22 Fun Ways to Spark Classroom Connections

On the first day of school, students often find themselves staring at a teacher they’ve never met and sitting next to classmates they don’t know. 

It’s a timeworn challenge: How can teachers cut through the awkwardness in ways that feel authentic and engaging, and help lay the groundwork for a strong classroom culture?

We asked educators to share the fun, low-stakes activities they use to build community from day one—and they delivered.

Below is a list of 22 educator-tested activities you can try in your classroom this year. When choosing one, “it might be helpful to think about the knowledge, skills, or dispositions you’re trying to build,” recommends educator Kaleen Tison. 

Boring Fact: Instead of pressuring students to come up with a “fun” fact, many teachers in our community say they ask students to share a boring fact about themselves instead. Something like “Water is my favorite drink” or “I had cereal for breakfast.” After sharing these facts, “we find out that we have a lot in common, and we start asking each other questions,” says educator Evelyn Brown.

“Find Me” Card Game: In this activity, each student writes a unique fact about themselves on a note card, which is then shuffled in a larger pile and distributed randomly. By mingling and chatting with one another, students must attempt to identify the person who wrote the fact on the card they’re holding. For about 20 to 30 minutes, “repeat this over and over again so everyone has a chance to meet up and chat,” educator Jill Staake recommends.

Beach Ball Toss: “At the beginning of the year every year, I have a beach ball with icebreaker questions written all over it,” says teacher Alex Johnson—simple questions like “What’s your favorite food?” and “Do you have any pets?” Students stand in a circle tossing the ball around and answer any question their thumb touches.

Save Sam: A gummy worm named Sam is at risk of drowning, so students must thread him through a gummy life saver—but they can only touch both objects using paper clips, not their hands. “It starts small, but kids start talking to other tables to see what’s working, and before you know it, everyone is sharing tips,” educator Stacy Belsito says. Teachers can check out this worksheet from Oregon State University for more information.

Card-Based Bonding: Give each student a playing card from a standard deck, and ask them to form small groups with peers holding a card with the same number or face. Each group must find a non-generic fact that they have in common (e.g., they all have a younger sister) to share with the class. Next, students form larger groups based on the suit of the card they’re holding, and again they must find a common thread. Finally, they do the same in groups based on their card’s color. Each time, finding a common thread gets harder—forcing students to dig deep and learn more about their classmates, says 10th-grade teacher Dana Lopez.

Super Hero Name: “I like introducing myself with my super hero alter ego, then I ask the kids to do the same,” says teacher Tawauna Renee. Steph Forster does a similar activity, asking students to describe themselves with an adjective that starts with the same letter as their name. “This one either gets seriously reflective, or it gets silly, but no one in the class will ever forget your name. Especially the kid in my middle school student teaching placement who dubbed himself Gassy Gabe.”

Academic Brain Teaser: To get students bonding and thinking from the first moments of class, start off with an open-ended question for them to solve as a group, suggests educator Greta Hansen—like “How much water does the average student use in a day?” or “Is math discovered or invented?” She writes, “You’ll still get discussions, you learn about the students and they learn about each other, and it’s something actually interesting.”

6-Word Stories: What can you communicate in just six words? That’s the question that former fourth-grade teacher Brenda Iasevoli used to pose to her students. Students were encouraged to write a mini-memoir or describe their state of mind; the only rule was that they could only use six words. Once everyone is done with their writing, “have students read them aloud, or display them for the class to read,” Iasevoli writes.

Tower of Commonality: Break students into small groups, and give each group a stack of index cards and a marker. Students get 10 minutes to come up with “as many things that everyone in their group has in common” and write each commonality on a card, says high school English teacher Jenna Reich. Each group then stacks their cards into a tower: “Whichever group has the tallest tower of commonality standing at the end of the 10 minutes wins!”

Line-by-Line Story: Renee L. Albright begins the year by asking each student to write the first line of a story on a piece of paper. “Then, everybody changes desks, they read the line that was just written, fold it back so that it can no longer be seen, and write the line that should go next.” The process repeats about a dozen times. By the end, each student has a silly story that the class wrote together in response to their starting line.

Cup Tower: Science teacher Nina Wilhite breaks students into small groups and gives each group 20 paper cups and 30 note cards. The task? Build the tallest tower possible. “This always results in failed attempts, teamwork, and discussions,” she says. Beyond breaking the ice, the experience also counts as a real-world lesson she can use to introduce students to core concepts like the scientific method.

20-Year Reunion: It may seem ironic as a first-day activity, but high school teacher Andrew Anglin has his students pretend they’re meeting for their 20-year reunion. “In pairs, they ‘reintroduce’ themselves as their future selves—the selves that have made all of their hopes and dreams come true,” Anglin writes. “They describe their ideal lives and accomplishments to each other, then each pair introduces their partner to the class and shares how wonderful their partner’s life has worked out.”

Number Hunt: To help students bond, think, and learn a bit about their teacher, eighth-grade math educator Lisa Berkoben Orr writes a bunch of incomplete statements about herself on the board, like “The year I graduated high school” and “How old my kids are.” She then writes down the corresponding numbers—in mixed-up order and with some red herrings thrown in. “Students work in groups to figure out the answers,” Berkoben Orr writes. “They go crazy when they find out how old I am—like they know a secret they aren’t supposed to know.”

Marker-on-a-String: Create small groups, and give each one a large piece of paper and a marker with four or five strings tied around it. Ask students to “draw something simple like a square or circle at first by using only the strings and not touching the marker,” educator Sophie Morton writes on Instagram. Later, the teacher can raise the stakes and have the groups draw even more complicated images.

Name Your Heroes: On the first day of class, educator Michelle Goldmeer has her students “think of and list three people they look up to,” then “list two to three characteristics about each person that they admire about them.” In small groups, students share who they put on their list and why—a simple way for “you and others to find out what that student values in a person,” she writes on Instagram.

Lego Duck Challenge: Elementary teacher Lyndsey Stuttard gives each of her students the same 16 Lego pieces, sets a three-minute timer, and challenges the students to arrange the pieces into the shape of a duck. When the time is up, each duck is placed on display at the front of the class. “We then talk about how every duck is inevitably different, and how our unique perspectives in approaching the challenge is potential we can harness when working together,” Stuttard comments on Instagram.

Identity Portraits: On day one, middle school classroom teacher Shana V. White has her students draw self-portraits. Half of the face should look like them, while the other half displays “the visible and invisible identity characteristics” they are comfortable sharing—such as their extracurricular interests or their ethnic heritage. White hangs these portraits on the wall so that each student can know “that they are all valued and safe in my classroom,” and she uses a gallery walk to help each student learn more about their peers.

Fake Summer Break Story: A common icebreaker question is “What did you do over the summer?” But when some students have epic stories about a trip to Disney World or a stay at their family’s beach house, many others can feel left out if their own vacations were less exciting. “I give students some time (15 minutes or so) to write the most outlandish summer adventure they can—made-up stories only,” says sixth-grade English teacher Ms. U on Instagram. Afterward, students read their stories, and the class votes on who had the wildest one.

Snowball Fight: In Myra Deister’s class, “students write what they are looking forward to on a piece of paper,” which they crumple up like a snowball. Then, students throw their paper in the air, and “each student grabs a piece of paper and reads it out loud,” Deister writes. Alternatively, students can write three facts about themselves on their snowball, and after throwing them around, every student must guess whose facts they picked up.

Unite the Quote: Educator Stacey Kaster Whaley takes quotes related to her class and splits them into two: “Each person gets a piece and has to find their match to say the complete quote,” she writes on Instagram. Pairs of students discuss how the quote might be relevant to the content they’ll be studying in the months ahead—then they share with the group, introducing each other first.

Name Bop: Students stand in a circle, and one kid in the center is armed with a pool noodle. After everyone has introduced themselves, “a student’s name is called, and they have to say the name of someone else in the circle,” says fifth-grade teacher Katie Maybaum on Instagram. The named student has to say someone else’s name, and so on. But students have to be fast: If the kid in the center bops them with the pool noodle before they’ve said a peer’s name, then they’re brought into the circle to become the new designated bopper. It’s a hilarious way to learn everyone’s names, Maybaum says, “and nobody has ever hit hard enough to hurt anyone with a pool noodle.”

Commonality Circles: Ask students to draw three circles on their desk using dry erase markers. “In one circle they write something they love, something they like in another, and something they hate in the last”—keeping their writing small to leave space in their circles, says teacher Rebekah Powers. Students walk around the room and “write their name in the circles on other desks for things they also love, like, or hate.” In just five to 10 minutes, students learn a lot about the things they have in common with their peers.