15 Easy Icebreakers for Spanish Class

A strong, positive classroom community is VITAL for language class. While I like to build community over the year through our classroom routines, I do like to do purposeful icebreakers and getting to know you activities from time to time, too! Let’s get into 15 icebreakers for Spanish class!

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15 Icebreakers for Spanish Class

1. Card Talk with Name Tags
2. Social media “profiles”
3. Conversation Cards
4. Human Bingo
5. After Break Writing
6. All About Me Posters
7. The Ball Game
8. 4 Corners Game (Opinions)
9. 4 Corners Game (Frequency)
10. 2 Truths and a Lie
11. Catchphrase/Taboo/Head’s Up
12. This or That
13. Blob Game
14. Levántense si..
15. Line up by..

Card Talk with Name Tags

I’ve shared about this in my first day of school lesson plan, and it’s such a low stress option for students to color their name tags and decorate them with little tidbits about themselves.

Social media “profiles”

These can be used in so many ways, like a book summary project or chapter wrap up, but they’re also great for an all about me project! Students create “posts” on their “profile” to show what’s important to them.

Conversation Cards

Exactly what it sounds like, these cards are great for a small group conversation starter option, and they are something that I will do at different points throughout the year, too! Students draw a card and you can have them answer, or you can have each person in the group answer.

Human Bingo

This is a great speaking option that gets students up and moving. Give students a bingo board and have them walk around and find classmates that fit the questions. This is easy to change the level for your students!

After Break Writing

This is perfect for those who want to avoid whole class or small group options to ease students back into Spanish class while getting to know students. Use printable or digital templates for students to share what they were up to all summer long, with variations for each level that you teach!

All About Me Posters

Another low stress, individual option is to have students choose and color a poster full of facts about them. You can have them do it in English or Spanish, depending on the level you’re using it with!

The Ball Game

This is always a hit and it is SO easy. Students ask a question, toss the ball, another student catches it, answers the question, and the cycle repeats. You can use this with ANY question/answer in Spanish. Let your students frame them, give them a bank, or scaffold it for them on the board!

4 Corners Game (Opinions)

4 Corners Game with Opinions is great to get students talking. For novices, use this cognates game and they’ll love seeing how many words they can figure out AND share their thoughts about them.

4 Corners Game (Frequency)

An easy way to change up 4 corners is to make the options based on frequency instead of sharing their opinions. You can do this with free time activities for a great review for your Spanish 2 students!

2 Truths and a Lie

This is an easy game you can play with any topic. I find it much easier if you have students record their 3 statements first. You can have them play in a small group or have them, mark the truths and lie, then turn them in. Play as a whole class by reading their statements out loud. Classmates guess which is the lie!

Catchphrase/Taboo/Head’s Up

These are great games that students can be silly with because it encourages out of the box thinking with circumlocution strategies and often winds up with a lot of laughter! You can scaffold these games for novices by using quizlet (or a different flashcard generator) and I have a blog post to walk through that strategy here.

This or That

Similar to 4 Corners, students move to show their opinions. You can do this with so many different themes! Click here to download a set for back to school.

Blob Game

This one is from La Libre Language Learning. Basically, students form blobs, or groups of people, by asking & answering a question. If they have the same answer, they get added to that blob, until there are only little groups around the classroom that all agree!

Levántense si..

Movement, but more contained as students will just stand up if a statement applies to them. This can be any kind of statement if you want to fit a particular unit!

Line up by..

This also works really well as a fast finisher. Line up by birthday, by name (alphabetically), by age, by number of siblings – anything!

Icebreakers for Spanish Class

There’s such a big mix of options there – you could do a different one every week for the first quarter and mix and match the rest throughout the year!

Looking for more?

If you’re looking for more to help you with your lesson planning during the first month of school, check out these posts!

This post is helpful as you’re considering your classroom policies and expectations.

As the year starts, you might be wondering how much time you should spend in class speaking Spanish. All of it? Some of it? and HOW do you communicate expectations to students and guardians? Check out this post on 90% time in the target language here!

If you’re not sure how to start every day, check out this blog post with what to do the first 10 minutes of class. Easy, repeatable, routine!

Establishing classroom routines at the start of the year is a great way to get your classroom management off on the right foot! Check out the post with daily routines, and how I like to start and end each class period here.