Nothing screams overwhelming like the first day of school. After spending the summer on auto-pilot, readjusting to a classroom routine can be a bit much.
Team building games students appreciate ease classroom tensions for teachers and students alike. These indoor activities help set the tone for the school year. They’re also unique ways to for kids and educators to get to know one another.
Motivate your learners with these 10 team building games students will love.
1. Team Building Games Students Love: Icebreakers
A great way for students and teachers to introduce themselves to one another is through icebreakers. These are safe ways to tell someone something exciting and personal about yourself.
Icebreakers range from a few questions up to as many as you’d like. Since your classroom time is limited, stick to three or four simple questions.
For example:
- Where did you visit this summer? This question sets up a possible creative writing assignment.
- Who’s your favorite superhero? Answers to questions like this give educators a peek into the imagination of their students and vice versa.
- What’s your birth flower? The average person knows their birthday but not birth flower. This question calls for a trip to the library, which sets up a research assignment. Educators may teach their students how the library call system works and let them check out books.
Have fun with icebreakers. But don’t get too personal, and steer away from generic questions. Ask questions that you can act upon later. WITS Team Building shares some one-of-a-kind ways to bring people together in fun ways.
2. Memory Games
Memory games are team building games that focus on communication and attention skills.
Building blocks, community puzzles, and pictures games provide recreation and help improve memory.
Deconstruct a giant puzzle and have everyone in class pitch in to reassemble it.
3. Diversity Play
Students and teachers come from different backgrounds. Classification games teach kids about the differences in people all over the world.
Teach students how to arrange people in groups without stereotyping and discriminating.
Divide the students into smaller groups and have them regroup classmates based on information they learned in the Icebreaker.
4. Telephone
Have the students stand up and exchange seats throughout the class. Start on one side of the class by whispering a secret in one student’s ear. Without blurting the secret aloud, that student then relays the secret to the person behind them.
The secret continues until the last person in the class receives it. That person shares the secret with the entire class. The object is to share the exact information the teacher shared with the first student.
The telephone game is a unique way to teach respect. It’s fun, and students learn the importance of not sharing misinformation.
5. The Silent Line Up Game
Advise everyone in the class to line up in a single-file line according to birthday, favorite color, or age.
Without speaking, everyone must line up in order as fast as they can.
Silent line up teaches healthy competition. Reward the students for following directions.
6. Hula Hoop Exchange
Students balance a hula hoop on their fingertips, lowering it to the ground, before passing it to another student.
The game is complete when each student has balanced and passed the hula hoop. If the hula hoop falls, the game must start over.
7. “Don’t Wake the Dragon”
This is a game of pretending. Students step into an imaginary world where a sleeping dragon holds all of the villagers captive.
The only way to save the people is by lining up according to height. Noone can talk or else they’ll wake the dragon. Once they’ve lined up, they scare the dragon off by screaming, “Boo!”.
8. Jump Rope
One way to facilitate teamwork is through jump roping as a group. The educator ties one end of the rope to a jungle gym or doorknob and turns the other.
Students coordinate their jumps to avoid stepping on the rope. Consider splitting the kids into groups for some healthy competition. See which group can last the longest without stopping the rope.
9. Truth or Fiction
On a small piece of paper, students write down two facts and one fib about themselves. Place the slips of paper into a basket or bowl and allow each student to pick a slip at random.
That student reads the paper and then tries to guess what is true and what is false.
10. Red Light, Green Light
Red Light, Green Light is a game the requires listening skills. Break up into teams with an adult across the room at the helm.
The teacher yells out moving commands–green light (go fast), yellow light (go slow), or red light (stop). The first group to get all of its members pass the instructor wins.
Play Team Building Games
Breaking the ice comes with challenges. Children aren’t always receptive to regular classroom settings. Shake things up. Break the monotony of the first day by playing team building games students will remember.
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