With a new school year comes fresh faces popping up in your high school halls and on the yearbook committee. While some students have been friends since kindergarten, others are new to town or just entering their freshman year and have yet to figure out the lay of the land.
Oftentimes, the yearbook committee has to work closely with each other in order to meet deadlines and cover after-school activities like swim meets, drama club productions, and fundraisers. That’s why it’s so important for the team to get to know each other quickly, so they’re able to work closely together and produce an amazing yearbook for the student body.
Here are five great icebreakers to do with the yearbook team during their first meeting. Not only will it help people get to know each other better, but it gives everyone an opportunity to share their goals and expectations for the upcoming school year:
It’s hard to work with someone if you don’t even know their name! Start off class by playing a memory name game to help introduce everyone to each other. Have the first person start off by saying their name, grade, and one word to describe their personality. Then have the next person in line say back what they just heard and add their own facts. Go around the circle one full time and see how far people can go before they forget a fact.
2. Fun Fact Guessing Game
Before class begins, ask everyone to write a fun fact about themselves down on a piece of paper. Hand out a paper with everyone’s name on it and read the fun fact out loud. Have students guess who the fact is about and write their answer down next to the person’s name. At the end of class, tally up who got the most right and reveal whose fun fact matches up with who and let them share the story behind it.
For this game, everyone says two things about themselves that are true and one that’s a lie. Students then have to guess which fact is not accurate. You can also play a classroom-friendly version of “Never Have I Ever…” where everyone starts with 10 fingers up. Each student takes a turn revealing something they’ve never done. (Examples: “Never have I ever been skydiving” or “Never have I ever ridden on a train.”) The kids who have done the activity put one finger down. The first person to put all their fingers down “wins.” Learning these interesting tidbits about each other helps you get to know each other quickly.
4. School Trivia
It’s important for the yearbook committee to know what’s going on at their school. Come up with a quick quiz covering everything from your school mascot to football stats and have the students take a stab at how much they know. It’s a great way to open up discussion about what’s important to your student body and what type of legacy you want to leave behind with this year’s yearbook.
For this activity, everyone gets in a circle and one person starts by holding a spool of yarn. Have them say their name and what they hope to get out of their time working on the yearbook, then have them toss it to another person in the circle. By the end of the exercise, the yarn will have made a cool spider web design that everyone can break out of together.
Any of these games above will help everyone learn interesting stories about each other, memorize everyone’s names, and generally “break the ice” so people can get to know each other quickly.
