The Power of an Icebreaker!!!

As the first post of this journal I wanted to talk about something I really like, and there is nothing I like best than an icebreaker. But, let's start from the very beginning. What is an icebreaker?

"An icebreaker is an activity, exercise, or experience designed to break the ‘ice’ that typically limits or inhibits interactions of a group of people who may or may not know each other. A group is exhibiting “ice” if there is little or no talking, reluctance to make physical contact, and poor eye contact. Additionally, group members stand alone, displaying a lack or initiative and absence of trust."

Source: https://icebreakerideas.com/what-is-icebreaker/

So, that is an icebreaker. When do we use it? We use it the first day of class with a new group of students, basically. Every time we start class with a new group or at the start of a school year, we need to do an icebreaker activity.

I can tell there are two types of icebreakers, the one where the studentts get to know their new teacher of the one where new students get to know each other.

What are my favourite icebreaker activities?

One that I almost always do is called "two truths an a lie" in my case I rename it as "three truths an a lie" and is quite simple. This is how it works:

Teacher: Writes four sentences on the board (3 of them are real and the other one is not) and tells the students exactly that. The teacher sets a time limit (I normally set 3 minutes) and asks the students to make as many questions as possible about the sentences and try to find out which one is not the real one.

Students: For three minutes they ask all the questions related to the sentences they can and as the teacher answer them, they - the students - have to try to find out which one is not true - based on the teacher's answers.

Teacher: After the three minutes are over, the teacher asks the students to discuss in pairs which sentence they believe is not true and the elicits ideas - and reasons why they think so.

At the end, the teacher asks the students to work in pairs and do the same - write four sentences about them, three real and one unreal - and perform the same activity they did with the teacher (three minutes for each student)

This is my example of "three truths and a lie". In this case I made a PPT presentation and I use it as my icebreaker. So, instead of writing the sentences on the board I show photos of myself with the sentences to make it more believable and a little more difficult for the students to know which one is not true.



The objective of an icebreaker is that at the end, the students get to know a little bit more about the teacher (so the teacher is not a stranger anymore) and the students themselves get to know a little bit more about their partners (so they don't feel they are sitting next to strangers anymore)

This is just one example of an icebreaker, but there are lots of different activities you can do the first day of class to "break" that ice between the students and yourselves and between the students themselves.

Some of those activities are as follows:

- Blobs and lines
- This or that
- Signatures
- Classmate Bingo
- Who's in your circle
- Toilet paper roll
- etc

You can get more examples and procedures here: https://www.ef.com/wwen/blog/teacherzone/great-esl-icebreakers-and-warmups/

If you have any other example of an icebreaker I would love to hear from you... so if you are not too busy maybe you can leave a comment with your ideas and share them with everybody else.

Thank you for stopping by... and happy teaching!


Erick Maguiño Matusaki

Welcome to my journal...

Hello everybody and thank you for taking the time to stop by and read these words. Let me introduce myself,  my name is Erick Maguiño Matusaki and I am a Peruvian English teacher with a 20-year-experience teaching this beautiful language.

This journey has taken me to classrooms in very poor neighbourhoods to offices of top executives in different countries in Latin America. I have worked with primary and secondary students at schools and language centres, university students and adults and executives. I have given General English lessons as well and Business lessons, prepared students to take Cambridge exams and IELTS and also train teachers to develop their teaching practices.

I am currently living and working in Monterrey - Mexico for International House. I moved here in September 2016 and it's been three amazing years so far. I am also a Cambridge Speaking examiner and work with learners all over Nuevo Leon.

Why am I doing this?

I have always wanted to start a journal but somehow never really had the chance to do it properly or to get my hands on this site but since the end of the year is approaching and there is less and less work, which means I am getting more and more free time, I decided to get this going and start working on it.

What will you find here?

I will try to post everything about teaching, from techniques on how to do some basic teaching stuff, e.g. giving instructions and setting up activities, to more complex topics, e.g. teaching approaches or innovations in teaching, just to name a few.

So, thank you very much for reading and taking the time to be here and I really hope you enjoy this. I am trying my best to make this work and share with you all the knowledge I've got and see if I can also learn something from you.

Happy teaching,



Erick Maguiño Matusaki