Icebreakers 2

On the first day of class, when you have introduced yourself and explained the guidelines for your classroom and you think that all of your students have arrived, hand out four or five small pieces of paper to each student. Ask them to write a different aspect of their lives on each piece of paper (e.g. "I have a dog named 'Biffie'.") You should walk about correcting mistakes at random until they are all finished and have deposited their papers into a hat, folded every which way, it doesn't matter how. Then each student draws the same number of papers as he or she put in, taking care not to draw their own. Upon completion of the draw, each student is required to find the writer of the papers in their possession. However, there is a catch. The students should do this in a polite fashion, starting with introductions, small talk and thus working around to learning the information they are seeking. Shouting out "Who has a dog named 'Biffie'?" does not fly.

By the end of this exercise, the class members should have met just about everybody. You can participate, too, but students may tend to avoid you as this is their first day and they are a bit wary as of yet. That's up to you.

Finally, in the ten minutes at the end of class, you should, one by one, call out each student's name and then hear from the four or five different people who chose their secrets.

This is a dynamite exercise, lots of fun and low pressure, and it will make everyone so much more comfortable with each other. And I thought it up all by my lonesome--though I'm sure it isn't original with me.

THIS IDEA IS NOT MINE.

2- This is a simple first-day icebreaker that I've found works really well with both small and large classes: The students think of three sentences, two are facts and one is a lie. One by one, students introduce themselves and say their three sentences. The rest of the class has to guess which one is a lie. It's best for the teacher to go first, not only to provide an example, but also to let the students know that the teacher is interested in interacting with them.

Name: Nicole Gardner

I've read many Ice Breakers at this site, most of which are quite good, but I've yet to find one that works better than this one.

Start the first class by telling the students your name only. No other information about the teacher should be shared. Then ask them to write down 5 questions they would like to ask you, the teacher, about whatever they may be interested in knowing about you.

As they are doing this, write down each student's name on the board. Once they've written down their questions, ask one student to come to the front of the class and explain that this student will now play the role of you, the teacher, and will answer 5 of the students' questions, to the best of their guessing abilities. It is important to divulge the way the ice breaker works only after the students have finished writing their questions so as not to have any impact on the type of questions they will write down.Give a "point" to the student role-playing the teacher for each correct answer (or "close enough" answer) and an 'x' for an incorrect one.

Each student takes turns guessing the answers to the students' questions until each student has answered 5 questions. Encourage the students to re-ask questions which were previously answered incorrectly to gain more information about you, the teacher. Once every student has had a chance to role-play the role of the teacher, volunteer or answer the questions about you which were left answered incorrectly.

At the end of this activity, the students have accomplished many things. Firstly, they have learned a lot of info about you. Secondly, they have asked a multitude of different questions, learning new question-expressions from each other as they go along. Thirdly, they have been both asking AND answering questions, the key to any conversation class. Fourthly, it makes them more comfortable, since they aren't saying anything about themselves, which some students may be reluctant to do during the first class. Also, they are learning each other's names.

This is also beneficial to the teacher, as it puts the students at ease and makes them feel better about talking about themselves in later classes. Secondly, the students get used to doing most of the talking, some of which aren't used to this type of class dynamics.

This can also set up another activity where the students learn aout each other.

Every time I've used this activity, the students have enjoyed it very much, laughing and sometimes providing funny answers. One time, one student's question was "how old are you", to which the student role-playing answered "47". I'm actually 28 yrs old. The students laughed, and I pretended to be surprised and angry (for a fleeting moment of course - all in good fun), before putting a HUGE 'x' on the board next to her name.

Enjoy, I always do!

Paul Surette

Students are always curious about their teachers and each other, so this can be played in pairs or between class and the teacher. It is a good icebreaker both for children and adults and helps students to speak.

The T (teacher) writes some words related with himself/herself on the board (age, shoe size, best friend name, school name, etc) and the students try to find what they are by asking yes/no questions. The student(s) who finds it can ask more detailed questions about that item in order to talk and get more information or can get a small candy as a reward. This can be done in various ways as the ss can question the teacher as a whole class or they can work in pairs, and after learning some about each other they can introduce/tell about their pairs to the whole class. An example is :
27 6
Burcak Kemal
7 Ankara

S: Is 27 your door number?
T: No
S2: Is 27 your age?
T: Yes
S2: When is your birthday?...


Burcu Tunca
Ankara, Turkey