The cards are randomly arranged, facing different directions. 

Choose two volunteers and ask them to find the ace of spades. Unless luck is on his side, the volunteer with the first deck of cards finds the ace of spades immediately. The second volunteer may, however, complain of a lack of fairness in the game. However, the takeaway is interesting. The unorganised deck symbolizes non-prioritizing tasks and randomly working on them. They take plenty of time, ultimately leading to students wasting their time. The organised deck symbolizes tasks organised based on their priority.

Takeaways: Understanding the importance of organisation, unblocking time for high-priority tasks

6. Animal Origami

Divide the students into groups of five. Elect a team leader for each group and take them away from the group. Teach them any origami of your choice, preferably an animal origami that can stand flat on the ground. 

Next, take them to the rest of the class and instruct them to teach their group members to make the same animal origami. Hand them four sheets of paper.

Give them the following instructions:

• They must make 40 origami.
• The shape and size of each origami are essential.
• No extra sheets will be provided.
• The maximum allotted time is 15 minutes.

Students will begin working in groups. At the end of 15 minutes, they will realise that each one has different abilities. Quick learners would have already categorised the entire task into subtasks based on the ability of each team member. Such a team succeeds in completing the task.

Takeaways: Time management, team building.

Wrapping up,

Time management activities and games are true eye-openers. With simple games and activities, students can correlate the instances to real-life scenarios and tackle them effectively. 

Efficient time management application in day-to-day life starts from the teacher – organised teaching, timely reviews, timely PTAs, and organised classroom structure. Such practical examples of time management demonstrate the necessity of acquiring such skills.

Several reputed universities now include special sessions such as workshops and guest lectures on requirements and inculcation of time management skills. Acquiring such skills is good for boosting one’s curriculum vitae.

Manpreet Singh

An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having  just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’, 

The post Activities for College Students to Improve Time Management Skills appeared first on Number Dyslexia.

Though an individual’s performance can be assessed by activities, like debating, running a 100-meter sprint, or even studying subjects such as geometry and algebra, we must remember that no person is an island. In the real-world scenario, we work in teams or groups that may or may not consist of our friends.

A good education aims to enable the next generation to succeed in an insanely competitive, fast-paced world, and just the textbook curriculum is not enough. Interpersonal skills, such as cooperation & collaboration, trust-building, leadership and executing, strategizing, and speaking skills cannot be honed through theoretical classes or rote learning.

Teams bring out a variety of attributes needed to get a task done effectively. Team building activities can prove fun ways to bring out the best characteristics among students while thinking of creative solutions to a problem.

Popular theories of team formation focus on identifying roles of individual team members that can be leveraged to get the best from the team to accomplish a specific task. Some children can be planners, curious investigators, Coordinators, Shapers, and Monitor Evaluators. Other children are dependable Team Workers, implementers, Completer-Finishers, and Specialists. Another theory creates teams based on the stages a group undergoes while ineffective team formation. 

As per Tuckman’s model of group behavior, these five stages are: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Yet other philosophies, such as Maslow’s needs hierarchy and the Briggs-Myers personality inventory, aim to determine one’s personality, which helps evaluate how good a fit he or she would be in a group.

The way to execute team-building in high-school students is to expose them to various activities over the year, which will allow them to exhibit at least one of the traits of a good team player. Games help to break the monotony in a classroom and can help involve all students.

You can implement Team-building activities throughout the year. You can merge an activity into a sports or PE session or reinvent an academic lesson as a team activity. You may want to have them during the beginning of the school year to induct the incoming batch of high-schoolers, establish a classroom culture, re-establish concepts, review learning, or deepen rapport.

10 activities to develop team-building skills high-schoolers

1. Building Blocks

Activity: Indoor

This game tests your students’ creativity while also working as a team to achieve the required targets in a given time. In this activity, divide the class into groups of 6-7. Allot equal amounts of materials, such as cardboard tubes, straws, playing cards, Styrofoam blocks, soft washing soap, and so on to each team. 

The next task is to give them something to build. Challenges may be as varied as Building the most structurally sound tall structure from a given set of materials, recreating a model from a blueprint, etc. Change the parameters of the challenge: which team can build it the fastest? Or the tallest structure in the same amount of time?

Skills: Communication, problem-solving

2. Minefield/Obstacle race

Activity: Indoor/Outdoor

This activity is a great icebreaker and team-building game. All you need to do is create an obstacle course and a reward at the end. Students are divided into teams of 4-5. The task may be to retrieve an item from a specific location or cross the obstacle course successfully without touching the “mines” scattered randomly. 

One or two students from each team need to navigate the system, while the other teammates will guide them. The best part, you can have this both out of the classroom and inside and make it work even in constrained conditions.

Skills: Communication, trust

3. Worst-case scenario

Activity: Indoor

This activity encourages debate, and peer discussion in the teams you form. Divide the class into groups of about 5-6 students, and hand them a case or a problem; a scenario where they have limited resources and time, and they need to arrive at the best possible solution. The procedure may be from your curriculum or a hypothetical situation, such as a class field trip bus stranded in a storm. 

Give them a map, if needed. Let the teams propose a solution for the problem. You can stimulate the Socratic method of teaching by opening their reasoning to the open house. The only rider is that everyone on the team must concur with the final solution.

Skills: Communication, problem-solving

4. Tug-of-war

Activity: Outdoor 

It is a classic outdoor activity that tests not just physical strength but also sportsmanship. It is a simple game with practically no equipment other than a strong rope. 

Much like the snake-boat races of Kerala, you can ask the teams to come up with their war cry. After all, a group that is equivocal about their desire to win performs well on the field.

Skills: Teamwork

5. Treasure hunt

Activity: Outdoor

A scavenger hunt also called a treasure hunt is a stimulating activity bound to keep everyone on their toes for a pretty long time. Make teams of 3 or 4, and have 12-15 clues or sets of questions that will lead the teams towards the final prize. This activity demands a good amount of out-of-class area and time constraints, so prior planning is essential.

Involve staff members, such as a librarian, or other teachers, to provide hints, especially if your clues are a tough nut to crack. For clues, you could derive your content from principles taught in class or current affairs.

Skills: Problem-solving, time management, logical application

6. Shrinking classroom

Activity: Indoor/Outdoor

This activity encourages the participation of every student, adjustment, and collaboration. The concept is pretty simple: divide the class into two teams.  Put them into two “classrooms” with flexible but defined boundaries that keep shrinking. 

You could use traffic cones or a giant rope loop that will gradually shrink. Both teams have to organize themselves to fit in that limited area. The essence of the activity is that “no one should feel left out”.

Skills: Adjustment, quick-thinking, cooperation

7. Create a class movie

Activity: Indoor/Outdoor

The end-of-year events in any school are typically more creative and fancy. Students would love to be showcased in a class skit or movie. While the entire class is required to participate, you will need to split up the students into smaller teams. As a teacher, encourage students to write their scripts, choose students for various parts, and help with the entire production. It’s a fun way to get their creative caps on!

The following things need to be done:

• What is the story? Let students write a synopsis and choose the best one.
• Allot parts and roles to students.
• Prepare the costumes and the sets.
• Practicing, and directing the movie scenes.
• Editing the settings.
• Organizing the screening of the finished movie.

You can have students perform a skit, shadow play, or a puppet show similarly.

Skills: Creative collaboration, timeliness

8. Picture story building

Activity: Indoor

Make groups of 8-10, and pass a picture sheet to each group. Each group should look at the picture, discuss and build a story around it. The concept may be abstract or show action or scene. 

All students should be able to add valuable perspectives to what the picture is indicating. The activity reveals that a single stimulus may evoke multiple perspectives, that not everyone sees things in the same way, and we should respect all views.

Skills: Story-building, peer focused discussions

9. Classify This

Activity: Indoor

It is a simple activity that pushes students to think beyond their comfort zone. Place around 20-25 random assortments of articles or pictures, such as paper clips, pencils, salt shakers, umbrellas, socks, ketchup sachet, forks, and so on. 

Make teams of 4-5 students, who are now tasked with categorizing them under specific categories, even when there are no apparent connections. Either you may fix how many categories they must fit each object into. You can ask students to group the things and find exceptions to the general rule. This idea can be used as a precursor to teaching Mendeleev’s periodic table or even species categorization.

Skills: Categorization, logical reasoning

10. Move the Marble

Activity: Indoor

You will need to make larger teams of 8-10 for this activity. Provide an assortment of materials to students: rulers, tubes, chalk, pencils, or anything they can get from their school bags. 

The objective is to get a marble placed on a high area to a designated spot at some distance away. Teams need to devise a contraption or a race track to get that marble safely by avoiding specific places or challenges that you may want to pose.

Skills: collaboration, problem solving

Ensuring successful team-building activities

As educators or teachers, it is essential for you not to be biased and allow every student to perform at par with others.

1. Your classroom is a safe zone.

The team-building activities in your classroom should emphasize that your classroom is a safe zone. All students, irrespective of their background, gender, socio-economic levels, and religion, deserve mutual respect and acceptance, empathy, and self-esteem.

2. Teamwork through trust.

Building good trust amongst fellow participants in your classroom is essential to bring about a sense of community. Authenticity and continuous improvement can be brought about through this community, including constructive peer-to-peer feedback and positive discussion. Team-building activities should be designed to teach trust and community-building.

3. Every Activity is a learning point.

The above activities are designed to be flexible as per your Classroom size and diversity. The challenges you pose to your students during each of these activities enable each student to learn. The learning is not only from their efforts, wins, and shortcomings but also from others.

Wrapping up,

Leadership, of course, should not lead to cognitive biases and groupthink; teamwork needs a variety of opinions, and great communication is the glue that holds everyone together. Such activities have a multi-fold advantage: they help bring out the dormant talents of public organization, discussion, and critical thinking of students who tend to be overshadowed by the more dominant students in the class. It creates a class culture and appreciation for diversity within the batch mates.

When these simple “games” are coupled with an appropriate incentive scheme, such as assignment deadline extension, class credits, or tangible benefits like prizes or gifts, students feel motivated to participate more. These activities are also pliable in the sense that the teacher can fit them into the course curriculum to deliver certain learning points, or just as an extracurricular activity. After all, the adage goes: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!”

Manpreet Singh

An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having  just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’, 

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