Icebreakers: What’s Your Favorite?
Do you feel stressed at your first lesson at the beginning of the academic year? Do you worry about how to introduce yourself and to create a friendly environment? Most of us have experienced this. When we enter the classroom, we see a quiet class with a lot of nervous students looking at us. As they don’t know anybody, they expect you to do something to break this icy environment. At this point, we need some icebreaker activities.
Photo Credit: Pavan Bhat
Benefits of ice-breaker activities
You can use these icebreakers when you want to introduce a new subject in your class as well. They will help your students feel comfortable talking with other students.
Points to consider in choosing activities
Choosing an important icebreaker activity is also very important as they might find it childish and may not want to attend the lesson. So you can adapt the activity according to your students’ area of interests. Feel free to follow these tips to make a good start in your lesson.
Photo Credit: Rust&Rosy Reading
Some ideas and resources
My favourite icebreaker is “Name chain” : We don’t need any materials for this activity. All we need to do is to ask our students to come up with one personality adjective starting with the first letter of their first name. E.g. : Sinem and Sociable. Here how it starts: After each student finds an adjective for oneself, the one who is sitting in the corner starts to say the adjective and his/ her name, then the student sitting next to him/her repeats it before telling his/ her adjective and name.
For example the first student’s name is Sinem. So she says: “Sociable Sinem”. The next student says : “Sociable Sinem and Creative Kevser”. And the third student says : “Sociable Sinem, Creative Kevser and Intelligent Ibrahim”. It goes on like that until all the students complete this chain. Then the last student starts from scratch.
It is an entartaining activity because all students try to be alert as they need to remember their classmates’ adjective and name. Whenever I applied to this icebreaker, I saw that each student found it very enjoyable as they were all smiling and even laughing at themselves 🙂
Click on these links to find lots of activities:
- http://adulted.about.com/od/icebreakers/tp/toptenicebreakers.htm
- http://icebreakers.me/tag/adults/
- http://humanresources.about.com/od/icebreakers/a/my-10-best-ice-breakers.htm
- http://insight.typepad.co.uk/40_icebreakers_for_small_groups.pdf
What are your favorite ice-breaker activities?
It would be great to hear from you. Please share your ideas and links leading to on-line resources with us.
Sinem Erdag for ScOLa CPD
Very practical ice-breaker indeed- asking for an adjective that shares the initial of their first name sounds both entertaining and widely applicable for various levels. Thank you for the idea.
Another similar activity I’ve been using as an ice-breaker is this: you ask students to write down one true but interesting sentence about themselves, on a piece of small paper. This interesting sentence can be about anything, from hobbies (I enjoy snowboarding and bungee-jumping), to interests, abilities (I can cook paella very well), to facts about themselves or their families (I’ve lived in 6 different countries. I have 78 cousins, etc…) Then they each read their sentences aloud, once, in turn. All class listens as their classmates read their sentences. Then all sentences are folded into small pieces and collected in a box/glass/etc. Then each student comes up and draws one sentence from the box and reads it aloud. The objective is to be able to name the person who had written that sentence. One reminder: the students need to be informed clearly before the activity, to listen to others’ sentences carefully- so that they can recall their names later.