Ice Breakers for the First Day (or Week) of School

Depending on how your first day (or week) of school looks, include some ice breakers. Ice breakers can help some students very quickly find like minded potential friends. They can also be quite intimidating, if you are trying to force your students to share too much about themselves too soon. A level of trust needs to be established before many will divulge information about themselves.

On our first day of school, we often do not have a “forever class”. We usually have the previous year’s class for the one-two hours of school. I can play a variety of games because we know each other. Some of those games include:

• 4 corners
• 7-up
• Bingo
• Card games, Uno, Sailors on Deck
• Would You Rather™, This or That (there are several on Youtube)

But what do you do when this is your first time with your class? Can you play the above games? Yes, though I wouldn’t recommend 7up yet.

The Value of Ice Breakers

Ice Breakers provide opportunities for students to make connections with their peers. A game like ‘would you rather’ lets students see who answers the same as them. For example, if the question asks, “would you rather read a book or hang with your friends?” can pinpoint those who are social and those who might be more introverted. As the teacher, I love to see the answers of the students as it can give me insights into how I can connect with the class.

In a Cornell University blog post on Icebreakers, the author suggests a couple more ways ice breakers benefit students.

• “helps create a more relaxed atmosphere”
• “prepares students for collaborative group work”
• “fosters a productive learning environment”

4 Corners as an Ice Breaker

When I was teaching middle school, students loved games like “never have I ever” and “4 corners”. Students are moving and it’s fun to see how students react to questions and the responses of their peers. Now in primary, we play the traditional 4 corners in the gym (and classroom) where one student closes their eyes, counts to ten and students run into a corner, in hopes not to be called out.

4 Corners as an ice breaker, gives students the opportunity to share a bit about themselves in a non-threatening way. I progress through the slides quick, but slow enough to let students see their friends responses. Sometimes if there is 1 student in a corner, I might ask them a more detailed question about their response.

For example, referring to the picture above of the trees/favourite season, if a student is all alone in the “winter” corner, I may ask them what do they like about winter? When teaching this game to younger students, I add the feature of coloured backgrounds, and label the corners of the room with that colour.

What is the difference between ice breakers and team building?

Ice breakers are about students getting to know one another, whereas team building activities are designed for students to work together. For younger students, parachute activities are good example of a simple team building task.

Parachute Games

While parachute games are more of a team building activity, it is something that I consider for the first week of school. Find out if your school has a parachute (or two) and depending on its size, you could ask another teacher and their class to join you. A couple easy activities are keeping a small or large ball on the parachute while moving it around in a circle. They can also try to get the ball into the air.

A Couple More Activities

One activity that I enjoy doing the first week of school is “4 Things About Me” paper bag activity. I give the students a paper bag (put their name on it) and there is a piece of paper stapled to it. I got this freebie from A Love for Teaching website, years ago!

If you have a lot of new students to your school (in your class) you can play “Find a Friend” or “Find a New Friend”

Find a (New) Friend Who:

• has black hair
• is missing a tooth
• has glasses
• is wearing something red
• has brown eyes
• is wearing a t-shirt
• has straight hair

Then when each student has a partner, they learn a “secret handshake”. It can be a fist bump, a high 5 or 10, spin around then shake hands, or something they want to create together.

Do you have any favourite ice breakers that you would like to share? I would love to hear about it!

Until then,

Happy Teaching!