I’m teaching in two institutions this academic year, so there are lots of students to get to know in each of the different classes. I’ve never been the biggest fan of ice breakers, as I struggle to think of fun facts to share about myself, and it can be stressful trying to come up with a sufficiently serious answer to what my favourite book is or why I’ve chosen to study history. However, it really helps me to learn students’ names when they say their name and tell me something. This can be about themselves, or something related to the course. I also think it helps the students to get to know each other and can release a bit of the initial tension.
I now have a few very low stakes strategies that I use to ‘break the ice’. I ask students to tell me their firstname and surname (so I can do the register and they can tell me if e.g., they prefer a nickname), their pronouns (if they want to), and then one of the following:
- What three objects would you take back with you if you were to go back in time for a week? The period depends on what course I’m teaching, so it could be ancient or medieval. This always elicits interesting responses, some students go for creature comforts and others go for more practical things like antibiotics and hand sanitiser, or even weapons (!).
- Tell me a boring fact about yourself. I set the expectations for this really low, like ‘I had toast for breakfast’ or ‘my favourite colour is purple’. Sometimes the responses are really actually quite interesting, but I find setting a low bar means that students aren’t worried about thinking of something really exciting to say. Usually it’s things like, age, pets, and lunch, but I’ve also discovered what musical intstruments students play, or what sports team they support.
- Asking a polling question e.g. Is a hotdog a sandwich? I ask each student to say whether or not they agree with the question, but with no explanation, and keep a tally of the responses. For the record, I’ve done this one four times this academic year, and it would seem that a hotdog is emphatically not a sandwich.
Icebreakers do serve an important function, but thinking about them as icebreakers and getting people to share personal information can make people (including me!) feel uncomfortable. These ones are either geared towards the course, to get students thinking about the time period we’ll be covering, or are pretty generic, not asking for anything particularly demanding or deep.
*
If I were to go back in time for a week to ancient times, I’d probably take some antiseptic, a fully charged Go-Pro and some gold. And my favourite colour is purple. And I think a hotdog *is* a sandwich.
On the Trail of the Bianchi of 1399 