Success in the classroom is all about relationships...both the teacher-student relationship and the student-student relationship. By building upon these relationships teachers will see a decrease in classroom management problems and an increase in academic achievement.
Get to know you activities are a great way to foster both of these relationships.
One of my favorite get to know you activities I call the "Interview and Introduction".
It's really very simple.
Here are the steps:
1. Hand each student an index card. Make sure they do NOT write their name on the card.
2. Have the students answer a series of five questions on their index card. Make sure the questions are not content related. Here are some possible questions...
- What is your favorite meal?
- What do you like to do in your free time?
- What is your favorite movie?
- What is you favorite TV show?
- What is your favorite book?
- What city, state, or country would you like to visit?
- Name something fun you did this summer?
3. After students have answered the questions, collect the index cards and redistribute them back to the students at random. Make sure students do not get their own card back.
4. Have students walk around the room asking questions (interviewing each other) to try to find the student whose card they have.
5. Once students find their person, they write the person's name on top of the card and go back to their seat.
6. The teacher then calls on students at random to "introduce" their person. Time and class size will determine how many students are introduced.
7. The teacher then collects all the index cards.
What's great about this activity is the teacher now has information about all the students that can be used for other activities throughout the school year to help build upon the student-student relationship as well as the student-teacher relationship. Remember, get to know you activities should not just be save for the beginning of the school year. To truly build your classroom, get to know you activities should be done a regular basis.
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