Icebreakers

[Harry Palmer]

what do you do in order to create a good group dynamic and positive classroom environment when taking on a new group of students?

i have to admit that for me the old ones are the best ones & i have found the 'find someone who' icebreaker to be great fun for both myself & the students alike on many occasions. another benefit is that it can be configured easily, depending upon the age & knowledge of the audience.

i merely create a sheet of squares, 9 or 12 in some cases. in each square place a suitable piccie. & under it write a question e.g.

find someone who has a pet...

find someone who can sing..

find someone who has talked to their parents about puberty...

you get the general idea... so give them an appropriate amount of time to go round the class collecting answers & have a wrap-up session to end...

[nomade]

Slight twist on the above is to make the sheet of paper into a bingo grid. (9, 16, 25 squares depending how long you want the activity to go on for)

Students fill in the squares themselves ... anywhere they want. The winner is the first one to get a complete horizontal/vertical/diagonal line of answers.

The advantage of doing it this way is that you have a "winner" and don't have the problem of some people finishing before the others and getting bored.

______________________________________

Another good ice-breaker for slightly more advanced (smallish) classes is to get students to make five statements about themselves. The statements can be true or false. The others have to decide whether the statements are true or not by asking questions etc.

Students love talking about themselves and I've had some really unusual "true" statements over the years. Last year one 19 year old guy in jeans said he had a false leg. The others asked him to walk about and jump up and down... which he did, so they didn't believe him. Turned out to be true though, and we got a very memorable conversation lesson in which he described how he had lost his leg in a freak car accident and spent the last year in re-education.

[Ijustwannateach]

My all time favorite- 3 truths, 1 lie. Good for almost any level of learner- put 3 truths on the board and 1 lie (don't tell the students which one is the lie), like:

1. I can't play the piano.

2. My brother lives in Florida.

3. I like fried alligator.

4. I didn't shave this morning.

Elicit the hard words or use pictures to help (like with alligator, shave, and Florida).

The goal is to trick your listeners into guessing the truth as the lie. Ask each student to vote one time and tally the marks. Then have the students write 4 simple sentences (point out different basic verbs they can use, and remind them that negative sentences or 3rd person sentences are ok). Then each student must go around the class READING OUT (not showing) their sentences to the others, who must then choose a lie.

At the end, the one with the most marks next to true statements is the winner! (and everyone should tell which one is their lie- mine above is about not shaving).

Even if the students are high level and know each other well, this can be a challenging game because they must think of things the other students don't know about them to succeed. If extra difficulty is required, change it around to 3 lies and 1 truth!

"Steven"

[Harry Palmer]

1. I can't play the piano.

2. My brother lives in Florida.

3. I like fried alligator.

4. I didn't shave this morning.

suggested modifications for teaching in the los... sorry to be so pedantic but we must adhere to best practice...

1. I can't play the piano.

2. My brother lives in Pattaya.

3. I like fried crocodile.

4. I didn't shave this morning.

observation...

surely if i was a lady teacher, option 4 would probably be an obvious lie... unless she were elderly

nice try though ijwt... we'll make a teacher out of you yet!

[rollo tomasi]

Hmmm... one lie eh?

1 - I fall down drunk pretty soon after I stop teaching you morons

2 - Black coffee is the only reason I still have a job

3 - It's me that smells, not that crate of month old beer empties

4 - Paying for sex is the only way I can relieve the pain of abject lonliness that consumes me

[bkk barney]

^^^must be marko in bkk

[bkk barney]

number 3 is the partial lie..

[Ijustwannateach]

Harry, the point is to teach them NEW things, right? Perhaps you're a professor of Thaiglish?

"Steven"

[Harry Palmer]

Harry, the point is to teach them NEW things, right?  Perhaps you're a professor of Thaiglish? 

"Steven"

i don't consider that an ice-breaker session has to be about leaning new things, it's about getting the group to interact, break down a few barriers, get to know each other... my chums up at cambridge are in agreement with me to...