16 Fun Classroom Team-Building Games and Icebreaker Activities for Back-to-School

Classroom team-building games are a must at the start of a new school year! They allow students to build new relationships, develop trust in one another, and start to feel comfortable in a new classroom group. Here are some of my favorites!

Save Fred

One of my go-to classroom team-building games is Save Fred. Fred is a gummy worm whose boat has capsized, and his life preserver is underneath it. He’s taking shelter on the top of the upside-down boat, and it is the team’s job to get Fred’s life preserver on and get him into the boat without him falling into the water. The trick is that students cannot touch anything with their bare hands.

You’ll need a gummy worm, a gummy lifesaver (not the hard kind), a small plastic container or cup, and one paper clip per group. You might use a piece of blue paper on the desk to represent the water.

To set up the task, place one gummy lifesaver under the upside-down cup with the gummy worm on top.

Students may ONLY touch the paper clips. They may bend the paper clips but cannot spear the life preserver, worm, or cup. They should restart the task if they drop the worm into the water.

Obstacle Course

Set up an obstacle course for your students to complete in teams. This could be done indoors or outdoors and can use any available equipment or none at all! You might use pylons, skipping ropes, beanbags, basketballs, or other items. If you’re short on equipment, consider using playground features such as benches and climbing structures. Also, if you only have enough equipment for one course to run, time each group and have subsequent groups try to beat the time set!

Two Truths and a Lie

Another of my favorite classroom team-building games for getting to know each other better is Two Truths and a Lie. This one is just like it sounds! Give students five minutes to write down two facts about themselves and one non-fact. Challenge them to choose fun or outrageous truths to make the lie hard to guess. After reading out their three items, the rest of the class tries to guess which isn’t true.

Escape Room

Escape room activities are a blast when used with the right group of students. (A word of warning – if your students don’t have perseverance skills, they could become frustrated and give up on an escape room activity. This is the opposite of the desired effect! A little lesson on perseverance and problem-solving strategies is always useful before challenging classroom team-building games like this.)

A consultant in my district shared this free digital escape room with me, and I’ve used it several times with Grade 5 students. Be sure to try it yourself before sharing it with students. It is challenging, but FUN!!

Hula Hoop Pass

Paper Chain Challenge

Divide the class into teams of 3 or 4 students. Give each team one sheet of paper in any size plus staples or tape. Challenge the teams to create the longest paper chain they can.

This Or That Games

This could be considered two classroom team-building games: Four Corners AND Right-Left. The idea is to ask students questions and have them move in a designated direction based on their answers.

For example, if you ask a yes-or-no question like, “Do you like seafood?” you would have students step either right or left to indicate a yes or no answer.

More open-ended questions lend themselves perfectly to a Four Corners game. For example, “If you could visit one of these countries, which would you choose?” Giving students four choices, such as Paris, Rome, Athens, or New York, students move to the correct corner of the classroom to find other students who also chose the same destination.

This activity is a fantastic way to get students talking about their common interests. Once the students choose, you might consider having them discuss their reasons with the other students.

Scavenger Hunts

A scavenger hunt is a fun way to get kids working together and is SO flexible! You can hunt inside or outside for virtually anything! I love to do a classroom scavenger hunt at the beginning of the school year, along with other classroom team-building games. Grab a free editable copy here:

20 Questions

Why not hold a game of 20 Questions?! Have each student bring something important to them (or a representation of that item, so it isn’t lost or broken at school) to school in a paper bag. Have the class ask yes-or-no questions to try and determine what the student brought to share!

Pentomino Puzzles

I LOVE using puzzles for classroom team-building games, and this one is a great task for math class. After our first attempt at this challenge, the materials went on our early finisher shelf, and the students worked on them all year long!

Grab a free copy of these pentomino puzzles in my Freebie Library!

This is another great activity to combine with mindset discussions! I used this page from my Social Emotional Learning in Math resource. It is available for Grades 1-3 here or Grades 4-6 here. Click the image below to grab a free sample.

Cup Stack Challenge

Next in the list of fun classroom team-building games is the Cup Stack Challenge! Grab a stack of plastic Solo cups, elastics, and string for this next hilarious team activity!

You’ll want to tie one end of a piece of string for each student in the group to the elastic. I usually have between three and five students per group.

Together, they must use only the elastic to stack the cups in various ways, refraining from using their hands. If someone touches a cup, they restart the challenge.

Group Drawing

I’ve seen a similar group activity: Each child is given a string attached to a marker and works together with the others in the group to draw a picture. I’ve never tried this one in my class, but it looks fun.

Silent Activities

Another favorite is the silent variety of classroom team-building games! Activities that require students to complete a puzzle or get organized in a particular way (e.g., by birthdate) without verbal communication are great ways to build teamwork and communication skills.

You can do this with a jigsaw puzzle or just a picture cut into pieces – no special materials are needed!

Tallest Structure Challenge

This building activity has always been a favorite with my students. We usually use miniature marshmallows and sticks of uncooked spaghetti. Students are challenged to build the tallest freestanding structure. They can break the spaghetti if they wish but cannot use any other materials.

I’ve also seen similar classroom team-building games done with toothpicks or other building materials, such as LEGO blocks. You can give students a limited number of building materials or make it unlimited. The choice is yours!

Replicate It

This Mental Blox game can be a great inspiration for a fun building experience in which students begin with a model and must describe to a partner or team how to replicate the design without contributing to the task.

While you don’t need the Mental Blox game, this is a great example of how this activity can work. In the photos below, a student has a photo card from the game box and is describing how the other students should build the structure so it matches exactly.

Choose the Back-to-School Support You Need:

If you’ve enjoyed this list of classroom team-building games, you might also be interested in the back-to-school tips, ideas, and resources I’ve shared in these posts:

Please consider sharing these classroom team-building games by pinning this post for friends and colleagues, and easy access next school year!