“One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” – Carl Jung
Goal: Try at least one getting to know you activity with your students. Below are suggestions to get you started. Check out my slide presentation here.
- Human Bingo is a popular and easy activity. Download my Digital Bingo and Human Bingo handouts.
- Mobile Show and Tell– Divide students into small groups (3 to 5 students). Each student spends about 30 seconds sharing a personal photo from a mobile device and the anecdote behind the photo.
- Recreate a Photo– Students choose one of the Mobile Show and Tell images to recreate as a group. They share the original then the newly created photo.
- Selfie Adventures– Pair students or divide them into small groups. Show them the Animal Selfies Tumblr or the Selfie Animal Tips video. They choose a favorite and write down reasons they liked this selfie. Then give each pair a stuffed animal, doll, character, or sock puppet. They will have to create 2 or more awesome selfies of this character.
- Draw and Dash– Each student will need to use a piece of paper or a drawing app like Tackk, Educreations, Magic Paintbrush, or Sketchbook Express. Name a category like favorite dessert, cartoon, sports team and so forth for students to draw the answers to on their tablets. Give them 30 seconds. When the time is up they should lift up their drawings and run to a peer they believe drew a similar choice. Give them 1 minute to talk about their drawings and exchange one fact or experience related to the choice. Find the Knowledge Swap handout that accompanies this activity in Learning to Go.
- Avatar Bucket Lists– Students write down 3 activities they want to complete within their lifetime. They get into pairs and discuss their lists. They choose one bucket list activity to animate in a short video or comic strip. Useful web tools include GoAnimate, Powtoons, Little Bird Tales, ToonDoo, and Makebeliefs Comix. Useful apps include BuddyPoke 3D Avatar Creator, Tellagami, Drawing Cartoons, Comics Head, and Friendstrip. Find more activities and ideas in this lesson plan I wrote, A Visual Bucket List.
- Vision Boards– Students can use digital poster and scrapbook tools and apps to create goal collages and vision boards. Try any of these tools: Buncee, Tackk, Biteslides, Smore, Pinterest, Glogster, or Pic-Collage.
- 3, 2,1 Introduction– Students use a web tool or app to create a video, comic strip, poster, book, or slideshow that includes the following: 3 things we should know about you, 2 hobbies, 1 dream job. This idea came from Nicky Hockly.
- Avatar Introductions– Students can introduce themselves with a Voki avatar or try one of these free avatar creators! Find several student examples here.
- Name Poems– Use a word cloud tool like Tagxedo or the Image Chef app. They can also do this as a digital poster using tools like Buncee, Tackk, Biteslides, Smore, ThingLink, or Pic-Collage.
- My Timeline– Students create multimedia timelines highlighting significant moments using a tool like Capzles or Popplet which both have free apps for i-devices.
- Icebreaker Mingle– Find my lesson plan that uses the Icebreaker question app here.
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