PAL Central: The PAL Blog

Engagement tip #2 - festive edition!

As we approach the Christmas period, many of you will be holding your final PAL session of semester one! As mentioned in our Halloween post, putting a festive element into your sessions is a great way to make them light and fun, whilst giving a sense of regularity in an otherwise unusual time! Even if you or the members of your seminar group don’t celebrate Christmas, you can use this time to prompt reflection as we come to the end of the year. Here are a few session and engagement ideas: 

• Facilitate an activity around reflection on your group’s first semester at university. You could include prompts such as achievements and proud moments, things that students enjoyed, or things they would like to change about their study habits for semester two. Using an anonymous TEL Tool such as Padlet or Menti, or perhaps a facilitation technique such as Round Robin may help to deliver an activity like this. 
• Ask your seminar group to dress in a themed or fun way, or bring a themed object into the session. This doesn’t have to be Christmas themed, and it could just mean fancy dress (which is for any occasion, not just festivities of course!).  
• At the end of the session, ask your seminar group to vote on their favourite costume/prop! 

We’d love to see some photos or screenshots of you and your seminar group’s efforts – just remember to ask your PAL group if they consent to their photo being sent to us before you do so. You can also encourage them to send us photos themselves at PAL@bournemouth.ac.uk!

Have fun, and remember to join in on any festive activities yourself!