Classroom Icebreaker 2.0

Icebreakers are often "once and done" by nature. However, what if we could use icebreakers to create an experience that sets the tone for our classroom interactions and creates more lasting connections to others?

Icebreakers are a necessary beginning of the year activity for students throughout the grade levels. The challenge as teachers is to make them engaging without being embarrassing those who aren't quite ready to step out of their comfort zone (as Jennifer Gonzalez of Cult of Pedagogy blog has wonderfully pointed out on her list of terrific icebreakers). After all, it is only the first days of middle school for our sixth graders and that can be really scary for many of us. We all want to make a good impression while warming up to the group. When discussing ideas for this year with my teaching partners, I remembered an icebreaker from years ago used by Naturebridge while at a teacher camp in Marin Headlands. Outdoor instructors really are THE best at this sort of interactive game. We classroom teachers can learn so much from them, but I digress. . .

With all these things in mind, my teaching partners and I collaborated and came up with a very cool icebreaker that is engaging having students up and talking to each other while setting up peer pairs (a new spin on the handy "Classroom Appointments" many teachers use). Classroom appointments is a strategy in which students pair up with several different students so that no two are working together all of the time throughout the year. It normally utilizes a clock motif that teachers call out to indicate which partner to join up with (For example, "Ok, class, now it's time to meet with your 10 o'clock appointment partner to read your drafts.") It enables teachers to quickly mix up the class and students to have a chance to work with many more people than they otherwise would while streamlining the whole find a partner process for the year. Check out the link in this paragraph for more information on this terrific strategy from another teacher blogger.

So, enter our Icebreaker 2.0 that mixes in the classroom appoints concept with a mingle style icebreaker. For our middle school students, we are referring to it as "Mingle Buddies." We'll instruct students to get up and find a new person in the room in each of the four rounds below (image at right is the slip they will each take with them to record). We're planning on breaking our mingling into three days to spread out the fun.

DAY ONE

[Student Sheet to record and store for use throughout the year.]

Round 1: Go find one other person of your choice and give him/her a High Five. That is your High Five buddy. Introduce yourself if you don't know him/her or catch up with what they've been doing lately if you do know him/her. Ask the question "What's your high five buddy's favorite school subject?" and write the response. Give each other one more high five.

Round 2: Find one person who was born in the same birth month. It must be a new person--not the same as round 1 person. Make up a secret handshake that includes a fist bump with him/her. Introduce yourselves if you don't know each other already. Talk out/write down the question "What's your fist bump buddy's favorite sport?" responses.

DAY TWO

*Warm-up: Give your high five buddy and quick high five and say hello using his/her name. Then greet your fist bump buddy using the secret handshake you made up together yesterday. Make sure to say hello and greet each other by name. Now back to finish the game. 

Round 3: Find someone you didn't choose from yesterday that is of the opposite gender. Introduce yourselves if don't already know each other. This is your dab buddy. Ask the question on the sheet: What is one thing that not many people know about you? Talk out/write down the question responses.

Round 4: Find someone you have never met before this week. This is your elbow nudge buddy. Give them a nice nudge. Introduce yourselves. The question is: What makes your nudge buddy's family special? Talk out/write down the question responses.

DAY THREE

On the final day, use the information the buddies collected to introduce each student to the group. To do this, have one student at a time raise his or her hand. When it is that student's turn, each of his or her buddies each should say something about the student learned in previous days. For example, Karisa raises her hand. Her high five buddy tells the group she loves science and technology. Her fist bump buddy adds that she likes watching water polo and her dab buddy tells the class she's a vegetarian. Finally, her nudge buddy tells everyone that her family loves learning new things on trips and reading. By the end, we're starting to get a sense of our class as individuals and laying the foundation of a classroom community.

Now here's another really great part--an added bonus if you will. Students are to keep these "Mingle Buddies" slips in their notebooks to use throughout the year. We teachers will occasionally announce, "Go find your high five (or dab, nudge buddy, fist bump buddy, etc.) and those students will meet up again to discuss topics as a pair. We envision using this at least a couple of times a week especially early in the year to get students up and moving as well as working with others that they wouldn't normally for a fresh perspective. 

Icebreaker 2.0 fine-tuning tips: 

*We're going to make sure that students end up with four different partners for each round.

*We've tried to scaffold the questions in the rounds from most easily approachable to a little more personal to build as comfort levels hopefully do. 

*If there is an odd number of students in the class, then we as teachers will add in to balance it out (I kind of hope there is because I want my own high five, dab, fist bump, and nudge buddies myself!)

* For during the mingling part of the icebreaker, I've created a "Mingle Buddy" Youtube playlist to quietly play as background music in the class.
*We'd like to encourage students to use their special greeting when they see each other in the hallway and other classes. It would be so awesome to see secret handshakes and friendly nudges happening naturally throughout campus.

Classroom Twitter Feed

One of the best things I've done in the past couple of years as a teacher has been to add a classroom Twitter account after a suggestion at Monterey Bay Aquarium's teacher training. It's helped me connect to parents, students, administrators, our librarian, and other teachers. Social Media like Twitter and Pinterest have a vibrant teacher community that if you haven't tapped into yet, I highly suggest you do.

One great thing about Twitter is that even those not on it can see your current posts in a Twitter feed--no "following" required (though it is nice when they do and "like" content). It's good if in general you take larger group photos, take photos in which students' faces are not close-ups, avoid using names if student's faces can be easily matched up, and especially with younger students consider taking photos from the back of their heads if engaged in interesting tasks or images of the work itself. Note: Our school requires students and parents to sign an image release. If your school does too, make sure to check with your administrator in case there are students who should not be in photographs. Anyway, here's mine:

Tweets by @LEroomI3

Designing a Flexible Seating Classroom

Perhaps after noticing that our middle school students tend to spend a whole lot of time working on the floor (by choice) and moving furniture around to accommodate our lessons, our administrator told us that we'd have the chance to remodel our classrooms to allow for flexible seating. I was so excited and ready to jump right in to reimagining my space. I wanted intentional spaces set up for students to choose from based on regular uses (gathering area maybe to be named "The Campfire" or "The Family Room," Maker Space, Reading Nook, etc.). After reading some articles on the topic, I thought a semi-private area might also be useful for individuals or very small groups to focus in (I'm going to call mine the "fish tank" since my aquarium will be incorporated). Of course, all this will be subject to change with the students' input and in consideration of their needs. However, just trying to wrap my head around what type of space new furniture would take up left me with the need to visualize via diagram. So far, here's what I've come up with using the website Floor Planner's free mode.

My Next Year's Classroom Ideas Diagram (with my notes):

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3D View:

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Will it stay like this? Definitely not! But at least I have a starting point. Need more info? So, do I! Here are some great resources on the topic I've found are a great place to start (please, let me know in the comments if you've tried the switch to flexible seating or have some good resources to share):

 Classroom Eye Candy (Cult of Pedagogy)

Flexible Seating and Student-Centered Classroom Redesign (Edutopia)

The Cemetery Method (Anne Shaw)

Albemarle County Public Schools (Edutopia Video)

Keepers for Next Year

As this year wraps up, I'm thinking back to some tools/strategies I used this year that will be "must use" in my middle school classroom for next year. .

Boom Writer: 

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Reading the teacher blog Cult of Pedagogy, I was intrigued by a new writing tool called Boom Writer. BoomWriter is an online writing tool that allows students to enter writing pieces into an in-class competition for the whole class to see and vote. Teachers write a prompt for students to respond to in writing. Then, after the teacher approves the pieces (or asks students for revisions), the class can vote on who wrote it best. I used it to have the students practice using their vocabulary words. The other sixth grade teachers and I have been looking for ways to have students interact more with the meanings of their vocabulary words. This seemed like very good tool for that purpose. Students loved having an audience for their writing and the built in extras of having a little character to decorate appealed to the students (while giving me as a teacher a little time to read their work and approve/ask for revisions). Students had great informal discussions going on while writing about word meaning and loved reading each others' work.  Even normally reluctant writers were eager to try it again!

Socratic Seminars

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We had a great time with using Socratic Seminars this year. Mostly we used the classic inner circle/outer circle format with everyone having a role during the seminar.

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I also tried out a new "Socratic Seminar" style to see if gamification spin could help pull in those that were a bit more reluctant to join in the argument. It at least gave them a way to reflect on what was happening. What is Socratic Smackdown? Basically, the Socratic Smackdown is a modification on the classic Socratic Seminar. It has students focus on a set of argumentative strategies that they earn points for if they use them well in an academic argument. It was lots of fun but one of my classes lost focus a bit and had to be redirected. I'll be fine tuning before using it again. My slideshow I made to introduce the format to students is embedded in this post. The idea is from Institute of Play that has other resources that I will also be checking out in the future.

Schoology:

We used this online learning system, Schoology, extensively this year at my school. It's free to sign up and use. Here's just some positive uses for me and my classes so far:

Discussion Posts: I wanted student to reflect more on their learning, see what roles they played in collaborative projects, and be able to share out their work with the class easily. Schoology's discussion posts became an awesome place to accomplish all of these goals. I would use the discussion post format to describe the assignment for students so that they had a resource to go back to for expectations. Then, as we worked on projects or when the project was complete, one student in each team would post the project link. All in the group would follow-up by replying to their team post by answering 2 or 3 reflection questions. I used this Edutopia list for ideas of reflection questions. I also used it share out about endangered species topics while projects were in progress and followed up with a lesson on giving effective peer feedback on a recent endangered species project.

Schoology Groups: I created groups for Yearbook, Garden Club, Engineering Club, and also for my sixth grade partners and I to share resources. This became a nice place to collect useful resources such as fonts to use in yearbook and how to send designs to the 3D printer for engineering. My fellow teachers and I used it to share assignments created as well as quizzes for vocabulary (which we could each help proofread and revise for clarity). It was great!

Rubrics: These made it easier to grade and cut down on copying off all those little slips. Plus, parents and students could refer back to them to see (no, loosing the rubric paper before showing curious parents or partners who were absent when they were handed back)!

I'll leave it there for now, but as teachers know it is never ending! So many more tools to find and refine practices. . .