Ice Breakers

ICE BREAKERS

Begin to telling the students your expectation of a good student, like bring their homework, their dictionaries, be on time, etc.

Then ask them to write, using as much detail as possible, their responses to questions, such as

• Now that I've told you my expectations of a good student, what are your expectations of a good teacher?

• Tell me about the best teacher you've ever had. What made that person such a good teacher?

• Now that I've told you some of my ideas about how we will go about learning this year's material, tell me about how you learn best. Give me an example of a project or unit where you learned a lot. Describe the project in detail.

People Poems

Have each child use the letters in his or her name to create an acrostic poem. For example, Bill could write

Big

Intelligent

Laughing

Loving.

Tell students they must include words that tell something about themselves -- for example, something they like to do or a personality or physical trait. Invite students to share their poems with the class. This activity is a fun one that enables you to learn how your students view themselves. Allow older students to use a dictionary or thesaurus. You might also vary the number of words for each letter, according to the students' grade levels.

Food for Thought

To get to know students and to help them get to know one another, have each student state his or her name and a favorite food or color that begins with the same first letter as the name. For example: "Hi, my name is Latrece, and I like liver." As each student introduces himself or herself, he or she must repeat the names and favorite foods of the students who came before. Watch out -- it gets tricky for the last person who has to recite all the names and foods!

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