Wanna know what icebreaker game for students works best for back to school time and introductions? Then stick around! I will tell you about one of my favorite games for back to school, to introduce my subject to students, and just have fun in the classroom. Find someone who… is a great game to play with students! Let me tell you why this is such a great icebreaker game for students.
Do you also want your students to get to know each other quickly and in a fun way at the beginning of the year? Would you also like them to do that through the target language? That’s what I thought! This game helps students get to know each other in those first weeks of school, and because it’s a game students will have fun doing it while also learning something about language!
Before I continue, if you love games, then you’ll also love this free cheat sheet of the seven best whiteboard marker games! Grab it here right away!
Icebreaker games for big groups
What are some good icebreaker games, you ask? If I have to name a few it’s Find someone who…, my version of Four Corners, name games, and the lineup game. I have explained them all briefly in this article. But this article is about a great icebreaker game for large group settings. Let me tell you how to play Find someone who…:
- Create a sheet of prompts about students in the classroom. They have to finish the sentence that starts with Find someone who… Prompts could include: has a cat, has a dog, has an older brother, lives close to school, rides the bus to school, has brown hair, has blonde hair, etc. The sheet should be full of them. I think 20 prompts is a good number.
- Provide each student with a sheet. You could also consider creating different sheets so that each student is looking for different prompts. Also ask students to bring a pen.
- Tell students they’re going to get up soon and walk around the classroom. They have to find a name to match each prompt on the sheet. The name of the student they’re going to write down below the prompt should be a person that this prompt applies to. For example, Emily has brown hair, then I can write her name below the prompt: has brown hair.
- Give students time to collect names by talking to each other in the target language. When the first student completes all the prompts, the game ends.
- Ask students to sit down again. Then go over each prompt and ask specific students who they found for that prompt and why they think the person they found is a match. This way students will share what they have learned about each other with the whole group. And by listening to what others learned, they can learn even more about their classmates.
Icebreaker games for introductions
So why is this one of my favorite icebreaker games in classroom settings? Because it achieves all of the goals that I have for introduction time!
- Find someone who… gets students to speak in the target language to one another. They have to ask each other questions to find out who matches which prompt. And they have to listen to each other giving answers in the target language.
- This is a great game for students to get to know each other quickly. They will ask each other questions about familiar things, and this way I’ll find out who everyone is.
- The last reason I love Find someone who… is that this game involves movement! Whenever I can get my students to move in the classroom while they are learning I feel like they retain knowledge better! Plus, kids love to move instead of sitting on their butt all day!
So these are the reasons I love Find someone who… as an icebreaker game for youth! You can easily create this game yourself. Just come up with some general things students will want to know about new classmates and insert them into a table. If you don’t want to create this icebreaker game for students from scratch though, I’ve got the game up in my store! It contains one sheet of 20 prompts and 6 different sheets of 12 prompts if that’s what you like better.
Grab it now by clicking here!
Related articles:
7 wonderful and easy back to school activities for your students
Why this is my favorite introduction game for students for back to school time
