10 Best Virtual Icebreakers for High School Students - TheHighSchooler (2024)

Lending a hand on the first day or in an early morning class can be edgy. Thanks to the Icebreakers that work to weave out all those personal cumbers, making us ready for the day and the year ahead.

Before the world shut down and moved to be a virtual one, teachers used icebreaking games and activities to help students get to know each other. But what would you do now that schools have shifted online? It’s simple! New needs call for new solutions! Teachers can now indulge in virtual icebreaker activities for students.

Just like indulging in some activities and games on zoom, these activities, too, are outstanding to warm them up for the year ahead. In this article, we will look at their need, benefits, and our picks for the best Virtual Icebreakers for High School Students.

Virtual Icebreakers Activities – Why Do We Need Them?

Icebreakers are nimble activities to start off the day incredibly. Deciphering their needs will only give us certain points which would make these activities beneficial for high school students. Here are some benefits that will entice you towards virtual icebreakers:

• A gathering with likely unfamiliar people may lead to awkward silence; icebreakers can get the comfort levels to rise. In the case of high schoolers, they can be awkward and introverted at first. Seeing new faces can intimidate them. With the help of icebreakers, they would get to know their peers and teachers well, and their discomfort will slowly convert to solace.
• A 15-minute icebreaker round can create a positive ambiance before any event or a meet, ensuring engagement and positive outcomes. This can be highly beneficial for young adults too, who might be in such a situation during their school life.
• The scene gets cordial, and members learn to interact. On the first day of high school, students do not indulge in conversing with their peers or teachers much. But thanks to icebreakers, they get a topic to chat about, which curbs the discomfiture between them.
• These activities sort out disturbances between the members, which leads to better collaboration and teamwork. Not just for the first days, these activities can also work in a great way when the teacher wishes to ease the tension between some students to inculcate tranquility and calmness.
• Icebreaker activities are always fun; this gets ever more thrilled amid long sessions.

Virtual Icebreakers Criteria- How To Select One?

Practicing the icebreaker activity in schools should not be a compulsion as it is needed to help children grow with each other. A collaborative study is encouraged when communication improves, and students get used to teamwork. This ultimately positively impacts their academics. Studying better, responding to questions with the right thought, interest in acquiring more knowledge, and also helping one another becomes a good routine practice to get finer at their academics. In accord with this, you may need to choose an icebreaker on certain criteria.

• Prefer an engrossing activity to involve all the participants. The icebreakers should be designed in a way to serve everyone’s interest. If a few participants lose out interest and do not participate much, the whole idea of the icebreaker gets killed.
• Since icebreakers often don’t stand up to be the central ground of the event or gathering, opt for short and direct choices. Overindulging can sometimes be monotonous and somewhat dragging.
• Enure these are creative and inspiring, leading participants to learn. Finally, keep it funny to respite. Only when they are full of wit, would they attract high schoolers and fulfill the purpose behind them.

Virtual Icebreaker Activities For High School Students

1. Know your team

Know your team better with this guessing game. Ask a participant to write three statements about themselves: 2 true and 1 false. Now, ask the other participants to vote on which statements are true and which are false. After the first person has shared their statement and the group has decided which statement is false, the first person will reveal which statements were true and which one was false. Move on until each person in the group has shared their statements. The person who manages to correctly guess the most lies wins. Alternatively, you can play this game in a non-competitive way just for participants to get to know each other.

2. Story by the team

This game improves coordination and team spirit. To start with, ask participants to agree on a random topic. It can be on anything. Explain that each person should contribute with three words to the story, and they will take turns to contribute. Encourage the participants to say the first three words that come to their minds. It does not matter if they make sense or not. More than pressing their creative keys, this would be a fun and light-hearted session where students can enjoy themselves with their peers.

3. Know and Introduce me

Start with pairing up participants in a set of two. Give them a list of questions to ask each other. Ask each pair to interview each other via email or in breakout rooms. When all the participants convene together in the same virtual room, each participant will introduce the participant they interviewed. This activity is a great icebreaker for the first day, as students can get to know each other and know about their likes and dislikes.

4. Dreamworlds Unveiled

While in an online session, ask a student to show a picture of their childhood dream and ask them to define it more in detail. Discuss each student’s childhood dream picture like, why this dream? What is the purpose and how are you planning on fulfilling it? Conclude it with an overall idea of how many dreams are easier to be achieved and how many of them can be achieved with either teamwork or much hard work if you want to achieve it solo.

5. Define a picture

Start with clicking a picture or show a picture during your virtual meet, one which you might have clicked earlier, or click one at the moment. Once you have made your click define what is in the picture. Now the picture can be of something you own which is close to you or a sunset you clicked while having a beautiful day. These pictures can be shared one by one and talked about. Teachers or the host can also ask the students to present one such picture. Through this activity, teachers can get to know a lot about the student’s mindset and much more.

6. Your last 5 choices

This is a very fun activity where you set up a fictional situation from where you have to evacuate. For example, the space station you are living in malfunctions and you have to evacuate, so what are the five things you’ll take with you. Every participant can imagine their house as their space station and can make choices based on what is close to them or dear to them. On every five choices, the participant has to define its reason. This can go on for every participant.

7. One word for one image

This is a pretty easy activity where you can ask one participant to choose one word that defines their life best or an image. The image can be downloaded at the moment and shown. This can also be something they have already. Communicate your definition of life to others, while some can ask you questions based on that. This is a good activity if you want students to delve into each other’s minds.

8. Guess me—with objects

Start with picking one random object that is beside you, keep your camera off, or maybe hold it in a way that it cannot be visible. Describe it to the entire group but don’t tell them what it is. Now, the rest of the participants have to guess what it is based on your description, and you can only answer in yes or no if they are getting close to the answer. This is a very fun activity to spend time with as it grows interesting how everyone describes their objects.

9. Interests and Hobbies

As simple as it sounds, just share your interests and hobbies with each other. You can ask questions like what made you start with this, or when was the first time you ever painted? A conversational icebreaker activity is always relaxing.

10. Time Travel Machine

Ask your participants if they had the opportunity to travel back or forward in time, where they would go, whom they would meet, and why they would travel to that particular timeline. Share thoughts around this and make the conversation more and more interesting.

Summing up

Icebreakers can make a jejune student a warm one by creating a fun and interactive ambiance in an online class. Using GIF reactions, commonalities, binging, and hypotheticals can prove potent add ons to our picks. Activities held physically can indeed benefit, but since the classes are being held online, it becomes imperative to indulge in some virtual icebreaker to avoid awkwardness. These icebreakers would also help students not look at lectures as a burden as it forms a salient part of their academics. Try these icebreakers, and let us know if they helped you out in the comment box!

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