#160: The 10 quick community builder activities that will become your classes favourite

What if I told you that you could build connection, boost buy-in, reset the vibe, AND reduce low-level behaviour… in five minutes flat?

No prep. Just you, your class, and a little bit of magic. ✨

In this episode, I’m giving you a front seat to 10 of my favourite grab-and-go community builders, the ones that get students laughing, talking, connecting, and (without even realising it) building the kind of classroom culture that makes behaviour easier.

A couple of episodes ago, we talked about the foundations of community, routines, predictability, felt safety, clarity, differentiation. All the behind-the-scenes cogs that make your classroom feel like a home.

Today?

We’re getting tangible (and fun as heck).

Because here’s the thing… Community building isn’t just a “start of the year” gimmick.

It’s how you:

• Reset a tense class
• Fill five minutes of dangerous dead-air time
• Reconnect when you’re feeling resentful
• Help students feel safe enough to share
• Invest in their emotional piggy bank (so you can make withdrawals later)

And yes — it also helps you fall back in love with your class when things feel a bit… blah.

So if you’ve ever thought:
 “They don’t deserve fun right now.”
 “They should just come in and learn.”
 “I don’t have time for this fluff.”

This episode might lovingly challenge that. 💛

Because connection isn’t fluffy. It’s proactive classroom management.

Inside This Episode:

Here are the 10 no-prep community builders I walk you through:

1. Transformer Triangles – Turn a simple triangle into something creative in 2 minutes. Gallery walk optional. Laughter guaranteed.
2. The Stare Down – Face off, no touching, no breaking eye contact. First to laugh loses. (Use your professional judgment with this one!)
3. Teacher Portrait – Students draw you. Risky? Yes. Hilarious? Also yes. (PS: Only if you’re not sensitive about your ears like I was.)
4. Class Debate – Throw out a juicy “Would You Rather” or controversial question and let them argue it out.
5. Racing Rhymes – Fast-paced rhyming battle in a circle. If you can’t rhyme, you’re out. Chaos in the best way.
6. Coin Toss Battle – Heads or tails showdown. Whole-class energy. No gambling involved, promise.
7. Sticky Slam – Interview your partner for 1 minute, then write down everything you remember. Fact-check. Compete. Connect.
8. Count to 20 – Whole-class challenge: count to 20, but only one person speaks at a time. Two at once? Back to one. Frustrating. Brilliant.
9. What’s Changed? – One student leaves, something in the room changes, they guess what it is.
10. Apple Pie – Guess who said the mystery word in a disguised voice. Year 11s LOVE this one.

RESOURCES MENTIONED

RESOURCES AND MORE SUPPORT:

• Shop all resources
• Join The Behaviour Club
• My book! It’s Never Just About the Behaviour: A holistic approach to classroom behaviour management
• The Low-Level Behaviour Bootcamp
• Free guide: 'Chats that Create Change'

Connect with me:

• Follow on Instagram @the.unteachables
• Check out my website

Transcript

Welcome And Purpose Of The Show

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi there, teachers. Welcome to the Unteachables Podcast. I'm your host, Claire English, and I am just a fellow teacher, a toddler mama, and a big old behaviour nerd on a mission to demystify and simplify that little thing called classroom management. The way we've all been taught to manage behaviour and classroom manage has left us playing crowd control, which is not something I subscribe to because we're not dancers, we're teachers. So listen in as I walk you through the game-changing strategies and I mean the things that we can actually do in action in our classrooms that will allow you to lean into your beautiful values as a compassionate educator and feel empowered to run your room with a little more calm and dare I say it, a lot less chaos. I will see you in the episode. Hello teachers, welcome back to the Unteachables Podcast. If you're new here, my name is Claire. I'm your host, and on this podcast, we talk all things classroom management and all the things that kind of fall under that. And one of the things that falls under that is community building. And I wanted to share with you today 10 really, really quick, engaging, fun, like fun as heck community builders that are going to become yours and your class's favorites this year. A couple of weeks ago, I did speak about how to build community. So I spoke about like the foundations of like routines and felt safety and predictability and clarity and differentiation, all the things that kind of have to create this foundation of, you know, a home in our classroom that is, you know, connected and has really beautiful rapport and all those things. If you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to that. That was not last episode, but the episode before that. But today I wanted to get really tangible with some things that you can do, things that you can bring into your classroom that are going to make your students go, heck yes, like this is a bit of fun. And without realizing it, you're going to be like without your students realizing it, they're going to be, you know, forming bonds in a different way. You're going to be opening up opportunities for a laugh, for more connection, for a little bit of vulnerability, just for community building, but not in like a really lame, explicit way that, you know, has your students cringing, but in a way that there's just going to be maximum buy-in. How many times can I say buy-in in this uh in this episode? What I really like about these ones as well, they don't require any prep because it is literally the worst thing when you Google, like, hey, team building activities, and you have a bunch of different results, and all of those results require like 50 pieces of paper to build a tower, or you know, like straws, or like just you know, balloons. Like you just don't have those things at the ready. And I'm not the kind of person that's going to plan things like weeks in advance. Like I'm always on the fly. So these are really, really great as just at a pinch, getting them done, like pull these ones out whenever you need them, because they are grab and go. Speaking of grab and go, these are all taken from my new cup filler resource. If you're in the club, go and grab them. Please, if you like the sound, like listen to this by all means, right? But if you like the sound of these, make sure you go and download that cup filler resource because it's going to add that layer of novelty. There's a start screen and it's like fill your cup. Um, you know, pick a cup and fill it up. And there's 20 cups, like all really colorful, really beautiful. And you click on a cup, and that is the cup that you fill through the activity that's on that slide. I love a good like click slide, don't I? Like clicking on the cup, clicking on the door, going like it's just it boosts the novelty so much. It's just brilliant. Uh, so go and download that if you're in the club. If you're not in the club and you're like, oh, I want that, uh, then I'll pop the link in the show notes for you to get that separately. So before I go into these 10 community builders, here's a little bit about how you can use them. You can use these obviously just if you want to invest a little bit of time into community building, like really explicitly. But you can also use these to kill five minutes of dead air time that often does result in a little bit of, you know, challenging, disruptive behaviors. Because if we're not engaging students with something, something else is going to engage them. I think I said that last uh episode. But if there's five minutes of dead air time, if we don't fill it, they're filling up with something else. So these activities are great for that. They do only take five or so minutes. They can take a little bit longer, a little bit less, just obviously can, you know, shape them for your context. Use these if you feel like things are a bit tense in the class, like if something has been going on, if you just get a vibe that things aren't great in your classroom, invest a little bit of time into one of these. Uh, like, you know, if you're struggling with the vibe. Um, and if you know that your students could use a little bit of familiarity with each other, if you know that like maybe they're not sharing during class discussions, maybe they don't feel comfortable in their groups doing group work, you can drop one of these in. And rather than saying, like, hey, let's do an icebreaker and a getting to know your task, you can drop one of these games in, these community builders, these cup fillers, and it will help to break the ice in a way that is really meaningful. But why even bother with community building? Like, why bother? Students will come in, they'll learn, they'll go home, especially when we're in a secondary setting when we have so many classes. Like, what is the point in investing in community building? Well, being in a classroom and learning and sharing and all of the things that we actually need to do when it comes to our job of teaching, it takes a really large amount of vulnerability for some students. Like getting students to share a response, like that does take vulnerability because it might be wrong or they might be laughed at, or, you know, yeah, just it's it's really awkward. It's really uncomfortable for some students. Like I was quite a high-achieving student. Like I, you know, had a good head on my shoulders and I still really struggled to share in a classroom setting because I was feeling really uncomfortable in myself. I was quite bullied, and I didn't feel comfortable with that. If we had a really strong class community, if I knew we had each other's backs, if I knew that we could have a bit of a laugh, things might have been different. If we were able to kind of build a little bit of a shared experience and a shared bond. Getting students laughing and sharing and just connecting in through the ways that I'm about to talk to you about, uh, it's just such a great way to like lay some foundations for them being open and willing to then share when it comes to the hard stuff or the learning stuff, like this more serious stuff. So it's just, yeah, it's just a great way to invest in that and to get students feeling more comfortable and familiar. And these are not something that you just do at the start of the year either. Like I drop these in all year long and you can do it whenever, whenever you want to. Even if you're listening and you're in the northern hemisphere right now and you're thinking, well, I'm actually more than halfway through the school year, do it. Like have some fun. What I really love about it as well is that if you're struggling with classroom behavior, you might be feeling like a little bit resentful of your students. You might be dreading some classes. You might be going, well, they don't deserve this, they don't deserve fun. What these particular activities will help you do is find the joy in your class again. And it will open up opportunities for you to see your students in a different light, which is always a really good like way of us to kind of break through that funk that we can get into with certain classes. So uh I'm seven minutes in, so I probably should go into the go into the activities that I want to share with you. Um, these activities, they're obviously in my cup filler resource, but because it might be a little bit difficult um for you to remember these or write them down if you're driving to work or anything like that, I'll pop them in the show notes as well. So it's super clear for you. So the first one that I love using is transformer triangles. So all of these instructions, by the way, I'm just gonna go through in like the clear student, like facing instruction way, because it's you know, really clear. So transformer triangles. Draw a triangle on a blank piece of paper. Like every student can draw a triangle on the paper that they have in front of them. You have two minutes to transform it into something creative. So pop the timer up, two minutes, and then instruct them to transform it into whatever they want, something as creative as they can possibly make it. When the time is up, students hold up their drawings and share it with the people around them. You can have something like a gallery walk, you can have like vote for the best, you can vote for the best one, the funniest one, the cutest one, whatever. But it's such like you can use this in a variety of ways, but it's a great one just to get students creative and having a bit of a laugh. The next one is the stare down. So find a partner and stand face to face. Your goal is to make the other person laugh first. You can pull faces, act silly, but no touching and no breaking eye contact. First person to laugh loses or to look away and moves on to a new competitor. Winners stay in until there's one stare down champion. Love this one, but just obviously, if your context does not, you know, really lend itself well to this kind of thing, I don't recommend it. For example, I worked at an All Boys SEMH setting. If they were staring each other in the eyes, like depending on the class, some of them might get a little bit defensive. So just be really conscious of the context that you're working in. Uh, really, really great one for some classes, maybe not as great for others. So just use your professional judgment. And that goes for all of these. It goes for everything that I say. You have to use your professional judgment. The next one is teacher portrait, really funny. You have two minutes to draw the best portrait of your teacher. When time is up, reveal your portrait and the winner will be chosen. And I put like a little bit of a PS on the slide saying, PS, please be kind. Uh, the reason I really like this one is because students sometimes aren't very kind and it gets so many laughs. Again, you can do a gallery walk, you can choose the funniest, you can choose the most accurate. Uh, but it's a great one to get a few laughs happening in the class. But don't do this one if you're really sensitive. Um, I've done this before and I've got pretty big ears, and they really emphasized those. And I was like, oh, obviously I had a laugh at myself, but um I was more sensitive back then. Okay, the next one is class debate. Just throw out like a really interesting debate question and, you know, get students to vote on their answer, get ready to argue their point, and you can choose a winning side. Again, just get students talking, having a bit of a laugh, like working together, uh, maybe getting them pretty passionate about their point of view. If you can get students debating and feeling passionate about something, like it's such a win. The one that I have up on the cup fillers is would you rather be royalty 1000 years ago or be an average person today? Just because it tests their history knowledge a little bit as well. But it's really like interesting to hear what they come out with. The next one is racing rhymes. Standing in a circle, the first person chooses a word and says it out loud. Going around the circle, each person must say a word that rhymes with the last word. If you can't think of a rhyme, you're out. Start again with a new word and keep going until there is one winner. This can be really fast-paced and really funny because you know, a lot of students like, uh-oh, and like say something stupid or can't think of something, and it's just a lot of fun. The next one is coin toss battle. Like exactly what it says on the packet, it's a coin toss. So each round, a coin will be tossed. You will guess either heads or tails by putting your heads on your hair, hands, on your head or on your bottom. If you get it correct, stay standing to play on. Incorrect answer, sit down, play on until there is one winner. This is kind of like a version of two up. So if you're in Australia, you'll know that on Anzac Day, it's the only day of the year where gambling outside of like a formal setting, Australians love gambling. I was so shocked when I moved from London and New Zealand back to Australia and how many gambling ads there were. Anyway, so it's a gambling game that you play on Anzac Day, and it was because it was played by the Australian soldiers during World War One. So two up is you literally stand in a pub and there's one person that's tossed, it's not like please don't do the gambling version with your students. I'm just saying there's a really interesting kind of history around it. Uh, you stand in a circle around one person, like tossing the coin, and you hold like a note up in the air, like money, like a five-dollar note, ten dollar note, twenty-dollar note, and you choose head or tails, and you do like a little, like, you know, non-verbal to say which one that you choose, and you find somebody with the same amount of money that they're holding up and the opposite choice to you, and then you pair up and they toss the coin. And if, you know, if it lands on tails and yours, you know, you chose heads, you hand your$20 over to the person that was also holding$20. So it's like, yeah, it's just a gambling game that Australians play on Anzac Day. Um, again, don't play the gambling version, but it is kind of like inspired by that. But the reason I'm talking about the Anzac Day game is because everybody gets into it so much. People are, I mean, I guess because it's gambling, but uh like people get so into it, it's just like a really like big community thing. Everyone's standing around, having a laugh. Like, that is the kind of vibe that the Queen Toss game can also bring because everyone just gets so like excited by their choice, and you don't have to gamble to make that exciting, obviously. Um, please don't gamble in your classroom. I'm gonna make that big disclaimer now. Do not gamble. I am not saying to gamble. I'm not even saying to gamble in your real life. I played two up a couple of times. I lose everything that I ever, ever, ever do. Uh so the next one, I'm gonna move right along from that. Uh sticky slam is the next one. Working in pairs, you will have one minute each to ask the other person as many questions as possible. Then you have one minute to write down everything you remember. The team with the most correct facts wins. This is a really great one for the start of the year, actually, um, because they don't necessarily know a lot about each other and they have to fact check as well. So that's a really good one. Count to 20. Uh, this is a whole class game where they take turns counting out loud, but only one person at a time can say a number. If two people speak at once, they have to start back at one and they work together to reach 20. It's so fun and it's so frustrating. If you have younger kids, you might want to start by doing just count to 10 because you know, like it's so hard. Because if I say one and you say one at the same time, we have to start back at one. And it's really great when you start getting close to 20 and you can see like the anticipation, like students like looking around. It's just a lot, of lot of fun. The next one is what the one chosen student leaves the room and the teacher or the class makes some kind of change. So you might move a chair around, you might switch seats with somebody else, you might turn a table a different way, or like, you know, hide one of the chairs. Then the chosen student who comes in tries to guess what has changed, and they have five guesses, and they're allowed one clue from classmates if they're stuck. The next one is actually the final one that I've got down here to talk about is apple pie. One student stands at the front of the class with their back turned, they're the guesser, and you tap a student on the shoulder, and they're going to be the chosen one who says apple pie or anything else that you want. Like it can be something related to your class, it can be something else funny in a disguised voice. The guesser has three tries to identify who said it. If they guess correctly, they switch places with the person who spoke. I have found that this one here is so great for the older. I mean, it's great for all ages, but the older students find it so hilarious. And with my year 11 and 12s, I always got them to um choose their own words. And that was always funny because they try to like, you know, throw a little red herring in to make it sound like it was somebody else. And it was just great fun. So I really recommend that one. Uh, and that is it. Those are the 10 community builders that I absolutely adore, and I hope that you will be able to take away at least one this week to, you know, pop into your classroom with and surprise and delight your students and feel really positive and happy and joyful and just building a beautiful community in your classroom. Because when it comes to classroom management, if you can establish that community, if you can have that buy-in, if you're able to build rapport with students through these games and these activities, because you're seeing them in a different light and you're seeing them for more than just students, then it's going to go a long way with how they're behaving in the classroom, how they're responding to you as their teacher. And also it's investing in their emotional piggy bank. So just say something does happen in a couple of weeks' time, you've invested in their emotional piggy bank. So you can make the withdrawal by sitting down with them and need to talk to them about their behavior. And if you do that over time, it's going to be so much easier to sit down with them, chat to them about their behavior, and actually get them to listen, respond, reflect, and make some changes and have buy-in to make those changes. So uh, mate, you should you should make my podcast into a drinking game. I also do not suggest that actually, that is a joke, but the amount of times I say buy-in, you could have like a little like unteachables bingo with the amount of times I say um buy-in, classroom management magic, routines. Uh I'm sure you could figure out some other ones. Uh, and on that note, I might just leave that. And I'll see if my husband decides to cut that out of the recording. Okay, have a wonderful week. If you do use one of those, by the way, feel free to pop in and let me know. And until next time, please keep sprinkling that classroom management magic all over the place. Big love, take care, and see you next time.