ICE BREAKER ACTIVITIES

Get comfortable with the technology and get to know one another.

Hello wonderful educators!

I think you'll enjoy this round up of virtual classroom icebreakers. Icebreakers are a great way to get to know your students and to get everyone comfortable with using the various tech tools

“A smile is a powerful weapon; you can even break ice with it.” ~unknown

Flipgrid Introduction

Flipgrid is a student-friendly video recording platform that can be set up with password protection. Students can record videos via chromebook, laptop, or mobile app. It's easy to use. In fact, last year I had a 1st grade student record daily reading videos for me. Students don't need to email the video, it stays out in the grid, and other students can see and interact with the videos.(be mindful of this and clearly communicate acceptable behavior - also turn on the moderate feature so you can review videos before they're posted live.)

This icebreaker can be a free form introduce yourself video or a structured introduction. Last year in my 9th grade ELA class I had students introduce themselves and then share two truths about themselves and one lie. The other students in the class had to record a video guessing which was the lie. www.flipgrid.com

Photo Collage

A photo collage is a fun way for students to introduce themselves and their interests to classmates. They can create collages using a chromebook, laptop or mobile device. Adobe Spark is a free and trustworthy tool students can use to create a collage.

These collages can be free form with little instruction or can include specific parameters. For example, they can include direct photos of the students or you can ban photos of the students themselves and ask them to build a collage, showing their interests, with stock photos from Unsplash.

Would You Rather

Ask students some Would You Rather questions and let them answer. Then ask them to post a would you rather question and instruct all other students to answer all the questions. You can use the Zoom chat for posts or have them share their answers and questions verbally during the Zoom meeting.

Examples:

Would you rather be a deep sea diver or an astronaut?

Would you rather be able to hear any conversation or take back anything you say?

Would you rather be invisible or be able to read minds?

Would you rather be the most popular or the smartest person you know?

Would you rather be the sand castle or the wave?

Tell it in a Tweet

In this icebreaker students can share a tweet style (max 140 characters) communication about themselves via the Zoom chat. It's tricky to stay within that character limit so they'll have to be concise!

Three Words This icebreaker activity can be done using the Zoom whiteboard. Have one student provide three words about their summer and then go to the next student who adds three more words (they need to continue the sentence). Keep going until everyone has contributed and read the story. For older students increase the number of words to six.

However you decide to kick your online class off be sure to have fun!