The first five minutes of a classroom experience are critical.
The tone set in a session's opening minutes can significantly impact and
influence, in both positive and negative ways, the quality and nature of
the subsequent learning experience.
How students spend that time can also have a positive impact on their
learning in both the short and long term. When the opening minutes of a
class are approached as an opportunity to build student connections,
collaboration, and community, all learners benefit.
As more and more learning experiences occur in synchronous and
asynchronous online learning environments, strategies that both welcome
students to online sessions and support student learning are
increasingly important.
Traditional ice breakers, while typically shared with a goal of building
community and student engagement, can sometimes have unintended or even
negative consequences on students.
This text shares a collection of powerful, opening activities that are
designed to simultaneously engage students, build safe and connected
classroom communities, and support student learning.
All strategies are easily adapted and personalized to fit individual
course and content needs including face-to-face, synchronous online, and
asynchronous online learning contexts. Shared activities are aligned
with associated learningscience research and incorporate strategies that
have been shown to support student engagement and learning such as
retrieval practice, active recall, spaced practice, and interleaving,
among other evidence-based instructional strategies.
