Yesterday was the first day of class! I’m teaching Calculus I for the third time, but this time as an active-learning style course. My students will be working in small groups every day in class, so I wanted to use an icebreaker to help them get used to working together.
The groups were randomly assigned (which is really important for making everyone feel included, and keeping people from just working with their friends every day). Each group of four had to share their names with their group, find something they all have in common, and find something that’s different about all of them. This part I’ll probably continue every day for the first several classes.
Then their task was this: given 30 colored notecards and a ping-pong ball, build the tallest tower you can using the notecards that will support the ping-pong ball. The teams had 7 minutes to work. The tallest tower ended up being 5 notecards high (the taller towers couldn’t stand up for more than a few seconds at a time). This was a great activity for students who don’t think they’re math-minded to use some of the math/physics/building skills they have.
After the activity, we talked as a class about applying lessons from this activity to daily group work. The students recognized the importance of
- listening to everyone’s ideas
- making sure no one was left out
- accepting feedback and even criticism.
Overall the students really enjoyed the icebreaker, and I would do it again!
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