Arctic Survival Activity – Team Building Lesson

About this resource

What's inside this resource

The Arctic Survival Activity is a 15-page cooperative learning resource that allows students to work in groups and weigh survival options after a hypothetical plane crash in the arctic. Learners must reach consensus on difficult decisions about scarce supplies and resources. This activity builds classroom culture as groups navigate team dynamics. It includes PowerPoint slides to facilitate the activity, a printable student worksheet for ranking arctic survival items (Google Classroom compatible), and an answer key with explanations. As students debate and problem-solve, the activity enables discussions about group dynamics, leadership, communication styles, psychology, and more. Students love this engaging crash scenario that stretches their teamwork skills and tests their survival know-how against experts.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Learning objectives

Rank items by relative usefulness under a shared survival goal and justify the reasoning.
Compare individual decision-making to group consensus decision-making and identify differences in outcome.
Reflect on group dynamics, leadership emergence, and how time was shared during a collaborative task.

Teaching tips

Give students explicit time checkpoints ('5 minutes left') during both the individual and group ranking phases, as the teacher guide recommends.
Allow 20-30 minutes for the group ranking phase, since the guide notes it takes noticeably longer than individual ranking.
Use the reflection questions after scoring to discuss why group scores are often, but not always, better than individual scores.

Skills covered

Collaborative decision-making — students negotiate a single ranked list as a group of three to five.
Reasoned prioritization — students justify why one survival item outranks another under a specific scenario.
Group reflection — students discuss leadership, group dynamics, and the decision process after scoring their results.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

How is the individual ranking phase meant to be different in pacing from the group ranking phase?

The guide instructs facilitators to keep the individual list-making brief with time-remaining announcements, then allow substantially more time — roughly 20 to 30 minutes — for groups of three to five to negotiate a single combined list.

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Resource details

Concepts & topics

Core concepts

team building
decision making
group dynamics

Topics

arctic survival group activity team building decision making

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Categories this resource belongs to

Social Studies Activities History Games Social Studies Games Fun Activities For High School Students 8th Grade Activities 7th Grade Activities

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