Students can use Ziplet without an account – Learn more
Icebreakers are activities or exercises used to help people get to know one another and build a sense of cohesion within a group. In the classroom, teachers use icebreakers to foster an environment where students feel more comfortable and engaged. These activities can range from simple introduction games to more complex team-building exercises.
Icebreakers help enhance the learning environment by making it more dynamic, inclusive, and conducive to student growth.
Icebreakers help students feel more comfortable among their peers and teacher, which is great for supporting better academic outcomes, and teachers can use icebreakers to get better insight into their students personalities and learning styles.
While icebreakers are often used to help new students get to know each other at the start of a new year, teachers can use icebreaker games with their students:
Using icebreaker games to continually break social barriers and facilitate better collaboration should be a part of every teacher's year-round strategy.
When to use it: Before starting a new topic
Show students a picture related to a new topic. Ask your students to describe what they see, or create a new story about it.
This excercise will help stimulate their imagination and prompt thinking before jumping into a new topic. It will also help you understand their prior understanding to guide your teaching.
When to use it: Before a group assignment or team exercise
Help students work even better together by getting to know their teammates before a group assignment.
A great way to do this is by playing Same and Different. In this game, students are broken into their groups and need to work together to find 3 things every person has in common, and 3 things that make each person unique.
Have students present their findings back to the rest of the class.
When to use it: When students need support to empathize more with one another
For this game, you'll need a ball of string.
Have students sit in a circle and hand the ball to the first student. This person will say something about themselves and then toss the ball to a classmate while holding onto one end of the string. This continues until each student has participated.
This game is great at demonstrating interconnectedness. By sharing insight about themselves, the students have collectively built a web of interconnectedness.
When to use it: At the start of term
This classic game may be one that your students have played before, but the game is never the same twice. Depending on how much time you have, you can choose to put students in small groups to play this game or even just share your own statements for the class to guess.
Give your students 5 minutes to think of two true statements about themselves, and one false one. Then have them share these statements and get other students to guess which statement is the lie.
When to use it: At regular intervals throughout term
Starting your class with a bellringer question is a great way to slowly get to know your students better (and help them to get to know you!)
Log in to your Ziplet account and grab a warm-up question from the library. Using your class pin, have your students respond to the icebreaker question.
This quick activity only takes a few minutes and will not only help break the ice, but also get your students focused at the start of the lesson.
Some of our favorite icebreaker questions:
When to use it: Before a group assignment or team exercise
This game is a creative and low-stakes way to get your students comfortable with teamwork and out-of-the-box thinking.
Split your students into two teams and assign a secret word to Team One.
Team One needs to spell out the word using their bodies, and Team Two needs to try and read the word. It's not as easy as it sounds!
Answer a Ziplet exit ticket and let us know what you think of this post. No login required.
Go to Ziplet.com/GO and enter the GO! Code:
