Team Building Activities - Back to School Videos & Assignments Classroom Bundle

Start the first month back to school with five engaging team-building activities designed to build collaboration, creative thinking, and problem-solving skills, while still allowing students to have fun. These activities are structured, interactive, and low-pressure, making them ideal for establishing classroom community and engaging even your most reluctant students. Each activity is introduced with a short, hand-drawn video created by John Spencer that clearly explains the challenge and immediately hooks students. Watch the preview video above to see the videos in action, and download the preview to explore sample handouts, organizers, puzzles, stations, and projects included in the bundle.

The 5 Back to School Team-Building Activities Included:

➡️ Maker Sprint Challenge: In this hands-on design challenge, students work in teams to create and “sell” a product using a limited set of materials, including cardboard, tape, plastic cups, a plastic bag, and string. The activity encourages creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving while introducing persuasive thinking and product design.

➡️ Zombie Teacher Escape Room: Students work together to solve puzzles and riddles in a race against time to save their teacher, who has been mysteriously transformed into a zombie. This highly engaging escape-room-style activity promotes teamwork, critical thinking, and communication as students move through a series of stations.

➡️ Wonder Day: Wonder Day encourages curiosity-driven learning by allowing students to research a topic they are genuinely interested in. Students practice asking questions, evaluating sources, and organizing information while taking ownership of their learning.

➡️ Buried Ship Mystery: In this mystery-based activity, students collaborate to analyze clues and solve a fictional mystery involving a buried ship discovered in downtown San Francisco. Students use inference and evidence to develop and justify their final theory.

➡️ Sports Mash-Up: Students design an original sport by combining elements from multiple existing sports. Through guided brainstorming and drafting, students develop rules, objectives, and gameplay while practicing creative thinking and collaboration.

How Do The Back to School Team Building Activities Work?:

• Students begin each activity by watching a short, hand-drawn video that introduces the challenge and sets expectations in an engaging way. These videos immediately capture student interest and provide a clear overview of the task.

• Teachers then use the included PowerPoint presentations to walk students through each activity step by step, explaining expectations and guiding discussion.

• Students complete the activities using the provided handouts, brainstorming sheets, graphic organizers, puzzles, task cards, and stations, all designed to support collaboration and critical thinking with minimal teacher prep.
  
  

Included in the Back to School Team Building Activities:

All activities include an introductory video, detailed teacher instructions, and a PowerPoint presentation to guide the lesson. Additional materials included for each activity are outlined below.

➡️ Maker Sprint Challenge:

• Two brainstorming graphic organizers
• “Analyze Your Ideas” checklist
• Product outline sheet
• Persuasive techniques handout (ethos, pathos, logos)
• Advertisement planning pages (blog post, video, or sales pitch)
• Final copy pages for advertisements
• Teacher rubric

➡️ Zombie Teacher Escape Room:

• Signs for each of the six stations
• Student instructions for each station
• All station materials (envelope templates, word maze, homophone slips, cipher wheel, jigsaw puzzle, rebus puzzles, spelling search, and encrypted message)
• Student zombie booklet for recording discovered codes
• Teacher answer key to check work and determine the winning group

➡️ Wonder Day:

• “Are Your Sources Credible?” handout
• Wonder Day research graphic organizer
• Good-copy writing pages
• Teacher rubric

➡️ Buried Ship Mystery:

• Buried Ship Mystery student handout
• Inferring information brainstorming page
• “Our Final Theory” graphic organizer with sentence stems

➡️ Sports Mash-Up:

• Sports Mash-Up brainstorming page with guiding questions
• Idea development pages with prompting questions
• Sport instructions rough draft page
• Revise-and-edit peer feedback page
• Final copy pages with space for illustrations
• Teacher rubric

What Teachers Are Saying About the Team Building Activities:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I started "Fun Fridays" this year. They were thrilled to play this game, and the teams were uber-competitive! This strengthens team-building skills. Thanks!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ These team building activities are so much fun. My students really enjoyed each activity, and I enjoyed watching them work together!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ These are really unique and engaging projects. Great to space out during the year for a class that might start off not knowing one another well. I did one after each time I mixed up the seating chart.

If you like this, you'll love our bell-ringers: 
→ Best-Selling ELA Bell-Ringers (Vol 3)

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The videos and resources in this resource are for single-classroom use and are not to be uploaded to the Internet in any format without permission from the creators. Please contact prestoplans@gmail.com if you require more information.