to start a meeting or a class?
-
Long or short? What is the goal?
For short, I like the m&ms game or toilet paper game--pass around and then you have to say something about yourself for every piece
For longer, the clock game: everyone has a paper plate and puts numbers 1-6 around the edge. Then they all make "appointments" with other group members. Facilitator then calls times "it's 1 o clock" and then each time has a question you talk about with your appt partner.
-
I'm a total introvert ... This is like my worst nightmare!
-
I like the one where you stand in a circle and throw a beach ball to each other, saying the person's name as you throw it to them (to learn each other's names).
-
My favorite one in a diverse group is to line up alphabetically by country or city of birth.
-
This is a very short one that may not really even count as an icebreaker. My friend asks attendees if they cover their fries in ketchup or if they put their ketchup in a puddle and dip their fries. She keeps a tally as they go around the room, introducing themselves and answering that question.
-
I had a list of questions last school year to ask my students. All they had to do was stand up if they were answering yes to the questions. The first few were questions that everyone should answer yes to like are you in 5th grade?, do you attend such-and-such school?, etc.
-
@kentuckygirl: love it!
-
Group of unknown people
-look what we have in common game. Every stands up and moves to one side of the room. A question is posed. Those that the question applies to moves to the center.
Small group of known people.
-two truths. Each person writes down a little known fact about themself and puts answers in the bowl. Taking turns one person randomly selects a truth and the rest of the group guesses the person.
-
Just played 1 this weekend. Everyone goes around and comes up a question, any question. Then he/she spins a bottle and the person it points to has to answer it.
-
I absolutely HATE icebreakers, especially when the goal is to learn people's names or keep any sort of rhythm/banter going. However, I just took a class with eight other adults I'd never met & the icebreaker was simple and got us laughing and talking more than we would have during some cheesy name-learning game.
Participants stood in a circle, and the facilitator simple asked that we take one step forward if we agree/if it applies. For instance, one question was "I've lived in Chicago for five years," which got us chatting about where we come from, and another question was "I have a pet that I treat more like a child than an animal," which had us laughing and telling stories.
The whole thing only took a few minutes, but it was really fantastic!
-
a round-table type game, I forget what it's called.
Basically, you ask a question (random one) and everyone has to answer. So, you go around the group and everyone gets like 1 minute to answer.
If this is a classroom that you meet with every week for example, you can do it each week at the start of the session to get the ball rolling.
example:
"What was the high of your day? The low?" and then everyone has to answer.
Or
"One character in a movie that most resembles your life and why"
I always liked them because they're casual and it MAKES people talk. -
I work for the Fed govt, and for one offsite we did a variation of the "texts from Hillary" meme, where we had pics of two different world leaders (but you could do celebrities, etc) and we had to write captions and share them, it was fun!
-
Human bingo.
-
@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I like two truths, too! I think it brings out the most random facts about people, which is fun. I can still remember facts about people from a college English class like 8 years ago.
Reply
Subscribe to our newsletter
- Google Plus
- Stumbleupon
- Twitter
- Facebook
- Pinterest
- Favorite1
14 comments