The purpose of todays ICEBREAKERS are to get students up and MOVING! This is a great way to calm down an energetic group before the next lesson, get the kids blood following and have some fun within the classroom!
Mimic Octopus
The idea for this game was found on education.com posted under icebreakers.
Directions: Everyone sits in a circle. The teacher takes one student out of the
circle and out of earshot. This student will be the “guesser”. The teacher then choose someone left in the circle to be their movement leader. The chosen student
then begins to do simple movements while remaining in the circle, the student will change the movement as they see fit. The other students must copy the leader’s movements, while trying not to reveal who the leader is. Every student must continually be doing the movement! The guesser comes back into the center of the circle as the movements continue. That student has three guesses to chose who the movement leader is!
ADAPTIONS:
- I could try this game having the students use animal noises instead of actions
- I could have there be two guessers for an additional challenge
- With older grades I could have two movement leaders and have half the class follow one leader and the other half follow the other
Popcorn
This activity was found on teacherspayteachers under 46 free drama games posted by Drama Trunk
Directions: The aim of the game is to get the whole class standing. Students sit silently in a circle. Students must randomly stand up whilst saying a consecutive number (1, 2, 3, 4,
5 so on) the student would remain standing after saying their number.
If two students stand and say a number at the same, everyone must sit down
and start at number 1 again.
The game requires the class to cooperate and use non-verbal communication to
achieve their goal (no talking other than the popcorn numbers). The class cannot work around the circle. It must be random.
ADAPTIONS:
- students could be instructed to do the alphabet instead of counting- this is great for an introduction to a literacy activity
- students could be asked to skip count ie: 2,4,6…. 3,6,9….- this is a great activity for students who are working on skip counting, addition or subtraction (have them start at a number and work backwards maybe)
- have each student make a different animal noise- this is great for working on students memory as well as coming up with lots of animal noises
- have students each name a different country- great activity for social studies
***** There are so many fun adaptions to link this game to every subject just be sure to keep it age appropriate so the game continues to move