It’s that time of year again! After a short break (that was hopefully filled with lots of time to relax) back to school is on the brain.
As a teacher, you already know that “getting to know you” activities are essential for starting the school year right. These activities are not only for the first month of the school year though. “Getting to know you” activities are important all year long.
Year-long activities help students to build positive relationships with their peers, and teachers! These relationship building activities create a positive classroom environment that further supports effective learning. Moreover, all of these activities help with effective classroom management!
Get to Know You Icebreakers
Traditionally, teachers start with an ice breaker game for students to get to know each other. While icebreaker activities are great, they are not the only type of “getting to know you” activity.
Icebreaker questions are a fun way for students to get to know what their peers are interested in. However, sometimes it can be hard for young kids to share their interests if they don’t know the other person.
Therefore, we suggest adding in some whole class activities that help establish respect and trust.
Morning Meeting
Our favorite whole group activity is Morning Meeting. This is also our favorite year-long team building activity.
Furthermore, Morning Meeting is designed to be used every single day. Therefore, by beginning it at the start of the year you have a great activity to help build positive relationships all year long.
Related post: How to start a Morning Meeting in your classroom
Morning Meeting consists of 3 key activities: a greeting, an activity, and sharing time. While it takes a bit of planning to get started, once you have it organized it is super easy to implement each day.
The easiest way to set yourself up for success is to create a set of greetings, activities, and sharing prompts that you can use all year long (year after year). This way, rather than having to come up with new ideas every week you just rotate through a set of activities.
If you want to make it even easier, our Morning Meeting activity pack comes with all the greetings, activities, and sharing prompts you will need.
Kindness is my Jam
Part of building positive relationships and getting to know one another is to create a level of respect. This doesn’t mean that every student has to be best friends with one another, simply that they respect each other.
Teaching kindness is an easy way to teach respect to young kids. “Kindness is My Jam” is a favorite activity to teach kindness.
It includes a sorting activity that helps students clearly identify kind and unkind actions.
Furthermore, this ready-to-teach activity can easily be added to any lesson plan (making it a simple addition for back-to-school planning).
Back to School Treasure Hunt
Most getting to know you activities focus on creating connections in the classroom. However, the classroom is only one part of your students’ school experience.
Therefore, it is important to include an activity that introduces students to the school as a whole. This is especially helpful for younger students.
A great school activity that introduces students to the people and places in the school is our Back to School Treasure Hunt.
This treasure hunt gets students out of the classroom and introduces them to important people around the school. It also helps them become familiar with different rooms and spaces in the school.
Invite school personal, like the principal and secretary to be participants. To further engage students, you can also have each one prepare a question to ask during the treasure hunt.
Crayon Discussion
Discussions are an important part of any classroom. However, even though students may like to chit chat, they don’t always know how to be effective participants in school discussions.
Set yourself and your students up for success by teaching effective discussion protocols at the beginning of the year.
Crayon Discussion is one fun way to do this.
Crayon Discussion includes several different conversation cards. Each card has a prompt on it that helps students get to know each other during “partner talk.” You can use these all week long, and have students talk to a new student each day.
This activity is also a great sharing activity for Morning Meeting throughout the year. In addition, you can also explore more discussion protocols here.
Would you Rather
Once you have established an understanding of kindness and discussion protocols, use a fun game to further establish peer relationships.
Would You Rather is a great activity that gives students a chance to share their personal interests and opinions. This is a great opportunity to have students practice working in smaller groups or with a partner.
Beyond being a good way for students to get to know each other, this activity also helps you get to know your students. You can join the small groups to listen to students share, and you can even share your own responses to help students get to know you!
The are so many fun activities that you can use for an icebreaker. Choose a handful to begin the year with, and then save some to come back to throughout the year. Remember, these are icebreaker activities that are meant to be revisited all year long.
