Ice Breaker/Warm-up/New Best Friend Game

[philontour]

I use the house>egg>garage>elephant game as well with my after school class 2nd and 3rd grade middle school students. I use it at the start of each lesson and put them into teams of three (12 students). They have a minute (I put 'online stopwatch' full screen on the tv) to write as many words as possible. I make the losers clean the board and re-arrange the chairs at the end of the lesson. This makes them competitive and drives them to thing of bigger words. Each letter = 1 point (e.g. house = 5 points), the team with the most points after a minute wins. I reward the winning team with a small piece of candy.

After a few lessons they begin to use great words (responsibility, translucent, educating etc.). They learn new words of each other and get's the brain thinking at the start of the lesson.

[windywillow20]

My students like the whisper game. I use it as a review game. Made two teams with the students standing in lines. Tell the two students at the front, the phrase or word and have them whisper it to the next person and so on. The last students in line race to the front of the room and either write or find the picture  and hold it up. Then the team will have to say it together, which ever team does it first is the winner. Rotate the students, so new students are the runners.

[Redvers]

I am always looking for these kind of things and this fits perfectly with what I am doing

[btnewberg]

Nice way to possibly reveal some connections between students they had overlooked.  I'll try it.

[Sunnystreet]

Good idea. I'm going to use this tomorrow.

[wtoddm]

Hi (mostly) new waygooks!! It's great to see you all sharing ideas... and trying to get your 5 posts in, hehehe. Never the less, I arrived mid-term last year, and I wasn't sure what quite to do... Some classes I've never taught, so I'm doing my get-to-know-me stuff whereas others had me last year, and I need not do such a self-centered lesson. These are a lot of fun and will help all of my classes throughout the year. The "elephant word game" (e.g. greg-gosh-horse-exerpt-tomato-organge) is a great warm up for any class, especially when you get them out of their seats!

Break a leg tomorrow (today) guys!

[noky]

I ran the New Best Friend icebreaker. It went well. Though, I ran it with my high schoolers. They had fun the first round and spent the next two setting people up (didn't tell them what the result would be on the first round). Nice way to get people loose if you don't mind the kids potentially making fun of each other.

[mebjones83]

wow! My students really enjoyed this game, and they are picky! It takes very little prep and all are involved! genius~

[pearlie.l]

Thank you for sharing this idea. I would like to use it for my after school classes too since the students may not know each other very well in the first 1 or 2 classes.

[zufelt.v]

great idea for an icebreaker...i'm going to have the students standing with their eyes closed so that they can't see what their friends are all thinking...you could also change the activity up a bit and have the students ask the questions or "would you rather ____ or ____" etc. thanks

[wtoddm]

great idea for an icebreaker...i'm going to have the students standing with their eyes closed so that they can't see what their friends are all thinking...you could also change the activity up a bit and have the students ask the questions or "would you rather ____ or ____" etc. thanks

I wouldn't deny the students the ability to see what their current teammate is writing. My students are very mixed and while they loved this, it was great to see that some students would help the poor spellers or students that couldn't think of a word. I highly recommend letting them help one another.
Also, be sure to tell them that writing a word on their hand and rewriting it on the board is CHEATING!
Also, I add the points as they write by stealing a tiny space on the board in the corner to save time and face (math, ugh) at the end of the team's turn.

[hang]

http://www.englishclub.com/english-clubs/english-club-warm-up.htm
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/icebreak.html

[Slippers02]

I have my first class on Monday - thanks for the idea! Going to give it a go!