Humanagrams! FREE class teamwork challenge activity

Need a quick activity to do with your class? Why not play Humanagrams?

Activity overview:

• Students try to combine letters in different ways to make words.
• There is a class set of 31 letters on regular paper (8.5” x 11”): 26 letters in the English alphabet, and each vowel has 2 copies.

Learning objective:

• Practice collaboration and communication 
• Practice creativity and tinkering
• Explore diversity and inclusion

Guiding prompts:

1. How many words can the class spell?
2. What is the longest word that the class can spell?
3. What is the shortest word?
4. What is the highest point word that you can spell?
5. What is the lowest point word that you can spell?

Discussion:

1. If this was a metaphor for inclusion, do some letters get included more than others? Why? (yes, vowels in every English word. )
2. Are some letters not included as often? Why not? (Not as many words that use that letter.)
3. How could we include these letters more? (Give them more points / worth more so that people want to use them. In other words, recognize and see the value in others.)
4. Take home message - sometimes, we don’t include people, because we don’t see value in them / we look down on them. How can we get to know people, so we see that we have things in common, so we want to include them?