Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Planning
- Delivery
- Activities
- 51 Action learning
- 52 Amplifying your teaching
- 53 Audio feedback
- 54 Bibliographies
- 55 Blogs
- 56 Brainstorming
- 57 Building blocks
- 58 Buzz groups
- 59 Card sorting
- 60 Case studies
- 61 Cephalonian method
- 62 Checklists
- 63 Design briefs
- 64 Discussions
- 65 Dividing the dots
- 66 Drawing the line
- 67 Fear cards
- 68 Future scenarios
- 69 Games
- 70 Goldfish bowl
- 71 Guided tours
- 72 Hands-on workshops
- 73 Ice-breakers
- 74 Interviewing
- 75 Jigsaws
- 76 Lectures
- 77 Mind maps
- 78 Multiple-choice questions
- 79 Peer assessment
- 80 Podcasts
- 81 Portfolios
- 82 Poster tours
- 83 Presentations by learners
- 84 Problem-based learning (PBL)
- 85 Pub quizzes
- 86 Questionnaires
- 87 Quizzes
- 88 Self-assessment
- 89 Self-guided tours
- 90 Social bookmarking
- 91 Stop, Start, Continue feedback
- 92 Storytelling
- 93 Technology-enhanced learning (TEL)
- 94 Treasure hunt
- 95 Video
- 96 Virtual learning environments (VLEs) (or learning management systems, LMSs)
- 97 Visiting lecturers/guest speakers
- 98 Voting systems
- 99 WebQuests
- 100 Wikis
- 101 Worksheets
- Index
73 - Ice-breakers
from Activities
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgements
- Planning
- Delivery
- Activities
- 51 Action learning
- 52 Amplifying your teaching
- 53 Audio feedback
- 54 Bibliographies
- 55 Blogs
- 56 Brainstorming
- 57 Building blocks
- 58 Buzz groups
- 59 Card sorting
- 60 Case studies
- 61 Cephalonian method
- 62 Checklists
- 63 Design briefs
- 64 Discussions
- 65 Dividing the dots
- 66 Drawing the line
- 67 Fear cards
- 68 Future scenarios
- 69 Games
- 70 Goldfish bowl
- 71 Guided tours
- 72 Hands-on workshops
- 73 Ice-breakers
- 74 Interviewing
- 75 Jigsaws
- 76 Lectures
- 77 Mind maps
- 78 Multiple-choice questions
- 79 Peer assessment
- 80 Podcasts
- 81 Portfolios
- 82 Poster tours
- 83 Presentations by learners
- 84 Problem-based learning (PBL)
- 85 Pub quizzes
- 86 Questionnaires
- 87 Quizzes
- 88 Self-assessment
- 89 Self-guided tours
- 90 Social bookmarking
- 91 Stop, Start, Continue feedback
- 92 Storytelling
- 93 Technology-enhanced learning (TEL)
- 94 Treasure hunt
- 95 Video
- 96 Virtual learning environments (VLEs) (or learning management systems, LMSs)
- 97 Visiting lecturers/guest speakers
- 98 Voting systems
- 99 WebQuests
- 100 Wikis
- 101 Worksheets
- Index
Summary
Ice-breakers are activities used at the start of a teaching session or course to ‘warm up’ the group so they will feel more relaxed and comfortable with each other. Ice-breakers can serve many purposes, but are particularly important if your teaching session involves group work.
Many training courses often start with an ice-breaker focused on individual introductions, but ice-breakers can also be main activities, which may often be more suitable to information skills sessions where there may not always be time to run formal introductions.
The purpose of an ice-breaker is to break down barriers between individuals within the teaching group in order to encourage them to be more participative and engaged in the activities. This can be particularly useful whether the group members are strangers or colleagues who may feel inhibited by status or role.
One example of an introductory ice-breaker would be to break your learners into pairs and ask each learner to find out three facts about their partner – this could be routine information such as their job or course, or something a little more unusual, such as the job they wanted to have when they were a child. Each learner must then introduce their partner to the rest of the group. Be careful with this technique if you are using it to gather information to guide the content of your session – what is reported may not necessarily be accurate! Consider giving learners the chance to comment on their partner's introduction.
✓ Best for
• group work
• breaking down barriers at the start of sessions
• creating an active environment for learning.
+ MORE
• If you have a large number of learners, run ice-breakers in small groups rather than for the group as a whole. It is better for some of your learners to have bonded than none at all.
• Consider using your ice-breaker as a way of gathering information to help you guide the session.
• An activity-style ice-breaker could be:
— something fun and totally unrelated to the session you are running
— a fun activity that can provide some ‘lessons learned’ to feed into your session
— a group or paired learning activity which forms part of your aims and objectives for the session – if time is short, simply starting with an activity rather than a presentation can act as an ice-breaker.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Guide to Teaching Information Literacy101 Practical Tips, pp. 192 - 193Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2011