Ice-breaker Discussion Topics

Introduction Activity: "Who Do You Want to Be?"

In a well-written paragraph, students should describe five accomplishments they want to achieve in their lifetimes. These can include personal or professional aspirations, lifetime goals or dreams, or anything they really want to do that would make their lives worthwhile. Students must be very specific in explaining why they want to achieve these accomplishments and how they will impact on their lives.

New School Year Student Interviews

Once students have completed their introductory paragraphs, they should prepare three or more interview questions for their peers. During a limited time-frame, students should attempt to interview as many students as possible, paying particular attention to future plans and aspirations. They should jot down their findings in a notebook and identify common goals among students they have interviewed.

Tests for Discussion

Have students discuss their findings to one or more of the following online tests:

Learning Styles Test

Leadership Style and Qualities Questionnaire

The Leadership Motivation Assessment (Good for assessing student roles before beginning group projects)

Two Lies and A Truth

Ask participants to list three interesting things about themselves. (I own two armadillos; I once shook hands with Tom Cruise; and I love to water ski.) Two must be lies and one must be true. Other participants must vote to determine which interesting thing is the truth. The participant with the most incorrect votes wins. Alternatively participants could be put into small groups and find out through teamwork what the truths and lies are. An other alternative game is three truths and a lie.

Six degrees of separation:

Ask each participant to find out how he/she is linked to another participant through 5 others because they have some kind of connection. The solutions needs to be posted and should look like this: me > Jeffrey > Donna > Patricia > Hans > Sherry with an explanation of the connections. In finding the answers, participants have to interact and ask a lot of questions to each other. It may easily take a week. A shorter variation of this exercise may be to ask participants to find one other person they have some kind of connection with. (a participant they did not know before).

Same and different

Put participants in groups and ask them to find something that the group has in common (e.g. everyone has been to France) and something that is unique to each person in the group (e.g. plays water polo, speaks Greek, was born in Leeds, etc).

Virtual walks

Use something like history pin to create a virtual walk of meaningful places.

Cultural Biography

Students identify name/nicknames, ethnic background, where they are from and where their parents were born, which generation they represent in the U.S. for their family, and one custom or tradition their family practices.

What ________ says about me

Fill in the blank with anything for your students to describe themselves (what my grandpa says about me; what my room says about me; what my ipod says about me, etc.)

Coffee House

A virtual "coffee house" for students to chat. Discussion posts are student-led/instructor monitored. Can be for non-course related talk.

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