The Unteachables Podcast

#74: The start of school ice breaker activities that need to get in the bin, and what to do instead to build a positive, thriving, class community (no matter what time it is!)

• Claire English • Season 5 • Episode 74

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How can you set the tone for an amazing school year without resorting to icebreakers that have your students eyes rolling?

In this episode, you will learn how to foster genuine connections, and create a positive classroom environment that students are eager to be part of, any day of the school year. Listen in as I explore why typical icebreakers often miss the mark and reveal criteria for activities that spark natural, student-led discussions.

This episode is packed with insights on creating a classroom culture where students feel safe and excited from day one. So whether you're gearing up for a new year or need a mid-year reset, tune in for tips on building a supportive, engaging classroom community.

Want to grab the icebreakers mentioned in the episode?

Find them in The Behaviour Club, or download them separately here on TPT!

Have a question, comment, or just want to say hello? Drop us a text!

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Speaker 1:

If the purpose is to get to know each other authentically, we're not going to get that anyway at the start of the school year through a few icebreakers, because they're not going to feel safe enough to answer the questions that you're posing to them and to share something genuine about themselves. Oh hi, teachers, welcome to Unteachables podcast. Congratulations. You have just stumbled across the best free professional development and support you could ask for. I'm Claire English, a passionate secondary teacher, author, teacher mentor and generally just a big behavior nerd, and I created the Unteachables podcast to demystify and simplify classroom management. I want this podcast to be the tangible support, community validation, mentorship, all those pretty important things that we need as teachers to be able to walk into our classrooms feeling empowered and, dare I say it, happy and thrive, especially in the face of these really tough behaviours. So ready for some no-nonsense, judgment-free and realistic classroom management support. I've got your teacher friend, let's do this. Hello, wonderful teachers, welcome back to another episode of the Unteachables podcast. If you are listening for the first time, welcome. It's so nice to have you here with us and I have noticed a big spike in the lead up to the new school year, so I wanted to make sure I was doing some things around that. Actually, a lot of the things I'm doing here in the Unteachables world has a lot to do with starting the year strong. I know that some of you aren't starting the year at the moment. I know that for my fellow Aussies and Kiwis maybe I can be an adoptive Kiwi because I'm living there at the moment I know that we are in the thick of the school year. However, I know that also, over 50% of the people who listen to this podcast are going into a new school year either now or soon. So I wanted to make sure that I was addressing the elephant in the room, which is we're going to be going into a new school year and classroom management is something that is on everybody's minds as we start a new school year. What will your kids be like? What will your class be like? What will the culture be like that you want to really create in your classroom? How are you going to start the year strong? So you have boundaries in place and expectations in place, but balance that with being the teacher that you want to be and being kind and compassionate and warm, and you want your kids to leave at the end of that first day going yes, this is going to be an amazing year, not, oh my God, this is going to be a really big bog down. So it's really important for us to be thinking about that start of the year and what we can do to hit the ground running in a way that's going to be really beneficial for the rest of the year as well. But please don't switch off this podcast episode if you are from the part of the world that I am in at the moment and you are in the thick of the school year, because the things that I will be talking about today and for you know, the next few episodes maybe, and everything that I'm kind of focusing on at the moment through the blog and Instagram.

Speaker 1:

I want to make sure that you know that you can press that reset button at any time of the year. You don't have to wait until the start of the year. It's kind of like those people that talk about not starting a diet on the 1st of January. I'm not about diet culture, by the way, but you know you don't have to wait until the 1st of January or the 1st of the year or the the first of the school year to start something new, to start that new habit to start, you know, like to recreate the culture in your classroom, to start a new set of expectations or set the boundaries again. You don't have to wait until day one. You can do that at any, any time of the year. Of course, it is ideal if you can start that from the start of the year. However, you are the leader in your room, you are driving that bus. You don't have to wait until the start of the year. So, as we go through the episodes, I'll also be talking about how you can implement these mid-year, whether it's through a community builder or through setting expectations or resetting expectations, because some of you are out like you're listening and you're in the middle of the school year and you're still struggling with classroom management and behavior. Of course you are. It's freaking tough. So this is going to be really beneficial for you as well.

Speaker 1:

So today, the one thing I did want to talk about in relation to starting the year strong is icebreakers, and I wanted to talk about why I think that some icebreakers just need to get in the bin and what I do instead with my class. I'm an introvert and I cringe at the thought of icebreakers. I still have these flashbacks of saying you know, oh kind, claire, as we go around the classroom, use adjectives to describe us that have the same sound as our first names, or those other icebreaker games where you know like you have to go around and say something kind of superfluous about yourself. But then I went on as a teacher and I played those same games with my students, unfortunately. So I feel I feel a little bit ashamed, not really. You just, you just do what you know like. That's like everything with classroom management, everything with teaching. I call it our inherited classroom management approach because we just continue on what we have experienced in the past or what we have learned in the past. But now I've spent 13 years teaching secondary students and I feel a lot more confident and, you know, capable of having fun in those first few days and balancing that with classroom management and boundaries and expectations, rather than feeling pressured to do a bunch of stuff that they might just roll their eyes at or go home and say, oh, that was not the lesson that I wanted to be in English is going to be crap this year.

Speaker 1:

So what's the problem with icebreakers? What's the actual point of them? Just go back to the purpose. Why are we doing icebreakers? To get to know each other? And if the whole point is to get to know each other, then the icebreakers that we do just fail at it because students aren't going to authentically get to know each other through a few icebreakers.

Speaker 1:

Some already might know each other. You might already know some of them. It also can get a little bit strange if you already know the students in your classroom or they already know each other, which happens a lot in secondary. You know you might've taught them three years before that. So really thinking about how we can have that really positive start of the year without doing something that feels like a slog, feels like they're going to roll their eyes, feels like something that we're just doing to tick a box. Also, it's really important for us to know that for our students especially for some of them who are the ones that maybe we want to do the icebreakers the most because we want to get to know them it takes so much vulnerability to share about themselves. The social risk for teenagers or any child in a school is huge. Even saying kind Claire was clearly too risky for me because I felt really anxious about it.

Speaker 1:

So if the purpose is to get to know each other authentically. We're not going to get that anyway at the start of the school year through a few icebreakers, because they're not going to feel safe enough to answer the questions that you're posing to them and to share something genuine about themselves. So instead of saying something genuine, instead of opening up about themselves and their lives, they might just say I like gaming. Or they might say I like football, or I want to play football when I grow up. You just don't get the kind of authentic response that you're hoping for and then kids just share the generic stuff about themselves. So the purpose for icebreakers, I change it. I change it to. You know, just break the ice.

Speaker 1:

I don't think about it as trying to get to know everybody authentically. I'm not trying to get everybody to kind of form that community, because you can't form a community on day one. The warming of the ice into the water that I could brew a nice cup of tea with comes over time. Community development isn't a one and done, and community is so important, so it's not something we can just tick the box with at the start of the year and go sweet, done, my community is ready, the class is together, I've done my icebreakers and now we can crack into learning for the rest of the school year. It doesn't work that way. We need to focus on that over time, which is why I said that if you are in the middle of your school year, you can definitely use everything that I discussed this episode and implement it immediately.

Speaker 1:

So when I think about an icebreaker, what are my criteria for that? The first thing is your enthusiasm and your energy. If you don't want to be doing it, there is no way your students are going to want to be doing it either. So do something that you are into, do questions, or do something that you want to do or you find entertaining. If the icebreakers I give you to follow aren't your thing, they're not going to be your student's thing. The second thing is you need to lean into it and still be a bit cheesy and dorky. Don't take yourself too seriously, because I don't care what anybody says. It always will be a little bit dorky, a little bit cheesy, and I just play up that dork factor. I get vulnerable for myself. I laugh at myself. I don't take myself too seriously when I'm playing these games. It is infectious and it gives your students permission to do the same thing, and if you can't be a little bit vulnerable, you can't expect your students to do that either. And it's like anything. I always talk about our energy being really infectious. I always talk about us being the captain. I always talk about us being the conductor of the energy in the room. That also applies here. If we want to get the energy up, if we want to have fun, if we want things to be exciting, we need to exude that as well.

Speaker 1:

The third thing that a good icebreaker should do is it needs to open the door for discussion, and I'm talking authentic, natural, student-led sharing, enthusiastic discussion. Students love telling stories, and you won't get that through things that are too rigid and structured. So the games that I'm going to share with you today, the activities that I'm going to share with you, these all support that, because it's giving them an avenue in to discussion. It's giving them an opportunity to go oh my gosh, that's something that I really relate to, that's something that I've got a really funny story about, or that's something that I really want to tell people about, and I'm not asking them to share, but naturally, they're going to be putting up their hands and they do the discussions that we have. We don't get through these games because we're too busy having those discussions and it's really beautiful the way that it happens, authentically and naturally. So what are the strategies?

Speaker 1:

When I say the names of these games and activities, it might sound a bit cheesy, but we have a lot of fun with it and the way you can use these. You can use them at the start of the year as an icebreaker, but these questions are also something that I drip out at the end of each lesson as a community warmer, to have a laugh, to inspire some discussion. I also use these games as a brain break throughout my lessons. So if I sense that things are getting a little bit you know tiresome, if the energy is low or if we're transitioning between tasks and I think we need a little bit of a break, then I use these questions. I might just pick one and we have that one per lesson, because then you're dedicating just three to five minutes to something that could potentially have an enormous impact on the quality of the teaching and learning to follow that lesson or the lessons to come. So it really is a brilliant investment just five minutes in the relationships within your classroom.

Speaker 1:

So my favorite thing to do and this is something that I do on the very first day, although you can do it whenever you want to is to do a class playlist. So I get students to provide me with their favorite song. I get them to put it on a slip of paper in a box or they can explain it depends on the time that I have. Sometimes I just get them to write it down and pop it in the box and I just have a little criteria on the board to say, like what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. They put it in the box and then I collate a playlist and then I use that playlist throughout anything. I do it for transitions, I do a weekly song, but do it to signal packing up. I do it as we come into the lesson. I have a game where we have to choose whose song might that be.

Speaker 1:

So you can use a class playlist in a variety of ways, but I love it because it just brings the personality and the energy of the individual students into the class and it's something that you can use in such a variety of ways and it just then feels like their class. It does feel like you're doing something that is completely personal to them, completely unique to them, and it's something that's so simple on the first day, getting a bunch of songs, popping them on a Spotify playlist or whatever other platform you use. It's just so wonderful to be able to have that in your back pocket as well, Like, okay, everybody, we're going to have a 10 minute task. Now we're just going to have like some mindful activities. Let's pop a couple of songs on. So it's just it's so good to use in a variety of ways.

Speaker 1:

Then I have four games I like to play, either as an icebreaker or, as I mentioned, to warm the community through, you know, um, brain breaks, or at the end of the lesson, or through transition or whatever I do it through. So I have four different games. I have a would you rather game and never have I ever game a speed greetings game, where they make two circles and, just like you know, any speed dating is a more appropriate version of that. They have to circle around each other and they speak about a certain question. But these questions aren't, you know, tell me about your life story or something that does require a lot of social risk. They're questions that are something that the students will want to discuss and want to, and just they find interesting. So a question might be imagine if there was no electricity for a week. What would you do to pass the time? What would you do to have fun? It doesn't require that same social risk and it does naturally get them to share about it, like you know, their lives about each other, but it doesn't feel scary to do that.

Speaker 1:

And the last one is blobs and lines. They have to, you know, form blobs with people who have something on the card. That's the common, that's, you know, something common between, like a commonality. Or they make a line. You know, for example, they line up with who woke up the latest this morning, or how long did it take you to get to school this morning, and they have to work out, you know, from earliest to latest or whatever, uh, in a line and they have to talk to each other to do that.

Speaker 1:

Then a couple of other things I do to warm the community on an ongoing basis, again, just like the class playlist or just like the questions. I just do it during any dead air time or as a brain break and I do things like doodles. So this is where, at the start of the term. I draw one line on a piece of butcher's paper and every day I have one student add one thing onto it. Sometimes I get them to do it in front of the class, sometimes I get them to do it in private, so then we can reveal it to the whole class. After Then I have it up on the wall for the rest of the school year and when people come in and they go, what is that? Then the class can explain that it's their shared artwork. So I love doing the doodles game and then guess who. So I might collect funny facts or a baby photo or something at the start of the year and they need to guess who it is. And you can also do this with places or objects or even make it subject specific. So I love the guess who game as well.

Speaker 1:

But all of these things again are brilliant icebreakers. They're wonderful ways to break the ice at the start of the year but also warm that community. And it hits all of that criteria. They don't require a lot of social risk. It gets them authentically talking. It will mean that they can open up more and more throughout the school year. So the questions they're going to give on would you rather never have I ever speak. Readings and blobs and lines are not going to be the same answers they give in six months time when we're having a discussion in the middle of the day around something and they're with their class they feel more comfortable with. So it will evolve over time. Which is something so brilliant and so beautiful and something that we want for our class. We don't want community building and ice breaking to be a one and done. This is something that we need to develop over time, consistently throughout the school year.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you are one of my wonderful BehaviClub members, every single thing I have just mentioned all of those games and all of those community warmers are available now to download in this month's focus area, starting the year strong, along with all of the other things the expectations lesson, the mini course and everything. I've made each of these four ice breakers into a card game with 27 cards for each of them, and I've also given you an editable PowerPoint with all of the questions. So my behavior club is head over there now. Go over, download everything. You can go watch the mini course. It's always there for you. If you want to go, dip back into it and if you aren't a behavior clubber and you would love to be, or you just want to learn some more about it, you can head to the-unteachablescom, forward slash, tbc or all the links are in the show notes.

Speaker 1:

And if you're not keen on that kind of thing which is also fine, it's maybe like, maybe you don't need that village, maybe you don't need that community, maybe you don't want the ongoing support and maybe you don't need all the courses, maybe you just want the icebreakers, and that's fine. You can head to my TPT and I'll put the link in the show notes for that as well where you can purchase all of those separately, because I want everybody to be able to access those, if you want to access those. But remember, you don't have to use my icebreakers. You can use whatever feels good for you. Just make sure that you hit that criteria mark of something that you're excited by, something that you can go in and have fun with, because if it's not fun for you, it is not going to be fun for your students. Go get a little cheesy, go have a little bit of fun. And when it comes to the other part of the classroom management that you want to really get a head start on for the rest of the year.

Speaker 1:

Next week's episode will be about a few things that will really support you in starting a classroom management approach in a really strong, consistent way. But this is classroom management. What I've just spoken about is a massive part of your classroom management, so don't neglect it and remember you just want your students to go home on that first day of school and be excited by being in your class. You don't want to give them a list of what not to do. You want to make sure you're fostering an environment that feels safe, that feels exciting, that they actually want to buy into, that they want to come into, and that is such a big piece of the puzzle. So go, have fun, either starting the year strong or pressing that reset button and just having fun with your students in whatever way that you can. Okay, lovely teachers, I will see you next episode, where I dig a little bit more into expectation setting, and I will see you there.

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Claire English

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