Play Commonality

You’ll need

Pens or pencils
A4 paper

Before you begin

Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help.

Planning and setting up this activity

You may want to run this activity as one big group, two small groups or a few smaller groups, depending on how many people are taking part.

Running the activity

Gather everyone together and explain that they’ll be playing a game called Commonality. The aim of the game is the first person to find something they have in common with each person.
Give out pens and paper. You may want to make a worksheet that has each person’s name on in your group.
Tell your people that everyone has something in common with the other people in the group, but it’s there job to find out what the commonality is.
In the game, everyone will need to talk to each other and find something they have in common. However, they can’t be things that are visible, such as ‘both wearing jeans.’ They have to be things you can’t see, such as ‘we have both have a brother’.
Once they’ve found the thing they have in common with someone, they write it down next to the person’s name. They then move onto someone else.
The winner is the first person to find something in common with ALL the other players.

Reflection

This activity was all about finding out what you had in common with other people. What did you learn about each other? What questions did you have to ask? Was it easy or hard? Did anything surprise you?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games: The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.