Word Scramble
Developed by Sherbrooke Community Centre of the Saskatchewan Health Authority in Saskatoon.
This activity can be done as an individual activity or in teams for staff in various sectors. It can be made into a challenge to engage staff (e.g. All completed scrambles can be submitted for a draw of 3 prizes -Tim Horton’s gift cards).
Cost: The only fee would be for printing and the cost of prizes (if you decided to make it a contest and if the prizes were not donated).
Timeline: would be approx. an hour to make and distribute the copies, make a poster to promote it if you chose to and collecting and completing the draws. Can be done daily for 26 days, or all at once can take up to one hour to complete.
Suggested Action Steps to Host Activities
These are the steps to consider in planning, implementing and evaluating your social activities and games:
Action Step 1: Planning
- Read and understand more about the activity you have selected among the options above.
- Determine who you are targeting for your activity (level of cognition, diversity of the participants, inclusivity, etc.).
- Where will be the setting of the activity? Who do you think will attend? What are the resources required? Can you partner with other organizations for greater impact?
Action Step 2: Promotional outreach and education
- Start to plan your activity by designing promotional flyers/materials to recruit participants. Distribute your materials through proper channels (eg. community newspapers, homes, community centres and other community settings where adults and older adults gather).
- Consider how you will manage the participants recruited. Do you have space/material limitations? Will you need to limit the number of participants for this activities and perhaps have people sign up in advance? Is there enough interest to host multiple events?
- Implement your activity as planned.
Action Step 3: Evaluation
- You can evaluate your activities by counting the number of handouts you gave, or how many people attended, or how many contact you gained from the event.
- You can also distribute a questionnaire to measure the level of satisfaction with the activity. See participant evaluation template HERE to customize.
Running this activity in a virtual setting:
Promote This Activity Online
You can share and promote an activity through social media posts and/or email.
- If you’re sharing a social media post to promote your activity, follow best practices like using shorter captions, quality images, hashtags and a clear call-to-action.
- If you’re emailing to promote your activity, make sure your email is thorough on what the activity is about and how people can register for it. You can use free tools like Canva to customize its design.