One of my favourite classroom exercises is to hand out items from my facilitator’s kit (box of crayons, stapler, whistle etc) and to ask learners to find a number of ways that that item is like the topic under discussion.

Hand your learners a box of crayons and ask them to find as many ways as possible that it is like a lesson. The answers are always insightful and diverse and provide an interesting perspective of the topic – for example:

Here are a few more items that you can suggest to your learners to encourage them to make links to the topic you are teaching:

Karen Gray is a director of Gray Training, a company devoted to developing facilitators, trainers, assessors, instructional designers and business writers. Training Tips is a free service that Gray Training offers to all our students and colleagues – and to anyone who is passionate about making learning happen. You will receive a useful idea each week to help you to make your training more interesting and effective.

For more information or training tips email her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

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