What Is An Icebreaker?

What Is An Icebreaker?

 a game or activity that is used

to introduce people to each other so
that they feel more relaxed together:
WHY Ice Breakers?
WHY Ice Breakers?
– You get to know your students
– The students get to know each other
– To wake them up!
– To review points taught the day before
– To relax the students before a quiz or
test
My world

doctor
green
Negureni
What’s My Name:
This is a really simple, fun way to learn
people’s names. The way it works is,
each person says their name out loud
with an adjective that begins with the
same letter as the first letter of the name.
Ideally, you call the person by that name
for the rest of the day. Joyful Jacob?
Reverse Acronyms
 The task is to use the name to begin a
word in an English sentence.

 Lilia Let’s impress Leo in advance.

Pass the eraser. When the music
stops – whoever has the eraser must
finish the sentence….
SPEAK UP AND SPEAK CLEARLY!
TP SURPRISE
 The teacher welcomes students at the door
while holding a roll of toilet paper.
 He instructs students to take as many sheets as
they need refusing to explain the purpose. Once
class begins, students are instructed to write one
interesting thing about themselves on each
sheet. When students are finished, they
introduce themselves by reading their TP.
 Variation: Students write one thing they hope or
expect to learn in the course this year on each
sheet.
10 things in common
 Students’ assignment is to find ten things
that they have in common – pair work or
group work. ( no body parts (we all have
legs; we all have arms) and no clothing
(we all wear shoes, we all wear pants).
Five of anything
The assignment is to share with the members of
the group five favorite:
 5 favorite novels
 5 worst movies that they've ever seen
 5 favorite flowers
 5 favorite vegetables
 5 favorite dinners
 5 foods they'd prefer not to eat again
 5 cities they'd most like to visit
 5 countries they plan to see
 5 favorite TV shows of all time
 5 most disliked tasks to do around the house
What’s Different?
 Students all pair up and get 30 seconds to
memorize everything about their partner’s
appearance. When the time is called, they
turn away from each other and change
something (i.e. take off a headband or
button another button). Which pair can
identify each other’s changes the fastest?
Alphabet soup
 Students have to search for objects that
they have on them and range them from A
to Z. The first to get all 26 letters
represented wins.
Start at the very beginning.
 The task is to write a sentence in which the first
word begins with A, the second with B …
 A baby cries desperately,
expecting familiar, gentle hugs
in joyful, kind, lovely manner -
natural of parents,
quietly realizing something
tremendously unsettling valuable
watched, xraying young zombies.
Pushing pencils, twisting tongues

 The task is to write a sentence in which all

the words begin with the same letter.

Connie Can't Cure Cancer Children.

Longer than always
 The task is to write a sentences that begin
with a one letter word, followed by a two
letter word …
I do for your house design
because absolute
amusement encourages.
What is a Warm-up Activity?
 A warm-up activity is a quick activity
(usually 5 minutes) used at the beginning
of a lesson (a warmer), in the middle to
boost energy (a filler), and/or at the end
(an ender).
Why should teachers use warm up
activities?
 is a great way to introduce a topic
 motivates Ss to arrive on time
 gets Ss’ attention
 helps Ss learn English without knowing it
 creates an interest in learning
 encourages collaborative learning
(pair/team/groups)
 develops creativity
 Warm-up activities are used by teachers
as good teaching and learning tools.
 Teachers are busy people so warmers
should require little preparation.
 Get your students involved! They can
plan and deliver the warm-up activities.
 Find a way to organize your warm-ups.
 Share warm-ups with other teachers to
increase the number of warmers that you
know.
 What am I feeling? Miming
 Each student takes a turn acting out an emotion, other
students try to guess what feeling the student is acting
out. Who guesses acts out the next emotion.
Nice and nasty
 Have students divide a sheet of paper into
two columns, one they label ‘nice’, the
other they label ‘nasty’. Tell them you’re
going to read out a list of words, each of
which they have to write in the column that
expresses how they feel about it.
Ring-ding-dong
 Board a simple word such as ‘meet’ and
give the students a minute or two to come
up with as many new words as they can
from that word by changing one letter at a
time. Meet – meat – seat – sent – went –
bent – bend – bind etc
Stop the bus
 Draw on the board a table.
 Students simply have to think of one item to go
in each category beginning with the set letter.
 The first to finish shouts “Stop the Bus!” .

Animals Colours Food Clothes Countries Sports

P
Sentence expansion
 John bought jumpers.
Tongue twisters:
 These are great challenges and also good
for pronunciation and memory.

I scream, you
scream, we all
scream for
icecream!
 Riddles
 I am full of holes; I can hold water. What am I?
 What are two things people never eat before
breakfast?
 What has two hands and a face, but no arms
and legs?
 What has 4 legs and only 1 foot?
 What gets wet when drying?
 What is it the more you take away the larger it
becomes?
 What can't be used until it's broken?
 What has many keys but can't open any doors?
STICKY NOTES
 This quick time filler helps students build
their vocabulary and spelling skills.
Write compound words in advance on
sticky notes. (For example, write “base” on
one note and “ball” on the other.) Place
one sticky note on each student’s desk.
Then encourage them to go around the
classroom and find the classmate that
makes the compound word.
Teacher says…
 Students listen and do all the commands
that start with – “Teacher says…” If they do
a command that doesn’t start with –
“Teacher says…” then they are out of the
activity.
I spy
 Teacher says "I spy with my little eyes
something that begins with B". Students
try to guess the object (e.g. "book").
Colours are a good alternative for younger
students ("I spy with my little eyes
something that is red").
Make the longest words

 Write a topical target word vertically down the board, for

example, Autumn. In twos or threes, students attempt to
come up with the longest word that begins with each
letter. Give teams a point per word and a bonus point for
the longest.
 Apple
Uncle
Terrified
Ugly
Mother
Nest
Name ten
 Have students think of 10 items that fit
particular criteria.
For example:
 Jobs where you have to wear a uniform
 Sports that are played with a ball
 Foods that contain eggs
 Animals that lay eggs
 Three letter parts of the body
Creativity (Finish the picture)
 Students are given an image. They are then
given one or two minutes to complete the picture
and give it a title. After they have completed the
task each pupil has to explain what they have
drawn and the title.
 This is a simple activity that is sure to get your
pupils thinking creatively.
Soft balls
 It’s an activity to review topics. Pupils make a
big circle. The teacher throws the ball saying a
topic; the student who catches the ball has to
say a word that belongs to this topic and throw
the ball again.
Feely-bag
 Students put a hand in and try to identify
the objects in the bag full of objects before
taking them out.
 E.g. - Think of 3 adjectives to describe it.
- Ask a question about it.
- Describe it in only 1 sentence
Change places
 Getting students to express what they think
about something:
- Change places if you prefer school dinners to
MacDonald’s.
- Change places if you think it is always wrong to
tell a lie
- If you think girls are better readers
- If you prefer English to French
Lined up (verbal)
 Ask the students to line up in different
orders. (birthdays, alphabetical order -
names)
Lined up (non-verbal)
 Ask the students to line up in different
orders but they are not allowed to talk.
(age, height, shades of the shirts…)
Paper Airplane Facts

 Two truths and a lie

Find someone who…
 The students have to ask each other
questions to find someone who "likes fishing" or
"is married". When they find someone they must
write their name on the game sheet. They
should find a different person for each
statement.
I’m going on a picnic and I’m
taking a …
 This is a guess the rule type game. Think of a rule which
governs which items can be taken on a picnic, for
example, it must be six letters long, or it must start with a
vowel. In this example, the rule is that the word must be
an uncountable noun.
 Teacher: I’m going on a picnic and I’m taking milk.
Student A: I’m going on a picnic and I’m taking eggs.
Teacher: No, you can’t take eggs.
Student B: Can I take orange juice?
Teacher: Yes, you can take orange juice.
Rose, love, mother, thanks, family, celebrate,
hug, chocolate, daughter, holiday, kiss, meal,
card, cake, care, gift, wish, sing, red, father, rose
Colourful instructions
Word shake/ Word squares
 An activity that is full of fun and challenge.
The task is to create as many words as
possible in a given number of time

 How many smaller words can you make

from the letters above?
 Last letter
 The last letter of the word must be the first
letter of the next word.
 It can be also played by throwing an
object.
Chinese whispers
 Put the students into a circle. Whisper a
simple sentence or a unit word into the
first student’s ear. He or she must say the
exact same sentence to the next
student….
Spot the differences.
Shape poems
 Through the peephole
 The teacher chooses a picture and does
not let children see it. The teacher places
five sheets of paper with holes of different
sizes over the picture. Children have to
guess which picture is only by looking at a
small section. They have to ask “Is it….?”
and the teacher answers:” No, it is not” or
“Yes, it is!”.
Mixed-up sentences
 Write sentences on the board but mix up
the word order, then challenge students to
reconstruct the original sentence.
 Write sentences on the board and
scramble the letters of each word.
 QUESTIONS?

ICEBREAKERS 101 59
“Grammar Cube”
 Dr. Peter Stepichev has created an
incredible tool….
 Puzzle hunt is a puzzle activity where
teams compete to solve a puzzle.
 Rhyming Odd One Out
Memory
 The first player chooses a
card and carefully turns it
over. The player then
selects another card and  https://play.google.com/st
turns it over. If the two ore/apps/details?id=com.
cards are a matching pair preschoolKidsMemoryGa
they take the two cards. meFree
The player is awarded
another turn for making a
match and goes again.If
the cards are not a match
they are turned back over
and it is now the next
players turn.
Board game
 Board game is ideal for activities that you
do not want to take too long. It is quite a
flexible game whose rules can be changed
to extend the game or add more language.
In this game, you need dice and chips.
Players roll the dice and advance
according to the number that shows up.
 http://eslgamesworld.com/members/game
s/printables/index.html
Word associations
 Each student, in turn, says a word he or she associates
with the word given by the preceding learner. This
should be done as a fast game. The teacher may
interrupt and ask why a word was chosen.
1: Water
2: Tap
3: Kitchen
4: Grandma.
- Why did you say ‘grandma’?
4: Because I thought of my grandma’s kitchen.
5: Wolf.
- Why did you say ‘wolf’?
5: Because of the story of Little Red Riding Hood.
 Word Harvest
 Students have to rush and “pick” a word in their
category and drop it in their basket
A long and growing list
 In this game, a given sentence pattern – I
went shopping and I bought … – must be
completed by adding any words that make
sense, each player adding one word to the list
when it is their turn. Each player must repeat
whatever has been said by the previous player
before making an addition to the list.