Stranded: Island survival icebreaker/team-building

Thieving monkeys. Angry ghosts. And there's SOMETHING in the jungle. Can YOU survive the island until help arrives?

Many students have played the classic critical thinking game in which they prioritize a list of items to survive on a remote tropical island. But there's two major drawbacks of this original version. First, most of these games reward a clear preference for certain items ("What do you mean you didn't take the compass?"). Second, the game basically ends as soon as the students make their selections and learn whether they picked "correctly" or not.

I take the simulation a few steps further as a way to enhance the critical thinking and team-building components of the exercise. First, ALL the items on the list matter and can be useful if the students are creative enough. Second, the game play focuses on a whole week of survival on the island. In this world, both the items students pick AND the actions they take matter. This activity can be used as an ice-breaker for back-to-school activities, a team building exercise or leadership development.

I've included a version of the game for younger students and a different one for older students. The former version removes any possibility of students getting "out" of the game; students may just miss turns if tragedy strikes. The latter version preserves the mayhem and chaos of island survival that high school and college students love.

I've also designed "ghost rules" as a way to keep any student (in the older version of the game) a part of the action even if they bite the dust on Day 1.

I've also designed a few other games for first day activities, leadership training or to be used as critical thinking exercises:

-Building Communication: A specialized team uses the popular brand of interlocking building bricks to create the tallest, most creative or fastest structure.

-Toxic Waste: Can your team imagine a way to transport a "deadly" substance before the other teams?

Additionally, I have longer games that fit well within civics or history classrooms at my store: Gov Games and Lesson Plans

***Attached files are all pdfs***