Larger teams that have more than five people will be challenged in how they organise the task, leadership and teamwork (ensuring everyone has a role within the team). You should run the activity in a suitably sized space, big enough so that all team members can view the puzzle and work together. Try to use a jigsaw puzzle with enough pieces to keep all team members actively engaged during the exercise. If you decide to start them in different rooms, it will take them a little longer to realise and work out how to resolve the problem. If sub-teams are working in the same room, they will discover the problem and solution quite quickly and work together to assemble the puzzle. You can start the exercise with either the teams working in the same room or different rooms. If they ask you, reiterate the introduction to the task as before and let them work it for themselves. Try and stay clear from giving them the solution to the problem. Generally, they shouldn’t need any more than 30 minutes to complete, although this will change depending on the complexity of the puzzle and group size.

Provide enough time for the teams to work on the puzzles.

They key point of the exercise is for the team to identify the problem and resolve it by discussing it between them and working together.

Teams will assume that they competing against one another, however there is only one puzzle and the pieces have shared out between the two teams.

You will receive no additional instructions” “The aim of the exercise is for each team to assemble the jigsaw puzzle as quickly as possible using the pieces provided. Try to ensure that each teams puzzle pieces appear to be an entire puzzle. Instruct them to assemble the puzzle as quickly as possible.

Provide each sub-team with a bag of jigsaw puzzle pieces.

Jigsaw Puzzle Pieces Team Activity Instructions

Split the team into 2 smaller sub-teams (or more depending on the size of your group) and hand each team a bag.

Divide up the puzzle and place an equal amount of pieces into each team bag.

Resources: 1 x large jigsaw puzzle and small bags to hold the pieces

Jigsaw puzzle 2 mix key