Icebreakers for High School Students

The first day at high school is full of apprehensions and inhibitions. New faces and an unknown environment, make the students uneasy on the first day of school. To make students feel comfortable, begin the day with a few icebreaker activities for high school students. Icebreakers create a positive atmosphere and breaks down social barriers. To help your students know each other, icebreakers is the way of doing it. On the first day of school, icebreakers will energize and motivate your students to attend your class and give you an edge over the other teachers to influence your students to do better!

Icebreaker Games for High School Students

Secrets About Toilet Paper
To play this game you will need, a dozen rolls of toilet paper. Make the students sit in a semicircle and throw in all the rolls of toilet paper. Ask the students to take as much of toilet paper as they can within a minute. Once time's up, ask them to tear along the perforated lines of the toilet paper and make them into pieces. Now, each student has to share personal details equal to the number of pieces of toilet paper!

Mingle! Mingle!
To play 'Mingle! Mingle!', distribute strips of blank paper and a pen. Each person must write a question on the strip such as, 'what's your favorite song?', 'which is your favorite movie?', 'what's your favorite cuisine?' and so on. Let the students roam around shouting 'Mingle! Mingle!' before you say 'stop', and bring the class to an immediate halt. Once everyone's stopped moving around, the student must grab the closest person and ask the question. After talking for about 30 seconds, the moving begins. This an excellent way of finding out things about classmates, that probably you'll never find out!

Fear in the Hat
Icebreakers are meant to bring students together and develop team spirit. To play fear in the hat, distribute papers and pens to all the students and make them write at least one of their fears anonymously. Deposit all of them in a hat and one by one, ask every student to pull out the pieces of paper and read the fears. Ask the students to explain what the other person must be going through while experiencing the fear. Playing this game fosters interpersonal empathy and support amongst students.

Name the Food
Gather all the students and make them sit in a circle. Every person sitting in the circle has to introduce themselves and then name the food they like, which has to start with the first letter of their name. For example 'My name is Mandy. I like Mars Bars'. The next person has to remember what the previous person said, recite the whole thing and then introduce himself/herself. It's hilarious fun when the game reaches the last person.

Icebreakers help students to get acquainted with their peers without any hang-ups. Icebreakers make the class atmosphere relaxed and cheerful as compared to a strict outlook of high school. The shy kids also open out and the worry of going through awkward moment gets diluted with icebreakers. These activities can reap rightful rewards if chosen carefully and played with the right spirit.