Getting to Know You Activities

The following two activities are great for the first few days with a new class. They assist the teacher to learn more about her students, and for students to learn more about each other. More importantly, they help to establish a positive, supportive environment in the class.

These (along with other similar activities) will be published as part of the upcoming wordsmart teaching resource, English Teaching: A Survival Manual.

a) Designing lives

Aim: To give students the opportunity to communicate their self-perceptions to other students and the teacher.

Procedure

1. 1. Teacher distributes a piece of A4, white paper to each student.
2. 2. Teacher tells students that they are going to imagine they’ve written their autobiography and have been asked to sketch a design for the front cover. They will need a title and at least one large image (further words can also be added).
   
   The image should represent something important about their lives, how they would like to be remembered. It helps to show some examples from previous students (see example below).
   
   
3. 3. As a way of getting started, ask students to write down three or four similes about themselves, i.e. “My life is like….” Or “My life is as …. as ….”. These could then be used as the basis for the title and image/s on their covers.
4. 4. Give students the time to work on their covers.
5. 5. These can be talked about in small groups and eventually displayed on the wall.

Tips:

1. Encourage students to express what they perceive as positive about themselves.

2. Be aware of students whose self perceptions are very negative. This may require further, but sensitive, intervention – away from the other students, and possibly with the assistance of the school counselor/guidance officer.

3. Respect student privacy – they should not be required to reveal anything they do not wish to.

4. It helps if the teacher models a cover based on their own life first.

b) Private eyes

Aim: To uncover facts about other people in the class.

Procedure

Each student is given a copy of a sheet containing facts they must discover, e.g.:

For a specified amount of time (say five minutes), they must find as many people as they can to place in each box. This will involve standing up, moving around the room and talking to other people in the class.

At the end of the time, students form groups of three or four (this can be based on desk arrangements) and compare answers.

Tips

This is a noisy activity. You might want to warn nearby teachers what you are planning, and organize a signal (e.g. a bell, raised hand) for ending the activity and in the event that students become too noisy.

Change the “fact sheet” to suit your class and school community.

Tell students they must talk to students they don’t usually sit near first.

Once students start, this activity really runs itself. Just be aware of non-participators and offer quiet encouragement. Like many of the other activities, teacher involvement is helpful.

As usual, privacy consideration must be respected.