Kick-Start Your Class

Academic Icebreakers to Engage Students

LouAnne Johnson

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781118216217
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Teaching Methods

The New York Times bestseller author of Dangerous Minds has a new way to engage students

LouAnne Johnson's newest book is a collection of fun and simple educational icebreaker activities that get students excited and engaged from the very first minute of class. These activities are great to use with students at all levels, and many of the activities include variations and modifications for different groups. Research has shown that the use of icebreakers increases student motivation by creating an emotional connection between the student and school. In as little as five minutes, a creative icebreaker can engage students' brains, encourage critical thinking, and much more.

• Includes a fun-filled collection of icebreakers that get students thinking and keeps them engaged
• Written by LouAnne Johnson, a teacher and acclaimed author of eight books
• Contains ideas for promoting creativity, unifying the classroom community, preventing disruptive behavior, and creating positive attitudes towards school and learning

No matter what your students' age group this book will give you the tools you need to create a classroom environment that promotes learning.

PART ONE
Getting Personal

Creating a Positive State

According to brain scientists, research suggests a phenomenon called “state-dependent learning,” meaning that the learning environment plays a key role in the retrieval of previously learned information and skills. Examples of this phenomenon are the way we tend to recall distinct memories from years past whenever we hear a particular song or smell—Elvis singing “Love Me Tender” or the unmistakable aroma of Grandma’s homemade cinnamon-pecan buns.

Classroom icebreakers can take advantage of this human tendency to relate memory and emotion by creating positive emotions through enjoyable activities at the start of a new course or school year. In this part of the book, you’ll find activities that focus on students as people and members of a learning community. The goal of these activities is to get acquainted with your students and give them an opportunity to learn a bit about you and their classmates via fun and engaging activities that are not physically or emotionally threatening.

Since our goal on day one is to create a welcoming classroom environment and generate positive feelings about our academic subjects so students will look forward to returning for day two, our ideal icebreakers will be specifically designed to reduce potential anxiety or negative stress for students, including newcomers or shy souls.

After your students have had time to bond with you and with each other, they may welcome activities that ask them to stretch their boundaries, tackle tougher challenges, and take more risks. But for the present, the activities in these first five chapters provide the maximum amount of enjoyment and the least amount of emotional risk.

Chapter One, Getting to Know You: Introductions, outlines activities that give teachers and students a chance to get acquainted and share a bit about themselves.

Chapter Two, Working Together: Assigning Pairs & Partners, provides quick and easy activities for randomly assigning pairs or teams. Random assignment avoids the hurt feelings and conflicts that can occur when students self-select their partners. These activities make a good lead-in to partner projects and tasks.

Chapter Three, Body & Brain: Kinesthetic Activities, focuses on activities that incorporate movement. They are a good way to expend excess energy and channel it in a positive direction, as well as serving as good pick-me-ups for the brain.

Chapter Four, How We Do Things: Routines & Rules, includes enjoyable ways to present rules and teach procedures.

Chapter Five, Teamwork: Building Classroom Communities, includes activities that promote community building and student bonding that can improve behavior, motivation, and achievement.

Working with “Hard-Core” Students

Sometimes teachers who work with reluctant learners or other challenging student populations are hesitant to use icebreakers. “What if nobody participates?” one teacher asked me. “Then I will look like a fool and I’ll totally lose whatever authority I had managed to establish up to that point.”

That teacher’s question is valid. Some groups of students are much more difficult to motivate and manage than others. But it can be done. The key is to keep in mind the needs of your students. At-risk or underachieving students often have serious self-esteem problems. Their number-one priority is to maintain their “cool” reputations or to avoid becoming vulnerable in front of their peers. They need to feel emotionally safe and protected. So asking them to participate in a round-robin exchange may not be the best choice. You may be surprised at their willingness to participate, however, if you select an activity that is interesting, mentally intriguing, and does not put individual students in the spotlight or ask them to reveal personal information about themselves.

I have used many of the activities in this book with hard-core at-risk students in three different states with good success. The icebreakers that worked best for those groups include I Have to & I Can’t, Magic Eyes, Do You See What I See?, and Right or Left Brain? from Chapter One; Puzzle Partners from Chapter Two; My Kind of Class and You & Me Pact from Chapter Four; and Find the Teacher, First-Day Feelings, Paper Turnover, and Unusual Measures from Chapter Five.

Don’t underestimate your “tough audiences.” It’s hard work to maintain an apathetic front and pretend that you don’t care about anything in the world. Given the chance to participate without losing face, most students will give it a try. They may still insist that they don’t care and that they aren’t having fun, but as long as they are participating or not disrupting the activity, they’re connecting. (And whatever you do, don’t point out that they are cooperating or enjoying themselves! They might decide t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• More Praise for Kick-Start Your Class
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgments
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Introduction
• PART ONE: Getting Personal
• PART TWO: Sticking to the Subject
• PART THREE: Forty Ways to Wrap It Up
• Appendix
• Index