Kick-start your class: academic icebreakers to engage students

Acknowledgments About the author Introduction Part 1: Getting Personal: Chapter 1: Getting to know you: introductions: 1: Adjective game 2: Autograph collectors 3: Are you kidding? 4: Business card creations 5: Flash figures 6: Getting to know you 7: I have to & I can't 8: I never would have guessed 9: Magic eyes 10: Me in a bag 11: Do you see what I see? 12: Name cards 13: Right or left brain? 14: Wave your flag 15: Stand by your music 16: Would you ever? Chapter 2: Working together: assigning pairs & partners: 17: Card sharks 18: Animal pals 19: Personality matches 20: Comics coworkers 21: Pick-a-stick partners 22: Puzzle partners 23: Story segments Chapter 3: Body & brain: kinesthetic activities: 24: Beanbag topic toss 25: Birthday circle 26: Brain boosters 27: Find your folder 28: Keep it up 29: Hello, stranger! 30: Make your move 31: Meet and greet 32: Name game ball toss 33: Name tag search 34: Shall we dance? 35: Symbol search 36: Slow, fast, slow 37: Verb mania Chapter 4: How we do things: routines & rules: 38: Class chant 39: Call-and-response 40: Crazy quiz 41: Cleanup time 42: Give me three 43: Noise-o-meter 44: My kind of class 45: Rules bingo 46: Seat scramble signal 47: We're going reading 48: You & me pact Chapter 5: Teamwork: building classroom communities: 49: Find the teacher 50: Team classroom concentration 51: First-day feelings 52: Finish the story 53: Juggling teams 54: Our class puzzle 55: Multi-balloon float 56: Paper turnover 57: Team trivia 58: Unusual measures

Part 2: Sticking To The Subject: Chapter 6: Mathematical possibilities: 59: Balancing act 60: Count my fingers 61: Matchstick puzzles 62: Number game 63: People shapes 64: Rhythm & words 65: What's my number? Chapter 7: Scientific suggestions: 66: Critter connection 67: It's elemental 68: Is that a fact? 69: Mail call 70: Recycled animals 71: Tower builders 72: What is this? Chapter 8: Language art's starters: 73: Analogy anchors 74: Picture tells a hundred words 75: Canine connection 76: Contraction cutters 77: Foreign phrases 78: I am poems 79: Meaningful matches 80: Lick a slug 81: Mirror writing 82: Musical words 83: Pictographs 84: Poetry-picture match 85: Proofreading pairs 86: Quotations 87: Six-word summaries 88: Wacky wordies Chapter 9: Rev up the reading: 89: Back-to-back 90: Book swap 91: Fishing for sight words 92: I can see clearly now 93: Three-story view Chapter 10: Social studies scenarios: 94: City search 95: Birthday customs 96: Local geography bingo 97: Name that flag 98: State silhouettes 99: Our world map 100: Time stretchers 101: World view Chapter 11: Techno tasks: 102: Add a sentence 103: Map your school 104: Sell a subject 105: What we know slideshow 106: Wordle teams Chapter 12: Artistic experiences: 107: Animal figurines 108: Artists & art 109: Head & shoulders 110: Me collage 111: Partner silhouettes 112: Newspaper hats 113: Tinfoil sculptures 114: Window on my world Chapter 13: Musical moments: 115: Beats me 116: Music-picture match 117: Musical moods 118: What color is this song? 119: Song switch Chapter 14: Swell ideas for ELLs: 120: Body parts 121: Let's talk 122: Noses to toes 123: School shoppers 124: Picture pairs 125: Take a note

Part 3: Forty Ways To Wrap It Up:

Chapter 15: What we learned today: daily closure

1: ABCs

2: Ball toss recap

3: Big banner

4: Board bingo

5: Cartoon quotes

6: Connect the dots

7: Countdown: 3, 2, 1

8: Flash cards

9: Fractured phrases

10: Learning tree or garden

11: Little whiteboard review

12: Missing words

13: Pair shares

14: Paper airplanes

15: Question of the day

16: Quiz questions

17: Rate the lesson

18: Roger recap

19: Sentence starters

20: 60-Second recall

Chapter 16: Recapping the course: end-of-term closure:

21: Countdown: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1

22: Class portrait

23: Create a quiz

24: Dear me

25: Dear Future Student (or Dear New Kid)

26: Digital scrapbook

27: Draw & discuss

28: Famous quotations

29: I'm the expert

30: I used to think

31: Learning tips

32: Paper quilt

33: Scrapbook

34: Self-assessment

35: Six-word memoirs

36: Story time

37: Twenty questions

38: Who wants to earn an A?

39: Words of wisdom

40: Write a book

Appendix: We want more!

Index.