Play Ball

Preparation

• Gather the following items:
  * two foam balls or two beanbags
  * one copy of the resource A Communication Process(PDF)
• Secretly Ask a participant to help you with the activity. Explain that the second activity in this session is going to involve young people playing catch. The volunteer’s job is to jump up and hit the ball so that the receiver cannot catch it. Show the volunteer the directions for the activity so that she or he knows when to jump up and cause a distraction.
• Enlarge the diagram from the resource A Communication Process (PDF) on a sheet of newsprint or an overhead projection.

Play Ball

1. Invite the participants to gather as a large group, and ask two people who are good at playing catch to step forward. Tell one volunteer player to stand on one side of the group and the other player to stand on the other side of the group. (They will throw a ball over the heads of the other participants.) Make sure the secret volunteer you selected is in a position where he or she can jump up and hit the ball away. Give a foam ball (or a beanbag) to one of the players, and ask the two players to throw the ball back and forth.

2. As the players are throwing the ball back and forth, present the following information:

• The two volunteers are illustrating the communication process right now.
• The one throwing the ball is the sender, and the one catching the ball is the receiver. The ball is the message. The two volunteers switch between being the sender and being the receiver.
• When one person catches the ball and returns it, most often that person is giving the sender some feedback about what has been said.
• Feedback is a reaction, verbal or nonverbal, that communicates the receiver’s interpretation of the message.

3. Ask for two more volunteers, and add them to the game of catch. Add another ball. As the four volunteers are throwing the two balls, present the following information:

• What we have here is a conversation that involves a number of different people as well as a number of different messages. When a lot of sending and receiving is going on, it is easier to drop the ball sometimes, or miss what someone is saying.

4. At this time the secret volunteer should jump up and try to misdirect the balls. When a ball drops out, before starting it into play again, present the following comments:

• Things sometimes disrupt a conversation, or distract us. What are some distractions that arise during conversations? [Collect some answers from the group.]
• For the process of communication to succeed, we need to eliminate as many distractions as possible.

5. Ask the volunteers to start playing catch again, and this time to try to have an actual conversation. Explain that every time they throw the ball, they have to speak a message to the person they are throwing the ball to, so that the ball symbolically carries the message to the person who catches it. Allow this to happen for about 1 minute.

6. Conclude this activity by making the following points:

• In conversation, just as in the game of catch, it is best when the messages we send get returned to us in a way that indicates they were understood. It is not fun to play catch with someone who is really bad at catching or throwing--when we do, we spend a lot of time chasing balls and standing around. But just like learning to catch and throw, learning to communicate takes some practice!
• Although not all our conversations involve a ball, they do involve something passing between us and other people. For our messages to be understood, someone must receive them. If no one hears a message, it drops out of the conversation, the same as when no one catches a ball, it hits the floor and stays there.
• In some conversations so many messages are being thrown around at the same time that it is impossible to catch all of them or to give feedback to the person trying to communicate.
• Communication begins with an idea. In this diagram [refer to the enlargement of the diagram from the resource A Communication Process (PDF)], you see that the girl has an idea. She is the sender, and she uses a collection of words to communicate that idea to the receiver.
• Even if the receiver, this boy, hears the words correctly, he may not understand the meaning intended by the sender. That is why it is important for a receiver to give feedback (to respond) to a sender--to see if the receiver understands the message in the way the sender intended.