Description
Foster classroom connections on the first day of school with Get to Know You Bingo! This interactive back to school icebreaker game gets students up, moving, and talking while discovering fun facts about their classmates. Includes editable template formatted for Canva!
Included with this Get to Know You Bingo Game:
- 10 Ready-to-Play Getting to Know You Bingo Cards with Student Prompts
- Editable Bingo Card Template for Canva
- Student Game instructions
How to Use This Get to Know You Bingo Icebreaker:
This Get to Know You Bingo is the perfect icebreaker for building classroom community, easing first-day nerves, and encouraging students to find common ground on the first day of school.
To begin, hand out the Ready-to-Play Bingo Cards to students. Each square contains a fun prompt for teenage students, like “find someone who has traveled to another country” or “find someone who plays a sport.” Students move around the room asking classmates if they match the descriptions and collecting names in each square. The first to complete four in a row – vertically, horizontally, or diagonally – shouts “Bingo!” to win the round.
You may also wish to provide students with the Student Game Instructions, which clearly explain the rules, objectives, and how to win. The instructions emphasize mingling, inclusion (no repeated names), and verifying answers, making it easy for students to understand and teachers to facilitate with minimal prep. You can either hand these instructions out to students or display them on your classroom overhead projector.
You can also use the Editable Bingo Template to create customized versions of the game. Whether you want to align prompts with classroom content, school themes, or seasonal activities, the editable card makes it easy to differentiate or personalize for various age groups and learning goals.
The Get to Know You Bingo activity is more than just an icebreaker—it’s a strategic way to promote communication, collaboration, and confidence among students from day one. This game encourages everyone to get out of their comfort zone and engage with new classmates in a relaxed, low-pressure environment. It’s especially effective in large classrooms or settings where students come from different grades, schools, or backgrounds.
One of the greatest strengths of Get to Know You Bingo is its adaptability. You can reuse it multiple times throughout the year with updated themes or prompts. For example, you can create a Halloween edition, a holiday version, or a content-based version that integrates curriculum facts. With the editable card, teachers can tailor the prompts to suit language learners, younger grades, or even cross-curricular events like science fairs or reading weeks.
In advisory periods or SEL lessons, Get to Know You Bingo can be used to reinforce lessons on empathy, listening, and inclusion. Students are encouraged to ask thoughtful questions and share meaningful responses, which can lead to surprising discoveries and new friendships. Some teachers even follow up the game with a class discussion or written reflection to consolidate what students learned about their peers.
Additionally, the activity works well as a substitute plan or transition task. If you need a quick community-building activity between units or during downtime, Get to Know You Bingo is a ready-to-go resource that requires minimal materials and little-to-no tech. Simply print, hand out, and play.
Educators in virtual or hybrid classrooms can also adapt this activity using digital tools. By uploading the editable template into a collaborative platform like Google Slides or Jamboard, students can still engage with classmates in a similar way through chat, breakout rooms, or shared documents. The important thing is that the spirit of interaction and curiosity stays alive, regardless of the format.
If you’re working with a particularly shy or quiet group of students, consider playing multiple rounds of Get to Know You Bingo with new cards or altered goals (e.g., fill the whole board or make an “X” pattern). This gives everyone multiple opportunities to participate and breaks the ice more gradually.
No matter how you use it, Get to Know You Bingo helps set a positive tone for your classroom culture. It gives students a safe and structured way to open up, discover common interests, and feel like valued members of the class. With repeated use, it can even become a tradition your students look forward to every year.
✨ Kindly note that due to copyright restrictions, this resource is not editable. This is a common practice within the online marketplace in order to protect the clipartists and software providers that have authorized their intellectual property for the development of this resource.
⭒ For classrooms utilizing Google Classroom® ⭒
To access the digital version of these worksheets, simply follow the instructions within the resource to copy the files directly to your Google Drive®.
