Team Building & Icebreaker Activities for High School Students

Icebreakers and team-building activities create an exciting atmosphere to help high school students establish a common ground and build new relationships with classmates. These activities energize students and give them an opportunity to share interesting facts about themselves, as well as learn about others. A few creative ideas and supplies are all you need to get started.

Write down 10 tasks to complete on several pieces of paper. You need one sheet that has 10 tasks for each student. Write down things to do, such as get a female to do five push-ups or have someone sing the chorus to a favorite song and leap over someone five times. The students have to have the person who did the task sign on their sheet saying they did it. They have to work together to get the tasks completed. The first person to have all 10 tasks completed wins the game.

You need index cards, a pen and a few celebrity names in mind to play the celebrity game. Write a celebrity name on each index card, and tape one card to the back of each student’s back. The students must walk around asking questions about their celebrity name to try to figure out which celebrity they are. They can only ask yes or no questions. The first student to identify the celebrity wins the game.

Draw a bingo grid with 25 squares, and mark the middle square “free space.” In the other spaces, write facts like “knows his zodiac sign,” “lived in another state” and “traveled out of the country.” When you say, “Go,” the students must try to find other students that can answer yes to these facts. The student must sign his name in that bingo square. The first student to have five squares completed horizontally, vertically or diagonally wins the game.

Use index cards to write a taco ingredient on each card, such as meat, cheese, taco shell, salsa, lettuce and tomato. Tape one card to each student’s back, and explain that it takes a taco shell, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomato and salsa to complete a taco. Students must walk around asking yes or no questions to figure out what ingredient they are. The first six players who can put together a complete taco with all the correct ingredients win the game.