How to Make Small Talk: A Practical Guide for Teenagers and Young Adults

Most icebreaker lists are written as if every class is the same and every student wants to talk. Yours is not and they do not. So these are sorted by what you actually need the question to do, with notes on the ones that go wrong.

I run social skills workshops in classrooms, which means I have watched a lot of icebreakers land and a fair number die. The ones below are the ones that hold up.

First day, whole class, low stakes

Use these when nobody knows anybody and half the room would rather be invisible. Every one of them is answerable in a single sentence, which is the entire design requirement on day one.

• "What is something you are good at that has nothing to do with school?"
• "What is the best thing you did this summer?"
• "If you could only eat one meal for a week, what would it be?"
• "What is a small thing that instantly improves your day?"
• "What is something you have watched or read more than once?"
• "What is one thing you are hoping to get better at this year?"

Keep in mind that "tell us something interesting about yourself" fails badly on day one, because it asks a nervous fourteen-year-old to both generate and judge their own answer in front of the room. Give them a narrow question and the answer arrives on its own.

Pairs, when the room is too big to speak in

Pair work is the single most useful format for the students you are most worried about. Speaking to one person is a fraction of the risk of speaking to thirty, and the quiet kids get to participate fully without ever being on display.

• "Find two things you both like and one thing you completely disagree about."
• "What did you want to be when you were seven?"
• "What is something you have changed your mind about?"
• "Tell each other about a place you know really well."
• "What is the most useless skill you have?"

Two practical notes. Pair students yourself rather than letting them choose, or the same kids get left over every time. And give a time limit, because "talk to your partner" with no end point makes anxious students watch the clock instead of listening.

Small groups, once they know each other a little

• "What is a rule you would change about this school, and what would you replace it with?"
• "What is something everyone your age is supposed to like that you do not?"
• "What is the best advice you have ever been given, and did you take it?"
• "If you had to teach a class tomorrow on anything at all, what would it be?"
• "What is something adults get wrong about people your age?"

That last one reliably produces the most honest discussion in the room, and it is worth being ready for real answers rather than funny ones.

Quick check-ins, thirty seconds or less

For the start of a period, or a Monday, or the day after something difficult happened.

• "One word for how this week is going."
• "Rate your energy one to ten. No explanation needed."
• "What is one thing you are looking forward to, even a small one?"
• "Thumbs up, sideways, or down, and you do not have to say why."

The "no explanation needed" part is not filler. It is what makes a check-in safe enough that students answer honestly instead of performing fine.

The student that will not answer

Every list assumes participation. Here is what to do when you do not get it.

Make participation genuinely optional and say so out loud. "Pass" should be an available answer, offered before you start rather than granted as a concession when somebody freezes. Almost every student that is given a real pass option uses it once or twice and then joins in.

Go second, not first. If you answer your own question before calling on anyone, you model the length and tone of a good answer and you remove the guesswork.

Avoid going around the circle in order. Sequential turns mean the anxious student spends everybody else's turn rehearsing instead of listening, and by the time it reaches them they are far more nervous than when you started.

And do not read silence as defiance. A student that says nothing in a group of thirty will often talk freely in a pair. The format is usually the problem rather than the willingness.

Why this matters more than it looks like it does

Icebreakers get treated as filler, something to run before the real content starts. For a specific set of students they are the real content.

There are young people in your classroom that have privately concluded something is wrong with them, because everyone else seems to find this easy and they do not. What they are actually missing is practice. Connection is a learnable skill, and the students that seem naturally good at it mostly just got more reps, earlier.

A well-run icebreaker gives a student a rep in a setting where the stakes are low and an adult is managing the room. For a kid that has not started a conversation with a peer in weeks, that is not filler at all.

Running them well

A few things that make the difference between an icebreaker that works and one that everybody endures.

• Keep the first one short. Two minutes is plenty on day one.
• Ask a question you would genuinely want to answer yourself. Students can tell.
• Do not make anybody stand up to speak unless the whole class is doing it.
• Repeat the same format a few times rather than finding a new game each week. Familiarity lowers the stakes far more than novelty raises the interest.
• Notice who never gets picked in self-selected pairs, and quietly fix it next time.

If you want the underlying skills, not just the questions

The questions on this page create the opportunity. What some students need is the thing underneath it: how to start a conversation, how to keep one going when the other person gives you three words, how to recover when it goes wrong.

Our free guides cover exactly that and are written for the students themselves, so you can send them to a class or to one kid. And if you would like somebody to come and teach it directly, that is what we do.