Yesterday in Leaders UNITE at the International Preschool of Raleigh, students played a game where they had the opportunity to work on communication, teamwork, and adapting to different leaders/situations. We played a game similar to charades- where I acted out different words and students had to guess which word I was acting out. I split the students into two teams randomly, giving them the opportunity to work with new students that they might not see during their class time. I then made one person from each team the “leader”— where this person’s job was raise their hand on behalf of the group and say the answer for the team. Although one person was raising their hand on behalf of the team, the team was supposed to communicate together and help their team leaders arrive at the correct answer. Another interesting thing about the game was that I changed the team “leaders” multiple times throughout the games- so students had the opportunity to quickly adapt to different leading styles and learned how to communicate in different ways. I was pleased to see that students’ teams did significantly better when the whole team was helping the team leader arrive at the correct answer, and that students got better and better at working together as the game progressed. We also spoke in depth about sportsmanship, teaching the students that we should be happy for the other team when they get points, instead of becoming upset. We also spoke about perseverance, where students learned that even if their team is losing, it is important to keep trying and stay motivated as a team. The students had lots of fun with the game- which actually ended in a tie by the end of the session! Finally, students had a brief discussion about leadership and teamwork, and how these both manifested themselves in this game. Way to go IPR!