Essay

10 Ice Breakers for High School Students

As a new student one can feel intimidated about the school and its surroundings, even when teens are not navigating new corridors they do want to socialize and make friends out of their comfort circle. This does not happen, however, peer pressure, group dynamics, and introverted nature can become an impediment to building mutual admiration. So it’s important to have icebreaker introductory sessions with teen students to build confidence and create new relationships in the classroom.

Benefits of Ice Breakers

Participation

Active participation in extracurricular activities is rarely seen among high school students because most of them have varied interests. Some are nerds, some students like the outdoors, and some like spending time at the library. Gathering all these brilliant minds into a single space is difficult most of the time. By hosting an icebreaker session, teachers can bring all these students together and learn about each other.

Trust

Teamwork and leadership are based on trust, and students are expected to rely on one another during the ice breaker session. They must place their faith in complete strangers, the popular children in class will be paired with the less popular crowd. Hence, to forge new bonds teachers will introduce them to tasks that will test their knowledge and trust skills. It will also mean how they deal with issues like bullying, racism, and peer pressure. This creates student-to-student relationships and encourages a productive learning environment.

Brain Storming

It is not always fun and games some of the ice breaker sessions can teach the students to find solutions to problems that are commonly faced during their teens. It is the age of being a rebel, students sometimes are victims of depression and face societal pressure. These can be discussed with ease during introductory sessions, they can find classmates who share the same interests. For example, the math solving group will enjoy getting acquainted with statistics students. Or music students will like being paired with their counterparts who love to sing, an interesting way to hone hidden talents.

Allowing the Individual Personality to Shine

Most often students who are introverted do not get the chance to mingle with extroverted ones. They find it difficult to express themselves, with ice breaker sessions these students find it easy to connect with others. Depending on the activity when shy students are paired with outgoing ones they get motivated to perform well in the given task. They warm up to normal conversations without having the fear of being judged by their fellow classmates.

The below ice breakers for high school students build confidence among students and encourage a productive team-building spirit. Before any of the ice breaker sessions, the students are not well known to each other, but after learning interesting facts about their fellow classmates they can find friends who have similar backgrounds and extracurricular interests. It allows adolescents to discover new things about themselves and about each other.

These given fun ice breakers can be implemented while on a class tour or introduction session.

Candy Confessions

It is all about making new friends with chocolates, when we talk about candid confessions it means nothing harmful. Each student can take a handful of colorful candy, toffee, or skittles. Then, with each color, they can introduce something exciting about themselves. For e.g. red for naming their favorite food, blue for naming their favorite place, etc. This fun way will not only make them feel comfortable but also remove the first time awkwardness for shy students

Blindfolded Self – Portrait

This can be done with a large group of students and have fun with paints while learning something cool about each other. First, they will introduce something funny about their personalities in front of the group, and then after being blindfolded the students will attempt to draw themselves on an empty canvas. Later, they will strip off their blindfolds and match the portraits. The ones who have painted themselves almost to the point will win.

Tattoo Parlour

An art exhibit technique that can be used as an entertaining activity to enable students to break the ice during the new session. Pay them a blank piece of paper and allow the students to draw something that describes their personality or any of their favorite things in the universe. Then, these colored paintings can be glued on a board so that they find a match. Thus, they may find other friends with similar interests or personality traits. If painting is not something they are looking for then a collage of magazine cutouts is also fun. 

What’s Different?

Differences can make a good match! Students must find a partner to who they have not introduced themselves. In 30 seconds, they must memorize their attire and style. Then face away from each other by adding or subtracting anything from their appearance. E.g. put on a tie, wear a headband, etc. Then they can turn back to face each other and point out what is different? Or what has changed in the other student’s appearance?

Build a Boat

Teamwork and leadership are some of the attributes that must be cultivated in high school students. This fun event will allow students to explore their potential in teamwork and camaraderie. Divide the class into small groups of five students, and then give each of the group drinking straws and duct tape. Instruct the students to construct a boat out of the given craft items. Fill a sink with water or place a tub of water to test the boats in the class, whichever group creates the perfect boat made out of straws wins.

Two Truths and A Lie

Going on the lines of the popular game truth and dare, but with a twist. Each student has to come up with two truths about themselves and then insert a line that is a lie. They can either come to the blackboard of the class and write it down or record it on a piece of paper. The other students will then have to guess what is wrong with the sentences provided by their classmates. A creative way to introduce themselves could also mean composing a few lines of poetry about themselves and turning it into a class poetry contest.

Student-to-Student Interviews

The teacher can choose a leader in the class and they will, in turn, assign the rest of the students a piece of paper. Questions that are unique, interesting, and revealing can be rated by every student in the classroom. Students can then vote for their favorite questions and the leader can mix and match the questions while asking each class member. After the individual interview with each student, the class can then collectively write their observations about each other or vote for the favorite answers given during the interview.

Treasure Hunt

Divide the class into separate teams and have them fight for the treasure. This game can be played in an open space with the game price hidden from view or within the school boundaries. Students can follow instructions using clues that are left at specific places that lead to the winning square. Players that use unique strategies and team-building win the game. Teachers may use misleading cues for students to get off the track while they play the game. This means that they will need to help each other to survive, encouraging community interaction and survival.

Bombing the City

Students from two classes may be split into groups and invited to mark their territories with different city names. Then in a bowl, the names of those cities will be put on a piece of paper, whatever the name of the city is called by the teacher this place is bombarded. The student who stands in this city will be out of the game, on the signal of the music, they can change the cities as they desire. The game will continue until there is only one student standing on every city name.

Hidden Identity

The teacher can ask students to get various celebrities, famous personalities, and admirable public figure cutouts from magazines or newspapers. These cutouts will then be shuffled and pinned at the back of each student. They must then go around the classroom and each student can ask a question to guess the famous figure stuck on their back. For example, is the person a singer or an actor? Are they tall? The student who correctly guesses all the answers will win the game.

Conclusion

These icebreakers are indeed fun when it comes to knowing fellow students at the time of a get-together or class introduction session. All of the above entertaining games will allow students to match up with someone they have never talked to and become lifelong friends. Our introductory icebreaker series help adolescents feel comfortable working and socializing with new knowledge.

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