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As a teacher, you know that keeping your students engaged and focused is crucial for their learning and success. However, this can be a challenging task, especially in a high school setting where students are often distracted or bored. One effective solution to this problem is to incorporate fun classroom energizers and activities into your lessons. These activities not only provide a short break for your students, but also help to keep them engaged and focused on the lesson. By using the educational resources and tools available at Allright.com, teachers can save time and energy on lesson planning, and focus more on building strong relationships with their students and creating an active learning environment in the classroom.
It may be appropriate to think about incorporating an energizer or a fun classroom game if you notice that your students are losing concentration and becoming distracted for a variety of reasons, such as the content being uninteresting, or if it's the last hour of the lesson, Friday afternoon, Monday morning, or they are just feeling tired or uncomfortable.
Here are some ideas for brain breaks, icebreakers, team-building activities, and learning games that you can use to keep your students energized and engaged:
Lie to me
This energizer is a fun way to get to know your students better while also promoting active listening and critical thinking skills. In this activity, students take turns sharing three facts about their life, two of which are true and one of which is a lie. Other students have to guess which of the three facts is a lie. You'll be surprised at how creative your students can be, and it's a great way to build a sense of community and trust in your classroom.
Keyword Music Roulette
This interactive classroom energizer uses music and keywords to make learning about lesson topics entertaining and engaging. The teacher can utilize a digital tool, such as the Randomness widget from Book Widgets, to produce cards with keywords relevant to the lesson in order to play this game. The students must next work in small groups to locate a music title that contains the keyword by using a tablet or computer. The first group to find the song gets to play it on their device. This activity is a great way to promote teamwork and creativity, while also reinforcing lesson content.
Get on that chair
This energizer is a fun and active game that requires students to be flexible and balanced. In this game, every student is assigned a chair, which is set up in a single row. The teacher then assigns the students a task, such as arranging themselves from tallest to shortest, youngest to oldest, or alphabetically. The students then have to switch seats on the chairs without touching the ground. This game is a great way to promote teamwork, physical activity, and problem-solving skills.
Blind Artist
This energizer is an innovative and entertaining approach to reinforce the material from the lesson and improve communication skills. In this activity, students pair off and one holds a drawing that the other cannot see. Then, the student with the drawing must verbally advise the other student, who must then create the drawing in accordance with those instructions. By adding restrictions like not asking questions or drawing with the non-writing hand, this game can be made more difficult. It's a terrific approach to reinforce course material while also encouraging communication and cooperation skills, and the outcomes may be hilarious.
Jigsaw
This energizer is a great way to promote teamwork and reinforce lesson content. In this activity, the teacher divides students into four groups and provides each group with a blank jigsaw puzzle. Each group then has to fill in the puzzle with something they learned in class, such as a drawing, quote, or word cloud. Afterward, the groups swap their puzzles, and the students have to solve each other's puzzles. This activity promotes teamwork, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills, and it's a fun and engaging way to reinforce lesson content.
The candy game
It is a great game for icebreakers in large groups, combining fun and sweet treats. It can be used to encourage interaction among strangers or facilitate team building. To accommodate big groups, you can divide participants into smaller teams of no more than 10 people.
To set up the game, provide students with multicolored candy. Each student should select three pieces of candy, but must refrain from eating them. For each candy, the student should answer a corresponding question. For instance, blue candy may prompt a question about the student's favorite food from a different culture, while red candy may ask about their preferred travel destination. Make sure to include playful questions that can spark engaging conversations among students.
Mirror me
This activity is great for developing coordination skills and having a bit of fun! Students copy each other’s body movements in this no-prep brain break activity.
Place participants into pairs and ask them to face one another. The participants should take turns to make an action (i.e. raising their left arm), which the other must copy. They are not allowed to talk while they perform.
After several actions, one person should call stop and they both go back to the start and try to carry out the actions in the same order.
Body letters
Divide your class into small groups containing 4–5 students each. The task assigned to each group is to come up with an acronym related to the topic they have learned. The acronym's length must not exceed the number of students in the group. For instance, if a group consists of 4 students, their acronym should consist of 4 letters.
Once a group comes up with an acronym, they have to use their bodies to represent the letters. The other groups then need to discuss what each letter stands for.
Next, you can write down the words on a piece of paper, which can be distributed around the classroom. These words can be referred to later in the lesson. Through this energizing activity, you can assess your students' memory and provide them with a useful tool to use.
Incorporating fun classroom energizers and activities into your high school lessons can help keep your students engaged and focused on the lesson, while also promoting teamwork, communication, and critical thinking skills. And with the rise of education technology and digital learning tools, there are more resources than ever to help you incorporate these activities into your teaching practice. Teachers who work at Allright.com can access a library of pre-made lesson plans, interactive games, and other teaching materials that can be easily adapted to fit their students' needs and learning styles.
