Grouping Cards by Bellmetrics
These bright and fun grouping cards were originally developed for placing people into groups for training, but also provide a great tool for card games and workshop activities (e.g. ice-breakers, warm-ups and energisers), and the symbols, patterns and pictures provide a basis to design your own educational activities.
What can I do with my cards?
Click on the links below to find out more about what you can do with your Grouping Cards.
Do you run courses that require you to regularly put participants into groups? Have you found that it can be time consuming and sometimes frustrating? Do the participants comment that they keep being put in the same group as some one else and they haven’t had the opportunity to mix with others in the course?
Now imagine how easy it would be if you could just say “we are now using the groups defined by red versus black”, or “we will be forming animal groups”, and people know exactly what group they should be in. You also know that the symbols and patterns have been specially computer generated for a good mix of people across the different types of groups.
This is how it works. Every person in the course gets
a card, and each card has its own unique picture containing various symbols
and patterns. According to the number of groups you want, you select
a certain attribute of the card, for example, for 5 groups use the type
of clothing, for 6 groups use the background colour or for 7 groups use
the letters of the alphabet (A to G).
There are 15 different symbols or patterns to let you put the people
in the course into 2 to 10 groups. Once you exhaust the different symbol
and pattern options, you can then use the number on the card to group
people, giving an additional 18 options (as shown in the tables).
The Grouping Cards are also useful for other activities such as “ice-breakers, warm-ups and energisers”. Use the suggestions provided in the booklet or create your own!
An array of card games based on the Grouping Card patterns and symbols have been developed for 1 to 5 people. These games are similar to “fish”, “snap” and versions of “patience” which can often be modified to make the game simpler or more challenging. Use the games provided in the booklet or develop some of your own.
The symbols and patterns, and the way they have been developed into a picture on the Grouping Cards provide a tool to create your own educational activities. The Grouping Cards can be used to help recognise similar or contrasting patterns and the pictures can form the basis of sparking creativity and imagination.
