When the students come back to school, teachers and students have the challenge of getting to know each other. This could be a very complicated activity especially for those teachers, such as English teachers, who the spend very few hours with each class.
Although during this post we are going to see some examples of activities for the different levels (preschool and 1st, 2nd and 3rd cycles), we are going to start with an activity to help teachers to introduce themselves to their students.
TEACHER AUTOBIOGRAPHY BIG BOOK
First of all, it could be interesting and very motivating for students to meet their teacher. You can create a big book with different information you want your students to know like:
- Childhood.
- Family.
- Pets.
- Sports you practice or hobbies.
- Favourite books.
- Other interesting or important aspects.
- Etc.
With this activity, the teacher will be an example for students and s/he will review examples of sentences and basic structures. After that, the teacher can ask students to create their own autobiography books.
3rd Cycle - TRUE OR FALSE STATEMENTS.
After the teacher's introduction you can prepare a follow up activity that could be great especially for the 5th and 6th Graders. In this activity, students have to write true or false depending if the written sentences about the teacher are right or wrong. After that, we can ask our students to write right or wrong sentences to do the same activities with their classmates, in pairs or in small groups.
*This activity can be adapted for younger students with simple sentences or reading the sentences aloud for them.
2nd Cycle - INTERVIEWING EACH OTHER.
Source: http://www.petitelemon.com/
In the 2nd cycle students are supposed to be a little bit more autonomous, especially with oral skills. That's why interviewing their classmates can be a good way to practice basic personal questions and answers. They can ask oral questions and write down their classmate's answers. In order to help your students, you can display a poster with examples of the different structures.
1st Cycle - FILL IN THE BLANKS.
Source: http://pamhyer.blogspot.com.es/ and Readable Creations (€!).
Our first graders are not supposed to know how to read and write in English because they are still learning to do it in their mother tongue. For this reason, we should start teaching personal information sentences orally. Once they understand these sentences, we can ask them to fill in some worksheets with some basic information in order to consolidate these structures. In any case, they will write whole sentences. The writing task should be very guided and the teacher will help the students most of the time.
Preschool - MY PORTRAIT
Our preschool students aren't able to write or to express themselves, especially in English. For this reason, you can ask them to draw a self-portrait and to write their name below. We can find out a lot of our students personalities through drawing.
WHAT CAN WE DO WITH OUR 'GETTING TO KNOW EACH OTHER' TASKS?
Usually, when we finish our tasks we usually put them in a folder and we forget them. When we carry out a task it's important to do it with a purpose because in this way, students will feel that they have a reason to do it and not just because the teacher says it.
1. DISPLAYING OUR DESCRIPTION ON THE WALL
If we display the description on the wall, we allow our students to have a look at them when they want and in this way they review the sentences they learnt and they practice reading at the same time. A good activity for fast finishers could be to review all this structures with the help of the descriptions and they can do it in pairs or in small groups.
If we hang them in the corridor, we will allow other students, teachers and parents to see what our students did.
2. CREATING MINI BOOKS.
Creating mini books with personal information can be an attractive way to compile the important structures they need to express themselves. It's also a good idea to display them in the classroom so they can be close enough to be reached by students if they need them.
These have been just a few examples of activities for the first week.
What kind of activities do you use to get to know your students?
