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Snowball

Through this activity, participants develop greater awareness of others' backgrounds and learn to describe their own background in an inclusive manner.

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Ritual

In this activity, participants experience and discuss feelings of inclusion and exclusion and practice watching and assessing the behavior of others. 

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Pick-a-Postcard

Participants use this activity to develop goal-setting skills, resolve conflict or establish group norms, and reflect using metaphor and figurative language.

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Personal Identity Wheel, Social Identity Wheel, and Spectrum Activity

Personal Identity Wheel challenges participants to reflect on their identities beyond social groups and get to know others in the group. They brainstorm words that describe their personal interests, skills, hobbies, etc. and then compare them with others.

Social Identity Wheel challenges participants to reflect on their identities in relation to social groups and get to know others in the group. They consider identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation and contemplate how those identities manifest themselves in different environments and impact others’ perceptions.

Spectrum Activity challenges participants to reflect on their identities and how they are perceived in different contexts. They consider identities such as race, gender, and sexual orientation and contemplate how those identities may be privileged in different environments and therefore affect their interactions with others.

These three tools can be used in conjunction with each other. 

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One Will Get You Ten

For this activity, participants generate and share ideas for solving a specific problem or exploring a topic. 

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Newton

In this activity, participants practice negotiating a win-win solution while learning how to manage conflict and competition. 

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Miniature Metaphors

In this activity, participants reflect on goal-setting, create group norm agreements, learn to resolve conflict in effective ways, and appreciate the individual strengths and positive attributes of others. 

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Meet the Trainer

In this activity, participants assess how a person's personal appearance and culture influence our assumptions or biases. 

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Mapping My Cultural Values

This activity can be used as a discussion starter between two participants, where they use their cultural value maps to identify the similarities and differences between their cultures. 

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Magic Spelling

The facilitator will perform a mathematical card trick and then encourage participants to dig beneath the surface of the trick through asking questions. Then, participants will connect their curiosity about the card trick to intercultural curiosity. 

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Lemons

This activity challenges participants to interrogate stereotypes and recognize how individuals are unique. Each participant will be given a lemon and asked to closely examine it and note its unique characteristics. Then, their lemon will be mixed up with all the others and they will be asked to pick it out from the group based on their previous observations. Finally, they will reflect on how this activity relates to stereotypes.

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Intercultural People Bingo

This activity enables participants to share information about themselves, learn about others in the group, and actively move around the room and engage with others. It's a classic icebreaker that is easily revised with a specific group in mind. 

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Icebreaker Grab Bag

University of Michigan LSA Inclusive Teaching Initiative offers a variety of icebreakers that can be used to build community in a classroom setting.

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I Am Poems

In this activity, participants write short poems where each line begins with “I Am,” which will allow them to describe what’s most important to the formation of their identities.

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I Am From Poems

In this activity, participants write short poems where each line begins with “I am from,” which allows them to describe their heritage using the details and memories most important to them. Through their poems, they can reflect on their own cultural heritage and connect with each other. 

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Human Values Continuum

This activity challenges participants to recognize and analyze their reactions to a variety of cultural values. Participants will move to various locations around the room based on their opinions about value statements read by the facilitator.

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Five Nosy Questions

This activity challenges participants to build empathy and a sense of team identity by listening and sharing. They will ask and answer some questions that help them better understand each other as both individuals and cultural beings

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Five Minute Poem, The

Participants first write a short poem about where they're from and then share either with the entire group or with a partner or small group. 

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Familiar and Unfamiliar

This activity challenges participants to expand their curiosity about unfamiliar cultural experiences. Using a deck of picture cards, they will compare their familiar and unfamiliar experiences with others in the group to gain insights about cultural difference.

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Draw a House

During this activity, participants will be asked to draw a floor plan of a house based on their own experiences and understandings of how houses are typically arranged. They will then compare their floor plans and discuss the differences between them. The goal is to help participants understand cultural differences in the organization of space.

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Different Similarities

In this activity, participants discover similarities between one another, discuss how we perceive difference, and analyze how we form groups and how our perceptions play into group-formation.

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Conversation Starters: 200 questions to get to know someone

These questions enable participants to increase their level of curiosity about others and develop active listening skills. 

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Conversation Starters

This assortment of buttons serve as conversation starters and help participants employ different roles and perspectives in a group. 

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Complimentary Round Table

After passing around an apple and dropping it while saying something mean about it, participants will then pass around a different apple and everyone in the group will compliment the person holding it. 

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Chain of Diversity

In this activity, participants identify the similarities and differences across the group, as well as what makes each individual unique. 

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