Getting off on the right foot from the start of the school year can be tough, but it can be a great way to set the tone for your classroom. There are a variety of ways you can kick off the school year for your classroom.
Below you will find 10 back to school icebreaker activities for your classroom. There are 5 hands-on back to school activities and 5 digital-based back to school activities.
5 Hands-On Back to School Activities
If you don’t have access to technology, or you want students to be interactive, then check out the below activities!
- Beach Ball Questions:
- Write questions on a beach ball and have students toss it to each other. When they catch it, they answer the question closest to their right thumb.
- Snowball Fight:
- Students write three facts about themselves on paper, crumple them into “snowballs,” and toss them around. Then, they guess which student wrote each fact.
- Figure Me Out:
- Students create equations that represent numerical facts about themselves. For example, 42/7 could represent the number of letters in their name. Classmates solve the equations to learn about each other while practicing math skills.
- Speed Dating:
- Pairs of students discuss questions in a timed rotation.
- What’s Your Superpower?:
- Students draw a picture of themselves using a superpower they’d like to have and share with the class.
These activities get students mentally and physically involved. I love getting students up and moving in the classroom because it is easy for them to be engaged. Thus, I love to set the tone with these kinds of activities early on in the school year.
5 Digital-Based Back to School Activities
Digital-based back to school activities are a great way to start the school year if you have the option to. Some great things about using digital-based activities is because it can provide opportunities to be creative or offer opportunities especially if you have a digital classroom.
- Digital “Me – The User Manual”:
- Have students create a digital “user manual” about themselves, answering questions about their preferences, communication style, and values. This can be adapted for various age groups.
- Google Slide Show and Tell:
- Create a template slide in Google Slides and have students duplicate it to make their own introduction slide with images and text about themselves.
- Digital Bingo:
- Create a digital bingo board using Google Slides, with squares containing facts about students. Players need to find classmates who match the descriptions.
- Avatar Greeting:
- Have students create a visual avatar representing themselves using digital tools. (Possible tool to use: Canva).
- Upload avatars to a shared Google Slideshow.
- Students view and discuss commonalities.
- Google Forms Quiz:
- Create a fun “get to know you” quiz using Google Forms.
- Include multiple choice and short answer questions.
- Share results to spark discussion.
These activities are great to gain invaluable insight on your students. These particular activities could give you insight to who they are as people and/or give you an idea of how they might fare in your classroom.
Are Icebreakers Even Important? Short Answer: Yes.
You may be asking yourself: “Why do I even need to do icebreakers? Are they important?” Your perspective right now may be that they are a waste of time. Admittedly, if you don’t have any intention behind why you are implementing them, then they may very well be. However, if you are proactive in why you are doing icebreakers in your classroom, then they are very important to your classroom.
Why might you implement icebreakers?
There are several reasons why icebreakers may be a good idea, but these are the most popular reasons:
- Build Community
- Set the Tone & Prepare Students for Group Work
- Introduce Information
Use Icebreakers to Build Community
Icebreakers are a great way to build community in the classroom. Depending on the type of activity you are implementing, they have the ability to develop camaraderie among students, build connections, and inspire friendship.
The question becomes: Why is building a community important? Well, it significantly contributes to the attitude students bring to the classroom and how much they participate. By building a community in your classroom, students are more comfortable around each other. Through this level of comfort, they feel more at ease in your classroom. In turn, they may feel more comfortable in sharing ideas and contributing to classroom activities because they care about what the others in the classroom think about them. There are other areas that community can help students (e.g., well-being, self-efficacy, etc.), but in terms of student engagement and participation, this is the most prominent reason you want to develop a solid classroom community.
Some activities listed above that could contribute to building a community are:
- Beach Ball Questions
- Speed Dating
- Superhero
- Digital Bingo
- Avatar Greeting
Set the Tone & Prepare Students for Group Work
The first few days of school are all about setting the tone for your classroom. Whatever tools you, energy you bring, and what you ask them to do really sets the tone for what they are to expect from the weeks to come in your classroom. Thus, it is essential that you are very proactive in your planning of the first few days of school.
A big part of the first few days of school are going through the syllabus, expectations, and procedures of your classroom. While this can be boring, you can get students active in this part of your classroom introductions. Check out the How to Make Your Intro to the Classroom Syllabus and Procedures Interactive and Engaging post (in it you can get a FREE syllabus scavenger hunt worksheet). The other part of your classroom introductions are getting to know students.
How you get to know students will significantly affect their perception of you and your classroom. The type of activity your implement will give students insight of what they should expect from your classroom. If your teaching style is having students work independently, then maybe you want to implement an activity that could be done more independently. Such as the Define Me Activity. But, if you know you will be having a lot of group work in your classroom or a lot of interactive activities, then facilitating a group and/or interactive might be exactly what you should implement for an icebreaker.
Some of the icebreakers listed above that are group and/or interactive include:
- Figure Me Out
- Speed Dating
- Snowball Fight
- Digital Bingo
Introduce Information
This perspective of an information icebreaker could be seen from your perspective as the teacher or the students perspective. In other words, what information do you want to know about the students in order to facilitate a successful classroom. Or, what information do you think students should know about you or the classroom in order for them to be successful.
Getting to know your students is essential to classroom success. There are two ways you should get to know your students:
- What kind of student are they? You need to know if your students are more visual, linguistic, or kinesthetic learners. You need to know if they generally like or do well in the content you are teaching. And so much more (but this is the basic stuff).
- Do students know that you know them? Building a good rapport with your students is essential to their success. This goes back to building a community in your classroom. If your students know that you genuinely care about them, they are more likely to do better in your classroom. So, make an effort to get to know your students.
Going back to who should know what (e.g., teachers should know their students and students should know their teachers/information of the classroom), there are a few ways you can establish that information among those individuals.
As stated above, teachers need to learn about their students. In many academic circles, this means establishing a learner profile. Where you get to know who your student is on a variety of levels. This could include learning about their family, what they already know about your particular content area and their current skill level, how they are motivated (i.e., intrinsic or extrinsic), how they learn, and even identifying differences between you and your students. Teachers can easily learn about their students by having them create their own profile or completing a self/pre-assessment. Some of the activities that are listed above that you could use for this are:
- Beach Ball Questions
- Speed Dating
- Digital “Me – The User Manual”
- Google Slide Show and Tell
- Google Forms Quiz
These activities are great for you to get to know your students, but what about the other way around? There are a couple ways to go about this. Either you can facilitate a “get to know you” through the syllabus scavenger hunt as mentioned in How to Make Your Intro to the Classroom Syllabus and Procedures Interactive and Engaging post, or you could provide an example of the above activities with your own information.
But, what if you don’t necessarily want students to get to know you but the classroom content instead? Well, you can do that too. You could establish that with the ideas found in the above linked article. Or, you can tweak some of the above activities to suit your classroom information expectations.
For example, you could form questions around the your classroom content for the Beach Ball Questions or Speed Dating. Or, you could even have statements posed in those situations and the questions that follow would be a student reflecting on that statement and how they fell about it. All of which are about your content!
Conclusion
Icebreakers are so important to your overall classroom success so don’t neglect them! By implementing an intention icebreaker, you are setting your classroom and the students up for success.
All you need to do is be aware of why you are implementing a particular icebreaker. If you can’t find the why, then perhaps you need to take a new approach to it.
With these ideas and list of questions all ready to go (check out the box below), you are all set for your first few days back to school!
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or want to brainstorm ideas! Contact me through the contact form, or you can reply to the email you receive with the Icebreaker Questions.
