Start of the year ice-breakers

New year, new students, and new routines!

I don't know about other teachers, but I seem to get new groups of students every year. Obviously, this means I don't even know their names, let alone their skills and learning styles. To me, this means I need to do both as quickly as possible in order to start feeling productive.

This year, I have done the following activities with my students:

First, my youngest students (1º ESO or Year 7). I have asked them to create a time capsule of themselves. I asked them to include information such as their height, their age in days, their favourite things, and other random questions. It was a bit of fun, but it got them thinking- 'how should I include my exact height if I don't have a tape measure?'... I asked them to be creative. Some of them used pens and pencils ("I'm 15 pens tall!"), some others asked their friends to walk toe to heel next to them ("I'm seven feet!")... It was a bit of fun but it allowed me to get to know the way they solve problems, how they interact, and also, how they express themselves in English. Another activity we did was to write Crazy Chain Stories. I gave them all the same start to a story, which they had to copy at the top of a piece of paper. Then, folding the sheet so only the last sentence was visible, they had to continue the story and then, fold again and pass it on. At the end, we read the resulting stories. I was more interested in the process of writing than in the final result. Again, it allowed me to check how they worked and it forced them to write in English, even if it was a simple sentence.

My next group, 2º ESO (Year 8), did a grammar revision activity with a prize attached to it. I gave them 15 gapped sentences and they had to fill in the gaps. Every correct answer allowed them to throw a paper ball into the bin. The person with the highest number of successful throws would get a lollipop. In this case, there was no cooperation- it was clearly a competition, but even then it gave me the chance to observe them when they were motivated and eager for the prize: some of them tried to copy someone else's answers, whereas others didn't complete the work and others breezed through it.

My oldest students, in 4º ESO (Year 10), were given a challenge. After showing them a short video on the 6 degrees of separation theory, I gave them random names of public figures, some of them already dead and some of them still alive, and I asked them to research them in order to find a plausible connection between them. Incredibly, some of my students managed to connect really diverse people in less than 6 steps! I watched them as they worked in pairs, as they tried to figure out how to 'crack' it, as it were, and finally, I asked them to explain their thought process in order to connect the two people they had been given. With an activity like this, I gained some knowledge of them, which I think is a good basis for a successful start of the year.

What do other people do to start their school year? Let me know in the comments box below!

Thanks for popping in! :)

Maite