5 improv games to use as warmups or icebreakers

Activities to unite, energize and ready a class for work

How do you start a class? What activity brings everybody together, readying them for whatever is the main focus of the lesson?

Here are five improv games, with instructions, I’ve successfully used as warmups or icebreakers with teenagers and adults. These are great no-fuss exercises, requiring very little prior preparation. They combine learning about mental flexibility, focus, communication, body language and empathy, with good fun.

To get the best out of them you’ll need a largish space like a hall to work in where you have the freedom to move and to be as loud as you want without running the risk of disturbing anybody.

When you’ve finished, a quick feedback round before going on to the lesson’s core event will benefit everyone. They’ll hear things they may never have thought about for themselves.

A general question like, “What could you take from the exercise(s) we’ve just done and use?”, will draw all sorts of answers.

For instance, through Hares and Hounds, we learn about reaction times: how quickly we respond to what was actually said, rather than what we think or assume was said.

In putting together a presentation, do we work on assumptions about what our audience needs and wants to know and how to present our information most effectively, or do we actually know?

Additionally, we learn how ready to follow the leader many of us are!

Through Walk As we get an opportunity to experience how it feels to be someone other than ourselves. What impact, if any, does that have?

Go to improv games: 5 warm-ups/icebreakers for speech and drama classes.

Until next time,
Happy teaching, happy speaking,

Susan

PS. As I said last week, and I’ll say next, if you have ideas for topics you’d like to see covered in this newsletter, or if you’d like to share an article on some aspect of public speaking, or a speech of your own, please get in touch. Either reply to this email or contact me through the form on my about me page on my website. I’d love to hear from you!