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Choice Line Up

10/23/2025

On a regular basis I find myself exploring the activities I know for different ways to use them. Particularly in ways that help my group members interact with each other a little more. One of the most common questions I ask myself is, “How can I add another ‘problem’ to the experience.” Problems invite interaction.

A recent exploration involved ‘Line Ups’ – the no prop activity where a group is given some parameter, followed by everyone finding their place. For example, “Line up in alphabetical order by your first name.” Or “Line up in birthday order my month and day, not the year.” Raise your hand if like to program Line Ups.

For years I’ve been providing the parameters for Line Ups. And each time I use the activity I challenged myself to bring in one or two parameters I hadn’t used before. When Ryan Eller shared ‘100 Ways to Line Up a Group’ I was all over it. Here are some of my favorites from Ryan:

Straightest to Curliest Hair
Who lives the furthest to the closest distance from where you’re standing.
Average time to get ready in the morning – least to most.
The furthest travelled away from home.
Number of times you’ve moved to a new house or apartment.
Number of first cousins.

Beyond the Basic Line Ups

Extension 1:
Years ago, my first extension of Line Ups was to include some time for a short conversation related to the parameter. For example, “Get together with one or two people near you and share the story of your name.” Or “Get together with one or two people around you and share your experience of a favorite birthday.”

Thought Experiment: What would be a question to discuss related to each of the parameters I picked up from Ryan? (It’s common to invite people to share a ‘scar’ story. What about a ‘hair’ story?)

Extension 2:
My latest change to Line Ups involves adding an additional problem to the process - choosing the Line Up. Instead of me providing the parameters, I ask the group to provide them. Specifically, I challenge them to come up with 10 different line ups to accomplish. (Why 10? The first few line ups will be the ‘easy’ ones. Then the group is going to have to work a little harder – take the time it takes – to come up with ones that everyone can be, or wants to be, part of.)

I frontload the challenge with a consideration: “As you discuss line up ideas, consider if the parameter you suggest include everyone in the group. For example, if you want the group to line up numerically by the sum of their cell phone number, does everyone in the group have a cell number? How do you know? How will you know?”

What I want to do, purposefully, is to get participants to think a little more about what they want to ask the group to do. How will they inquire? Who will lead the ‘thinking’ process? Will participants ‘share’ the space for suggestions? How will the group decide on a line up? Will they ‘check in’ with everyone? Will everyone be comfortable with the line up? Will people speak up about their level of comfort?

Yes, Line Ups, of course, can just be a fun way to get participants to interact, talk with each other, and ‘connect’. And, when you want to/can, dive in a little deeper, extend the process. Get them into some conversations to build more understanding, more awareness of each other.

My favorite processing question after this one:
What is something you found out during this activity that you didn’t know before?

How have you extended Line Ups? Leave us a Comment below!

All the best,

Chris Cavert, Ed.D.

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Double-ZOOM (and Dialogue)

10/8/2025

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Editorial Note from Chris: One of my goals for the FUNdoing Blog is to share activities and ideas that the majority of readers can utilize – either no equipment needed or the equipment is easy to access. There are times where only a minority of readers will be able to make and use an activity, but I want to share it for more than utilization. There is a creative twist or unique way to use props or people. And maybe others will be able to see a way to use the idea or process. Double-ZOOM will fit into this category. The access to a copy machine and colored copies is needed.

So, let’s put on our thinking caps. What else can we do with this idea? I’ll start: Word Circlers, how about using two Word Circle Puzzles on index cards?

Our FUNdoing friend Gal and I had this dialogue about his crafted experience with the Zoom and ReZoom books (by Istvan Banyai). The Zoom (red cover) picture book experience with teams has been used for years to illustrate the importance of detailed commination. Banyai’s second book, ReZoom (blue cover) can be used in the same way.

I wrote a historical teambuilding perspective of Zoom in my book, Portable Teambuilding Activities. (Check out the ‘Categories’ in the right sidebar of the FUNdoing Blog for the ‘Zoom’ activities/variations I’ve posted at FUNdoing.)

I chose to share my dialogue with Gal, with limited edits, so you can experience a little of what I got from my first read of Gal's initial email.

Thought Experiment: Before reading my response, after reading Gal's initial email, think about what you would have asked Gal], and then check out the path I followed for clarification and thoughts I had during my reflection on this Zoom/ReZoom adventure (What I'm calling: Double-ZOOM).

Let’s go…

9/1/25
Hi Chris.
I wanted to share with you a game I recently tried in my workshops that uses the Zoom picture books…pictures that must be arranged in chronological order from the first page to the last.

I made a double-sided version of the game that combines the Zoom and ReZoom books that came out in such a way that after arranging all the pictures in order, if you turn them over, you will discover the second story, which is also in order. [From Chris on Copyright: Making a copy of each book for educational purposes, and not for resale, can be seen as a fair use of the material.]

The rules of the game itself are as follows:

The group must connect all 30 pages…into chronological order.
Since it’s a wordless picture book, the group [may not] use verbal communication during the task.
The group has 10 minutes to complete the task.

The group [is introduced to] all the pages mixed [around on the floor with] half of the pages [of one book’s storyline] turned upside down – [in other words] part of [both] stories are exposed. But the group does not know [yet] that there are two stories here. [Edits I (Chris) made here are clarified below, but I wanted to share them here to avoid some re-learning.]

[Back to Gal] At first, [I observed] participants approach [the pages] separately and try to start finding connections and [then] connecting different pages. They…soon discover[ed] that these are double-sided pages with a picture on both sides. At this point, they [had] to actually make a decision, which side to continue with. Once a decision is made, the group will focus on one story and find all its pages in a row.

In the elaboration [Reflection] of the exercise, of course, you can approach the issue of micro and macro, or the fact that at first things do not seem clear until you gradually understand the full picture, or the issue of perspective of how we look at things in our lives from different perspectives, or even the ability to zoom in or zoom out from different situations.

[In] this version of the game there is an additional element. What story do I choose to tell myself? What happens the moment I choose to focus on one story and not necessarily the other? [Chris' emphasis] The focus is on the issue of choice and its future consequences and how each choice we make creates a new story in our lives. What would have happened if we had…chosen the second story? Where have we lived? Have there been times when we stood at a crossroads and made a decision that changed the story of our lives?

I invite you to try the exercise and see where else you can take the adaptation.

Gal

9/13/25

Hello Gal, thanks for sharing your version of ZOOM!

Right after I got your email, I read through it quickly, but I didn't have time to 'think' about it. The other day I had more time to dive in. I really like it, especially from a resource management perspective – know your resources. In this case, what's on the other side? (A great metaphor right there!)

With time to think into this version I realized you place the pages down on the floor – with "half the pages turned upside down..." This is my favorite twist. Now, I get no words in the book, so no talking. I don't yet know what the learning is with no talking – how do you link this non-verbal lesson to everyday life? (Something just came to me – maybe it's simply a constraint to work with? "How did you all work around the constraint of no talking?") The 'elaborations' you use are very useful and I'm sure lead to good conversations (reflection). I love the "what story do I choose to tell myself" and what happens when I choose one story over another? (More rich metaphors.)

If you are willing (and can spare the time), I would love to find out how you introduced this version to your group – what is the (general) script you used and what constraints did you set. For example, no talking is one, what else did you allow or limit?

After thought I'm having: The no-talking is growing on me. Say I look at the other side of a page to discover another picture. I now have 'powerful' information. Do I share this information? Do I keep the secret to myself? (If I could talk, would I tell anyone?) Do I go around and turn over the pages to reveal just one story – 'make' others follow my story? More METAPHOR!

One more thought: What if we made a set of pages where the two stories do not fall into the same sequence? So, lay out one story in order. Then, if you flip the pages over, the second story is not in order. Would this add anything to the experience?

WOW, thanks again for sharing. This one is really making my brain work!!

Chris

9/13/25

Hi Chris.

I'll start with the instructions for the exercise:

The group must arrange the pages of the book in chronological order from the first page to the last. The book is 30 pages long.
Each page [except for the last one] has a follow-up picture in the form of a zoom in or out like a camera zoom.
The group has 10 minutes for the task.
And the twist is of course that the book is wordless and so will the game be…silently.
And the rule that enforces it is that if [anyone] speaks then the time is shortened for the group by 30 seconds.

The idea of time is to create a sense of pressure to solve the puzzle before time runs out. The idea behind the wordless, besides introducing a challenging limit of non-verbal communication into the game, is also to create exactly the situation where at some point one participant will realize that there are two sides to the story, and this is where the group work actually begins.

Up until this point, each participant has been working alone in an attempt to understand what is on the pages. Here are a number of situations that can happen:

The participant will try to communicate this to others non-verbally.
[They] will choose to sacrifice 30 seconds to communicate it more quickly with the group
[They] will simply make a decision for [themselves] and choose which story to focus on and start running with it and gradually others will join in.

It very much depends on the participant.

In the adaptation, you can later question that participant [about how they] acted once [they] realized that there were two stories here. And what was the decision based on which story to choose?

Now about the idea of doing the story on the other side not in sequence. I thought about that too. But in the end I actually liked the twist where I turn all the pages in front of everyone and reveal to them the story that is not told and talk about it. Sometimes every story in our lives has two sides. There is the story that we choose to tell ourselves. There are these quarters of "What if I had acted differently at the moment of the decision?"

I'm glad you delved deeper and liked the exercise. I have been using it recently with teenagers and also with workshops for reservists in the context of them living a double life with the story of returning to citizenship and the story of being called up again to serve.

Gal

So, what did this dialogue spark in your mind? Leave us a Comment to extend the thinking.

All the best,

Chris Cavert, Ed.D.

P.S. After writing this point I wondered, "How many participants will be a good number for this ZOOM version?"

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