Creating community and staff training is something that can be difficult and time consuming to prepare for; however, with an organized presentation you can teach everyone a great topic. Having a great training includes having interactive materials, great breaks and reinforcement for participating.

One way to keep everyone’s attention during the training is providing fidget items for people to interact with, another thing I provide is a bag of candy or snacks on the table.  During the break times, I try to show funny videos, put on relaxation videos or GoNoodle Videos.

Another way to make the training fun is adding a reinforcement component. During the training, I like to hand out tickets for answering or asking questions, being a model, or providing a real life example. At the end of the training, I have everyone write their names on the tickets and pull multiple. My prizes typically are small fidgets, therapy or educational materials, or a gift card.

To keep everyone’s attention during the training, I like to use interactive polls or questions. To do this I use different programs such as Mentimeter or Kahoot. Using Mentimeter you can create multiple choice questions, quizzes, word clouds, open ended questions, and image choices.

Since I am a behavior analyst, having data is pretty important. One way I focus on this is by doing pre-test and post-test. After finishing the training preparation, I create the test by pulling pieces of information that is important to the topic.

To end the training, I like to pull everything together and create a Jeopardy game. I have the group break into small groups, provide them with buzzers from Learning Resources and play Jeopardy on topics from the presentation. Having this game allows the group to recap the information in a fun way. Here is a website of different templates for Jeopardy.

In conclusion, creating a fun and interactive training environment allows the individuals to learn and remember the information they were presented with.