A vocabulary game

Get-to-know-you activity

This year, try this fresh get-to-know-you activity with your class: I call it, “Who’s In Your Circles?” It gets kids up and moving, finding out about those common interests, but in a non-threatening way.

First, have students draw three concentric circles on their desk with a dry-erase marker. (Or, a piece of blank paper and a pencil works fine, too!) There should be a nice-sized gap between each circle and a little room outside the outer circle.

Now tell students how to label their circles: the inner-most circle will be the Topic, like… favorite food, favorite subject, favorite hobby. In the photo above, the topic is “favorite food,” so the inner circle is labeled, Food.

The next circle gets labeled Love, the third circle gets labeled Like, and the space outside the third circle gets labeled Don’t Like. Be sure each student has a name tag on his/her desk, and if they don’t, just have them write their name in the corner of the desk.

Next, have students fill in their own inner circle with their answer to the topic. In the photo above, you can see this student —let’s call her Addy — wrote “pizza.”

Now this is where the fun begins.

At your signal, students will leave their own desk, bring their dry-erase marker with them, and visit other students’ desks.

Let’s say Kate visits Addy’s desk. Kate reads that Addy’s favorite food is pizza. Now Kate decides if she loves pizza, likes pizza, or doesn’t like pizza. Kate lovespizza, so she writes her own name on Addy’s desk, inside the Love circle. Then Kate moves on to other desks.

After students have had time to visit most of their classmates’ desks, bring them back to their own desks to have a look at all the names in their various circles.

Addy sees that Emma does not like pizza. Really, Emma? Who doesn’t like pizza? But Addy also sees that Sarah and Kate both love pizza. Sweet! Maybe they can have a pizza party together this weekend!

After a couple of minutes, have students erase their desk and and start a new round with a different topic!

I have pre-made “Who’s In Your Circles?” sheets that work great for this activity. Each page has three topics (two pages worth, so six total topics) to help students get to know each other better!

https://blog.teacherspayteachers.com/whos-in-your-circles-a-fresh-get-to-know-you-activity/

Start a new school year

                                                          -------- makes me angry

Creative Solutions

Creative Solutions

This activity encourages creative problem solving. Pick four or more different objects, such as a coffee can, a potato peeler, a knit hat, and a book. Split students into even teams. Now present a situation where each team has to solve a problem using only those objects. These scenarios can be anything from students are stranded on a desert island and must find a way to get off or survive to students must save the world from Godzilla. Give the teams five minutes to figure out an original solution to the scenario, including ranking each object based on its usefulness. When the five minutes are up, have each team present their solution along with their reasoning to the class. (Tip: Don’t make the scenarios so easy that it is obvious which objects will be most useful.)

Group Hop

Group Hop

This activity requires coordination and communication. Divide students into groups of between four and six people. Have the students in each group stand in a straight line with their right hand on the shoulder of the person in front of them and their left leg forward so that the person in front of them can hold their ankle. The group then sees how far they can hop along together without toppling over. Once groups get the hang of hopping, you can hold a competition to see who can hop the farthest or longest.

Storytelling Round-Robin

Storytelling Round-Robin

This activity helps students pool their creative resources. Students can sit in a circle or at their desks. The teacher will begin with the first line of the story, for instance, “Once upon a time there were three children walking through the forest … .” One by one, each student adds one sentence with new details to the story. The story cannot end until every student has participated. 

Not doing what I'm doing

 Not doing what I’m doing 

This activity is aimed at practising vocabulary and the ‘present continuous’ tense. It can lead to a very nice writing activity depending on the activities chosen by the students.

Procedure 

■ Students stand in a circle. One starts miming a simple action (e.g. brushing their teeth) and the person to their right asks them what they are doing.

 ■ They respond, giving any answer except what it is they are actually doing (e.g. ‘I’m sweeping the floor’). The student who asked the question then starts miming this new action (i.e. sweeping the floor). The person to the right asks what they are doing and the process is repeated. 

Variation ■ To make the game more difficult, the teacher gives the students two letters of the alphabet, which must be the initials of whatever actions they choose (e.g. R, L: reading a letter, riding a llama, rotating a lamp).