Teacher Introduction Activities

Teachers often have to step in to help their students get to know each other. Whether it's on the first day of the school year or on a day when a new student joins your class, you want to make sure classmates feel comfortable with one another. To help create a friendly environment, have the students introduce themselves through several entertaining activities.

Begin this activity by having the students all face the front of the classroom. Pick one student out of the group to stand at the front of the room. Tell her to say one thing about herself, such as an experience like visiting the Grand Canyon or an interest like reading. If any of the students share the same experience or interest, they stand up and have to switch chairs with one another. The player at the front of the room tries to find a chair to sit in before all of the chairs are occupied. The person left standing has to share an experience or interest with the classroom just as before. Continue until everyone has had a turn.

Prior to this game create a Bingo grid composed of five squares by five squares to create a total of 25 squares. Within each square, write an experience or interest the students may have. Examples include "I'm the only child in my family" or "I've lived in another country." Make sure that none of the Bingo cards have the same placement of these pieces of information. Give each of the students a Bingo card and a writing utensil. Tell all of them to start mingling, asking each other whether their experiences or interests match a square on their Bingo cards. When a player finds a match, the match signs his name on the corresponding square. The first player with five squares in a row (horizontally, diagonally or vertically) calls out "Bingo" and wins the game.

Play this introduction activity by first handing each of the players a few pieces of paper and some drawing utensils. Tell them all to draw some of their favorite things and places on pieces of paper, drawing one picture per page. Once the players have drawn about three different things on their papers, pick one of the students to hold up one of her papers. The other players guess what the picture represents. When they guess correctly, they learn more about the player. After you go through all of the first player's pictures, continue on to other students until everyone has had a turn.