Beginning (ice-breaks, warm-ups)

"Do you have special skills/superpowers?"
"What is the biggest value you bring to the team?"
The participants add pictures, videos, photos or sticky notes on the online whiteboard, which illustrates their special skills.Afterwards, everyone explains their special skills and how they can help the group achieve its goals. This often leads to discussions, which are very helpful for team building. The game is very popular all over the world, not only for team building or online games but also for weddings and other big celebrations. Preparation: Before the start, all participants send an old photo of their childhood (from baby age to puberty) to the moderator by email. The moderator sticks all pictures on the online whiteboard. The moderator sets the timer to 2 minutes (possibly more depending on the participants). The participants should add sticky notes on the online whiteboard during this time and guess who is shown on each picture. Afterwards, all participants will reveal one by one who is on which picture and what great memories are associated with it. You could do it also with the pictures of your office desk, desktop, pets and many more.
Each participant will come-up with three facts about himself: Two of them are true, and one is a credible lie. Everybody writes the facts on sticky notes on the online whiteboard. 
Next, everyone shares their three statements and the group votes or discusses the presumption for the lie. For example here are three statements about John:

This icebreaker is a great way to get to know each other and to laugh a little bit. Talking about wishes and dreams is an excellent opportunity for improving the collaboration when working remotely. In this virtual game, the participants are asked to select three wishes and discuss them within the group. The online whiteboard Collaboard is very well suited for this. You can invite people to post a picture or video representing their wishes or dreams.Then other participants can guess what they mean! They can also vote for the best dream or wish. This way, the participants become more creative and get to know each other better. 

Here are questions to break the ice. Some of them are funny, others meaningful or serious.
The answers can be astonishing and show many characteristics of personalities and value systems of the participants. 
The list is of course not exhaustive.
Here are poplular examples of ice breaker questions: 

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  If you could write a book, what would it be about? 
  
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  What is your ideal day? 
  
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  What is the best gift you ever gave / received? 
  
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  What is the happiest moment in your life? What made it so special? 
  
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  What is the most terrible thing you have ever done for fun? 
  
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  What was the best advice you ever received? 
  
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  Where is a place you would like to go? 
  
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  If you had a time machine, what period would you travel to? 
  
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  If you were stranded on an island, what three things would you bring with you? 
  
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  Which song describes you best? 
  
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  If you were a colour, what would it be?
  
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  Which superpower would you choose? Why? 
  
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  What was your favourite TV show as a child? 
  
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  If you woke up tomorrow as an animal, what animal would you choose to be and why? (While an amusing ice breaker, this fun question can also lead to discussions about the valuable traits different animals possess and how those traits might relate to people.)
  

You can put the answers on the online whiteboard, discuss them together with you team members and have so much fun. How to do an ice breaker game with a big group online? 
Almost all effective group activities like ice-breaker games work in a regular group size of 10 - 30 people.
But what if you should conduct a session where you have many more participants? The warm-ups and ice breakers, which work well with regular group sizes, will probably not work at all or not very effectively with larger groups.
It is often difficult to attract the attention of so many participants, even for an experienced facilitator. But don't worry, there are solutions to the problem!
Many games that are suitable for smaller groups can be played in parallel in subgroups. Before the game starts, the large group is divided into smaller subgroups.
It is usually recommended that each subgroup includes participants from different departments or areas. This allows the participants to organise themselves and to play the game effectively within their subgroup.
The subdivision into subgroups can be made according to any characteristics: age, favourite food, hometown/-land or hair colour.
For online meetings and workshops, special characteristics can be considered: Size of the flat or house, distance from the main office in kilometres and so on.
The results of a first ice breaker game can also be used for future activities. For example, the results of the "Guess where I come from" can help in the subdivision according to the characteristic origin.
Icebreakers for the first day of class is a mini collection of activities to be done with a new group of students. Icebreakers are a great way for the teacher to get to know the students and for the students to get to know each other. It is important to keep things light on the first day and focus on communication. On top of that, icebreakers allow the teacher to initially assess their students’ strengths and weaknesses and do a little bit of language analysis, something which is very important to tailor the course to students’ needs.
Below, you can find 5 icebreakers to be done on the first day of class with adult or teenage classes, levels pre-intermediate and above. Here, you can take a look at how to tweak some of these activities to make them truly communicative and student-centered.
Icebreaker: Concentric circles conversations
This icebreaker works a little bit like a speed-dating session, requires very little preparation from the teacher and ensures a lot of one-to-one talking time for each student. It might be adapted for each level and group size, although it usually works best with bigger groups (at least 6 students). The teacher might also play although it is better to stay on the outside, moderate the game, and step in, in case there is a student left without a partner.
Procedure:
Arrange students in two circles, an inside and outside, the inside facing out. Each student should have a partner. Pairs talk about their answers to questions which you a) put on the board and erase after each has been discussed b) are printed on handouts for each student. Students have 3 minutes to discuss each answer. Once the time is up, you ask the students from the outside circle to move to their right, meet their new talking partner and answer the next question from the list. You should have as many questions as students. The most important thing is to make the questions open-ended to give your students something to work with. YES/NO questions will kill the game after a minute.
Here are some examples I came up with for my intermediate group of 8:

1. 
   Describe your perfect holidays.
   
2. 
   What is the last film you saw? Would you recommend it?
   
3. 
   What do you usually do in your free time?
   
4. 
   What is your best childhood memory?
   
5. 
   Are you more sociable or shy?
   
6. 
   Is there anything new you would like to try?
   
7. 
   Have you visited any nice restaurants or bars lately?
   
8. 
   Would you be interested in traveling into space?
   

Alternatively, at the beginning of the class, you could ask your students to write one question they would like to ask a stranger use those instead of your own ideas. Although it is more motivating for students, you run the risk of not everybody coming up with suitable questions (and in the case of teenage groups you almost ALWAYS end up with at least one dirty question ).
#2 Icebreaker: Matching pictures 
This icebreaker requires a little bit of preparation (see below). It allows students to talk about their preferences and get to know each other’s tastes and opinions what leads to exchanging views and finding out more about each other. It is also great in terms of student talking time and making students more comfortable speaking in front of their peers. I have seen this game in action many times and it is incredible how quickly students strike up conversations when they have a visual prop to give them something to work with. It works best with bigger groups, levels intermediate and above.
Procedure:
I have two sets of pictures I usually work with: different holiday destinations and different houses. Each set contains 12 different pictures, each picture has a number from 1 to 6 on the back (you need to glue pictures and number and cut them up before class). Numbers double, so there are two different pictures of holiday destinations/houses with the same number on the back. In case you have toner issues at work, you might always use pictures cut out from newspapers and magazines, just remember to put numbers on the other side of each.
Ask students to randomly pick a card from a box/ a sack and take a look at the picture.
Do they like this holiday destination /house? Would they like to travel/live there? Why/ why not? What are advantages and disadvantages of each holiday destination/house?
Give them a minute to think about it and then ask them to walk around the class and find the person who has the same number at the back of their picture.
Once they find their partner, they should introduce themselves briefly, and talk about their pictures answering the questions you have asked before.
What might seem like a monologue, usually naturally transforms into a conversation: students agree or disagree, ask about more details (Person A: I’d like to travel there because it seems peaceful and I’m very stressed at work. Person B: Really? What do you do?), and exchange personal experiences. The topics are neutral enough in nature not to cause any controversy or immediate clashes of opinions.
Give your students 5 minutes to talk in pairs and then ask numbers 1 and 2 to get together (you should get a group of 4). Same goes for 3 and 4, 5 and 6. Now, let students introduce their partners to new students: