You: The Video Game - A Back to School Icebreaker & Community Builder

As an introvert, I'm not a giant fan of icebreaker/get to know you activities that require awkward conversations with people you don't know. I'm not the only one - plenty of students feel the same way! Last year I came up with a beginning of school activity that introduces content, allows me to learn about each student, and begins to establish classroom community connections— AND it's cringe free! :) Our kids really enjoy this activity - there's lots of opportunity to be creative and it's culturally relevant with its video game tie-in.

No Cringe Icebreakers
In this activity, You: The Video Game, students share the things that make them unique and learn about their classmates' lives, but there's no uncomfortable conversations. Instead, students pretend their lives have been turned into a video game. They create a "screenshot" of their imaginary video game that includes 10 symbols, and write a bit of text to explain the meaning behind each symbol. They also name their game, and identify their game's final "boss battle" - aka a challenge they face in their life. Below is my teacher example - I use it to model expectations, and introduce myself to students.



Building Classroom Community
Once students complete their Slide, they'll add it to a digital Slides gallery. Students will individually explore the digital gallery of classmates' video games screenshots. They'll use the "speaker notes" section underneath each slide to identify connections they have with classmates.

A Little Content
As part of this activity, I introduce the concept of symbols. We analyze visual symbols, and then explore the difference between concrete symbols and abstract symbols. This sets students up for later work analyzing texts, and preps them to begin examining graphics and images for potentially deeper meanings (hello, information literacy!). 


Resources
If you adapt this idea for your own classroom, I'd love to see what you create! If you'd like access to my resources for this project, you can access them here in my Teachers Pay Teachers store.






 





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