Hot Hat or Hot Basket

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Hot Hat or Hot Basket

"Passing the hat" is an intelligent game/exercise that you as the program coordinator or workshop leader can use for review of your entire program at the end of the program or you can also use it at the end of every session/module of your workshop or seminar. Through such review method, you can check out the extent of learning by the participants of the topic(s) under review by giving the participants active role and responsibility in the review sessions. This game also facilitates the recap of the entire program or any particular session/module. The participant's learnings also get reinforced by this kind of

review.

The game/exercise is a good energizer and it is quite participative. It gives you an excellent feedback on how well the participants are responding to your way of facilitation or teaching and then, you can bring out suitable modifications in it.

You will have to announce about usage of this method of review by you right at the beginning of your seminar/workshop. You will also need to give them the details of this methodology (which will become clear to you as you read on). This announcement is sure to make them sit up and pay more serious attention in your program- that's your and participants' big advantage.

Whenever during your workshop you decide to review the level of absorption of the learnings by the participants, you can ask the participants to write review questions for the topic(s) under review. Each participant will write one review question related to some aspect of the session/module you just concluded and which is under the recap now. They should write their names on the papers on which they wrote the questions. They should write the question without consulting each other.

Go with a hat or a basket around the seminar room and ask each participant to drop his review question that he would have written on a standard sized piece of paper, into the hat/basket. Now this hat or basket has become hot with questions and so, we will call it "hot hat" or "hot basket".

Shuffle the contents of the hot hat/basket well. Now randomly choose any one participant, go near him and ask him to pick up one piece of paper and let him read out loudly. And ask him to answer that question. Make sure that the piece of paper he picked up was not written by him. If he does so, ask him to choose another question.

Keep picking up many participants randomly one after other and let each one pick up a question not written by him and answer it. Encourage rest of the participants to fill in any gaps in the answer given by that particular participant.

If you still feel that the answer was not complete, add your own explanation.

When you realize that all the important and significant aspects of the topic(s) under the review have been taken care of, you can conclude the session by congratulating the participants for having done an excellent job of the recap. Let them celebrate their success by loud clapping by all them and you too can join in.

Get Hold of the Related Books

You can order the following books on "management games and icebreakers" as printed books and eBooks from Amazon online:

1. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
2. Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers (Volume 2)
3. Classic Team Building Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers
4. 101 Classic Management Games, Exercises, Energizers and Icebreakers

Related Reading: (Repository of a large number of articles in management and leadership): http://shyam.bhatawdekar.com and http://management-universe.blogspot.com