Ice Breakers
Here are some starters, checks on learning, and plenary ideas for you to borrow and adapt with your students.
One Word Recap
What: Share how you're getting on with one word. Can be altered to use one colour, picture, song.
Use: Mentimeter, bubbl.us
Pictionary
What: Show off your artistic talent and get other people to guess
Use: Jamboard, Draw Something, Skribbl.io, AutoDraw
Avatar Who's Who?
What: Students to create an avatar and others to guess who is who from asking questions.
Use: Google Slides. Bitmoji, Padlet
Badly Describe A...
What: Give someone a tv show, song, film and get them to badly describe it. Everyone has to guess.
Use: Google Meet
@indigo_swan
What: Complete the bingo. First person to get a row/ 2 rows/ the complete list wins.
Use: Click the title text to be redirected to the bingo doc.
What Are You Up To?
What: See how you're students are getting on by asking them a simple question. Also ask "what do you want to do today".
Use: Mentimeter, PollEverywhere, Jamboard, Padlet
Plan for the Week
What: Get students to plan their week including assignments and wellbeing tasks.
Use: Jamboard, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Calendar
Selfie Treasure Hunt
What: Students hide a selfie of themselves and the first person to locate all selfies win
Use: To track locations: Google Sheets, Docs, Keep
Create a Display
What: Everyone creates a display of what they're reading/writing/listening to.
Use: Jamboard, Google Slides, Padlet
Bingo!
What: Have students come up with one fact about themselves. Collate into a bingo sheet and see if anyone can get a row. Use a pre-existing bingo sheet.
Use: Slides
Describe the Sound
What: With music playing as students enter the classroom, ask the students to listen to the sounds: where are we? what's happening? what one word would you use to describe the sounds?
Use: YouTube
What's the Concept?
What: With instruments (and potential instruments, e.g. plastic cups / rubber bands) on tables, give students the challenge to use the instruments using no more than 7 sounds, 7 rhymes and 7 syllables per line to explain the concept of the topic.
Code-Breaker
What: Create a code-breaker question for students to answer, such as one featured here that students have to solve as they enter the classroom. They collect the sheet as they enter the classroom to then solve as they sit down at the start of the lesson.
Thought Bombs
What: Create thought bombs with lesson starters on that form a quest or activity linked to the lesson. Students who have the bombs have to combine the words contained within to form the sentence that is the learning outcome.
Keep the Message
What: Can you double / triple / halve the words in this sentence and still have the same message? Try asking students to remove every third word from the sentence and describe how its removal changes the meaning and why the word in the sentence was important in the first place. Ask; if you had one eighth of the words would your message be more concentrated and powerful or weaker due to lack of size?
Peg it on the Washing Line
What: Put up a washing line with key words from the previous lesson attached to it. Each student has to take down a key word attached to that washing line as they come in the classroom with a minute to prepare a response to that key word linked in from the previous lesson’s activities. This could also be saved exit tickets, pegged to the washing line from the previous lesson.
What: Create a rebus by adding emojis to your story in Google Docs.
Use: Docs
What: Use Google Sheets to create a fun word game you can play with a friend! Along the way, learn how to use formulas and functions.
Use: Sheets
What: Learn how to plan for and create a comic strip about a story or series of events.
What: Create a crossword puzzle by adding words and clues and formatting a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.
Use: Sheets
What: Recognize the words and actions of classmates by creating a digital badge for a scrapbook.
