Meet the Teacher

In Front of the Class

by Linda Starr, Education World®

Brown Bag It

What's your bag?

To help students get to know you, bring to school a brown bag containing 3-5 items that reveal something about you -- your interests, hobbies, travels, and so on. Share the items with students, invite them to guess what each item signifies, and then explain the actual significance of each item. As their first homework assignment, have students bring in a bag containing items that tell about them.

Nice to Meet You

Introduce yourself to students.

Extend your hand to one student in your class. Introduce yourself, and tell that student one personal fact about yourself. Then ask the student to tell you his or her name and an interesting fact about himself or herself. Move to the next student and repeat the activity, this time providing a different fact about yourself. After the second student introduces himself or herself, repeat that information and the previous student's information before going on to the next student. Continue until you have heard (and ideally repeated!) the name of, and one fact about, each student in the class.

A Collage of Personalities

Get to know one another.

Create a collage to get to know your students and to help them get to know you. Draw or find in magazines pictures that reveal things you are interested in or things that are important to you. Invite students to look at the pictures and try to guess as many facts about you as they can. Then have each student create a collage about himself or herself. Try to guess students' interests from the pictures included in the collages.

Copyright © 2005, EducationWorld.com, used by permission