21 Awesome Icebreaker Games for Students – Say Goodbye to Boredom!

Whether you’ve been learning from home or just getting back into the classroom groove, reconnecting Face-to-Face can feel awkward at first.

Luckily, we’ve got 21 super fun icebreaker games for students and easy no-prep to loosen up and strengthen those friendship bonds once more.

Who knows, students might even discover a new BFF or two in the process. And isn’t that what school is all about – making memories, inside jokes, and lasting friendships to look back on?

• #1 – Zoom Quiz Game: Guess The Pics
• #2 – Emoji Charades
• #3 – 20 Questions
• #4 – Mad Gab
• #5 – Follow the Letters
• #6 – Pictionary
• #7 – I spy
• #8 – Top 5
• #9 – Fun with Flags
• #10 – Guess the Sound
• #11 – Weekend Trivia
• #12 – Tic-Tac-Toe
• #13 – Mafia
• #14 – Odd One Out
• #15 – Memory
• #16 – Interest Inventory
• #17 – Simon Says
• #18 – Hit it in Five
• #19 – Pyramid
• #20 – Rock, Paper, Scissors
• #21 – Me Too

Check out more ideas with AhaSlides

• Ice Breaker Questions Everyone Will Love
• Fun Questions to Ask Students

21 Fun Icebreaker Games for Students

To strengthen student engagement and build their interest in learning, it’s essential to mix up the classes with fun ice-break activities for students. Check out some of these exciting bunch:

#1 – Zoom Quiz Game: Guess The Pics

• Select a few pictures that are related to the topic you are teaching.
• Zoom in and crop them in any way you want.
• Display the pictures one by one on the screen and ask the students to guess what they are.
• The student with the correct guesses wins.

With classrooms that enable students to use smartphones and tablets, teachers can create Zoom quiz questions on AhaSlides, and ask everyone to type the answer👇

#2 – Emoji Charades

Kids, big or small, are quick on that emoji thing. Emoji charades will require them to creatively express themselves in the race to guess as many emojis as possible.

• Create a list of emojis with different meanings.
• Appoint a student to select an emoji and act out without speaking to the whole class.
• Whoever guesses it first correctly earns points.

You can also split the class into teams – first team to guess wins a point.

#3 – 20 Questions

• Divide the class into teams and assign a leader to each of them.
• Give the leader a word.
• The leader can tell the team members whether they are thinking of a person, place, or thing.
• The team gets a total of 20 questions to ask the leader and find out the word they are thinking of.
• The answer to the questions should be a simple yes or no.
• If the team guesses the word correctly, they get the point. If they are unable to guess the word within 20 questions, the leader wins.

For this game, you can use an online interactive presentation tool, like AhaSlides. With just one click, you can create an easy, organised Q&A session for your students and the questions can be answered one by one without confusion.

#4 – Mad Gab

• Divide the class into groups.
• Display jumbled words on the screen that do not make any sense. For example – “Ache Inks High Sped”.
• Ask each team to sort the words and try to make a sentence that means something within three guesses.
• In the above example, it rearranges to “A king-size bed”.

#5 – Follow the Letters

This can be an easy, fun icebreaker exercise with your students to take a break from the synchronous classes. This no-prep game is easy to play and helps build students’ spelling and vocabulary skills.

• Choose a category – animals, plants, daily objects – it can be anything
• The teacher says a word first, like “apple”.
• The first student will have to name a fruit that starts with the last letter of the previous word – so, “E”.
• The game goes on till every student gets a chance to play
• To spice up the fun, you could use a spinner wheel to pick a person to come after each student

#6 – Pictionary

Playing this classic game online is now easy.

• Log into a multiplayer, online, Pictionary platform like Drawasaurus.
• You can create a private room (group) for up to 16 members. If you have more than 16 students in the class, you could divide the class into teams and keep the competition between two teams.
• Your private room will have a room name and a password to enter the room.
• You can draw using multiple colours, erase the drawing if needed and guess the answers in the chatbox.
• Each team gets three chances to decipher the drawing and figure out the word.
• The game can be played on a computer, mobile or tablet.

#7 – I Spy

One of the main points of concern during a learning session is the students’ observation skills. You can play “I Spy” as a filler game between lessons to refresh the topics you’ve gone through that day.

• The game is played individually and not as teams.
• Each student gets a chance to describe one object of their choice, using an adjective.
• The student says, “I spy something red on the teacher’s table,” and the person next to them has to guess.
• You can play as many rounds as you like.

#8 – Top 5

• Give the students a topic. Say, for example, “top 5 snacks for a break”.
• Ask the students to list down the popular choices they think would be, on a live word cloud.
• The most popular entries will appear the largest in the centre of the cloud.
• The students who guessed number 1 (which is the most popular snack) will receive 5 points, and the points decrease as we go down in popularity.

#9 – Fun With Flags

This is a team-building activity to play with older students.

• Divide the class into teams.
• Display flags of different countries and ask each team to name them.
• Each team gets three questions, and the team with the most correct answers wins.

#10 – Guess the Sound

Kids love guessing games, and it’s even better when audio or visual techniques are involved.

• Choose a topic of interest to the students – it could be cartoons or songs.
• Play the sound and ask the students to guess what it’s related to or who the voice belongs to.
• You can record their answers and discuss at the end of the game how they found the correct answers or why they said a specific answer.

#11 – Weekend Trivia

Weekend Trivia is perfect to beat the Monday blues and a great classroom icebreaker for high schoolers to get to know what they’ve been up to. Using a free interactive presentation tool like AhaSlides, you can host an open-ended fun session where the students can answer the question without a word limit.

• Ask the students what they did on the weekend.
• You can set a time limit and display the answers once everyone has submitted theirs.
• Then ask the students to guess who did what on the weekend.

#12 – Tic-Tac-Toe

This is one of the classic games that everyone would have played in the past, and still likely enjoy playing, irrespective of age.

• Two students will compete with each other to create vertical, diagonal or horizontal rows of their symbols.
• The first person to get the row filled wins and gets to compete with the next winner.
• You can play the game virtually here.

#13 – Mafia

• Choose one student to be the detective.
• Mute everyone’s mics except for the detective and tell them to close their eyes.
• Pick two of the other students to be the mafia.
• The detective gets three guesses to figure out who all belongs to the mafia.

#14 – Odd One Out

Odd One Out is a perfect icebreaker game to help students learn vocabulary and categories.

• Choose a category such as ‘fruit’.
• Show the students a set of words and ask them to single out the word that doesn’t fit in the category.
• You can use multiple-choice questions in a poll format to play this game.

#15 – Memory

• Prepare an image with random objects placed on a table or in a room.
• Display the image for a certain time – maybe 20-60 seconds to memorise the items in the image.
• They are not allowed to take a screenshot, picture or write down the objects during this time.
• Take away the picture and ask the students to list down the objects they remember.

#16 – Interest Inventory

Virtual learning has impacted the social skills of students a lot, and this fun online game could help them redevelop.

• Give out a worksheet to each student that includes their hobbies, interests, favourite movies, places and things.
• The students get 24 hours to fill out the worksheet and send it back to the teacher.
• The teacher then displays the filled worksheet of each student a day and asks the rest of the class to guess who it belongs to.

#17 – Simon Says

‘Simon says” is one of the popular games teachers can use in both real and virtual classroom settings. It can be played with three or more students and is an excellent warm-up activity before starting a class.

• It is best if the students could remain standing for the activity.
• The teacher will be the leader.
• The leader yells out different actions, but the students should do it only when the action is said along with “Simon says”.
• For example, when the leader says “touch your toe”, the students should remain the same. But when the leader says, “Simon says touch your toe”, they should do the action.
• The last student standing wins the game.

#18 – Hit it in Five

• Choose a category of words.
• Ask the students to name three things that belong to the category under five seconds – “name three insects”, “name three fruits”, etc.,
• You could play this individually or as a group depending on the time constraints.

#19 – Pyramid

This is a perfect ice breaker for students and can be used as a filler between classes or as an activity related to the topic you are teaching.

• The teacher displays a random word on the screen, such as “museum”, for each team.
• The team members then have to come up with six words that are related to the word displayed.
• In this case, it’ll be “art, science, history, artefacts, display, vintage”, etc.
• The team with the most number of words wins.

#20 – Rock, Paper, Scissors

As a teacher, you won’t always have time to prepare complex icebreaker games for students. If you are looking for a way to get the students out of the long, exhausting classes, this is classic gold!

• The game is played in pairs.
• It can be played in rounds where the winner from each round will compete with each other in the next round.
• The idea is to have fun, and you can choose to have a winner or not.

#21. Me Too

The “Me Too” game is a simple icebreaker activity that helps students build rapport and find mutual connections among each other. Here’s how it works:

• The teacher or a volunteer says a statement about themselves, like “I like playing Mario Kart”.
• Anyone else who can also say “Me too” regarding that statement stands up.
• They then form a group of all those who like that statement.

The round continues as different people volunteer other “Me too” statements about things they’ve done, like places they’ve visited, hobbies, favorite sports teams, TV shows they watch, and such. In the end, you will have different groups consist of students who share a common interest. This can be used for group assignments and group games later.

Key Takeaways

Icebreaker games for students go beyond just breaking the initial ice and invite conversation, they promote a culture of solidarity and openness among teachers and students. Frequently integrating interactive games in classrooms is proven to have many benefits, so don’t shy away from having some fun!

Looking for multiple platforms to play no-prep games and activities can be daunting, especially when you have tons to prepare for the class. AhaSlides offer a wide range of interactive presentation options that are both fun for teachers and students. Take a look at our public template library to learn more.

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