Count Up, Count Down

Summary

A team game to encourage patience, turn taking and focus. A great challenge.

How Do I Play It?

Start in a drama circle.

The students in turn have to count sequentially from 1 to 10 and back down to 1. Anybody can say any number but if a number is said by more than one person, you have to start from the beginning.

A great game to encourage teamwork, listening and concentration skills. Can be used as a warmup to focus minds, or as a cool down to end a session.

Tips

Add strategies such as ‘only one number each per round’ and ‘you cannot say the same number that you said in the last round’ to prevent over confident students taking over the game

Variations

This can be adapted with numeracy in mind e.g. only even numbers or numbers from the 7 times table

Participants
Pairs, Small Groups, Whole Group
Expertise
All
Skills
Concentration, Relaxation, Teamwork
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Games could be a beginning starter, an introducing step during a workshop or as an end plenary. They are a platform for further development and are never meant to be the whole session on their own.

The nature of drama games is that they are shared, adapted and extended. The original author is not so important as the shared practice. You’ll find games on the site that you’ve seen before, called something different or that you even use in your own teaching toolkit.

We hope that among the known games are ideas of how to refresh old ones as well as new games to use.