• Team-building activities help bring a sense of community to a classroom.school image by Jerome Dancette from Fotolia.com
  
  Team-building games and icebreakers help teachers establish a sense of community in their classrooms and allow students to become more comfortable with one another. The best team-building games help students get to know one another while taking them out of their comfort zones and asking them to do something creative or silly.
  
  

Back to Back Pictures

• Students sit in a line and are told they are not allowed to talk under any circumstances.The person at the back of the line is shown a simple picture and uses his fingers to trace that picture on the back of the person in front of him. That person then repeats the motion on the person in front of him, and the tracing continues up the line until it reaches the last person. The last person in line draws the picture she thinks was traced on her back. That picture is compared with the original picture. No more than five people should be in a group. If there are multiple groups, the class can vote on who came up with the best final picture compared with the original.
  
  

Two Truths and a Lie

• Students go around the room and state three facts about themselves. Two of the facts are true, and one of the facts is a lie. The facts can be presented in any order, and the other students in the class are required to determine which of the three is the lie.
  
  

Honey, I Love You

• For this game, students sit in a circle. One person is chosen to be "it" and stands in the middle of the circle. The person who is it goes up to someone in the circle and says, "Honey, I love you." That person must respond with "Honey, I love you too, but you can't make me smile" without smiling or laughing. If he smiles or laughs, he is the new it person. If he responds without smiling or laughing, the person in the middle continues to be it and moves on to another person. Students who are it will quickly learn to be funny and persuasive and add to the initial "Honey, I love you" phrase to get their classmates to crack a smile.
  
  

Alliterative Names

• To help the teacher learn student names and help students learn a little about each other, have students stand in a circle. One at a time, students will say an adjective that starts with the first letter of their name, followed by their name. For example, Animated Amy. As students go around the circle, they will add their adjective and name to the list after repeating the alliterative names of the students who came before them.
  
  

I Like People Who...

• Students sit in a circle while one student stands in a circle and says "I like people who..." followed by something students in the class might have done, such as "I like people who horseback ride." Everyone who has done that activity gets up and scrambles to find an empty seat. The person left standing continues with a new "I like people who..." phrase.