As any seasoned teacher will tell you, it’s important to start the school year off on a good note. Along with essentials like reviewing classroom rules and units of study, icebreakers play a key role in setting the right tone and building rapport with a new group of students.

Icebreakers help students get to know one another, create a sense of community, ease opening-day anxieties and add an element of fun. But they also help teachers learn more about their students by revealing personalities, likes and dislikes, and learning styles. Gaining these insights early on can help us steer the rest of the school year in a positive direction. The best icebreakers also tie in thematically or structurally with future learning.

Ruth Duran, a 6th-grade teacher at PS/MS 315 in the Bronx, said first-day icebreakers essentially allow teachers to go with the flow. “Students want to be social when they first come back from summer, and icebreakers give students that opportunity,” she said. “The students already have that pent-up energy, so you might as well use it in a productive way.”

On the first day of school, Nora Meyers, a 2nd-grade teacher at PS 889 in Brooklyn, kicks things off with a name game. The first student says their name, the second student repeats it and adds their own, the third recalls both names before adding theirs and so on. “I am the last one to go so I get to say everyone’s name,” she said. The activity gives students the chance to hear one another’s names pronounced correctly, while giving Meyers an early opportunity to memorize the class roster. In the days that follow, she builds on the theme by reading “The Name Jar” by Yangsook Choi.

Amy Mascunana, an ENL teacher at Pelham Gardens MS in the Bronx, likes to begin the year with the “two truths and a lie” game, an icebreaker where students try to pick out which of three statements is untrue. She usually asks students to write down in advance the three things they want to say, because they are less likely to accidentally give away the lie with their intonation if they read the statements aloud.

She said she enjoys trying to stump her students with unexpected facts from her life. “Icebreakers have the potential to humanize teachers for their students,” she said. “They’re also a great way to establish common ground.”

As the year progresses, Mascunana noted, the “two truths and a lie” game can be adapted for academics. Teachers might ask students to identify which statement is untrue about a character in a novel, a historical figure or even a math concept, she explained.

In my own classroom, I’ve used an activity called “voting with your feet,” in which I read a statement and students position themselves around the room to show how strongly they agree or disagree with it. At the start of the year, the prompts are usually topical or cultural — something students can easily relate to. As the year progresses, I shift to academic content, using the activity to introduce themes in “Romeo and Juliet,” for example, or other works of literature. The “voting with your feet” icebreaker can even be used as a form of preassessment to see what students already know about a new topic of study.

Meyers has a go-to icebreaker that she returns to throughout the school year: “Zip, Zap, Zop,” a hand-movement game in which students pass a physical and audible signal around the circle. Her class first plays the game in September and records their time, then returns to it periodically as a brain break. The students challenge themselves to complete the game faster each time they play, which keeps the activity fun and motivating.

For teachers using icebreakers this year, it’s important to keep student diversity in mind. Prompts like “What did you do on your summer vacation?” can unintentionally exclude students who didn’t have the opportunity to travel. Choose activities that are inclusive and accessible to all students so that students with disabilities and English language learners can fully participate and feel part of the classroom community.

Students who have trouble expressing themselves in written form can share their ideas orally or use images to help communicate, Meyers said. For students with limited English, Mascunana suggests offering translations or pairing students with a language buddy who can help them follow the activity. And if all else fails, she said, “body language and tone are universal.”

Some teachers are hesitant to use icebreakers at the beginning of the school year because they don’t know their students yet and they aren’t sure how the activity will go. Duran said they shouldn’t let that fear stop them.

“It’s okay if it gets a bit messy. Embrace it,” she said. “You want your students to know that they can bring a little bit of themselves into the classroom, that things can be a little bit flexible, that their voice matters.”

Above all else, Duran said, icebreakers can help create the welcoming environment that is so important to establish at the start of a new school year.

“You want the students,” she said, “not to feel that they have to be here, but that they want to be here.”