As most teachers know building your classroom community is essential at the beginning of the school year. Over the years I have tweaked the below getting to know you activity that has been around for years. Students about each other quickly and in a fun format. Feel free to use and tweak for use in your classroom:
Bag Your Personality
You will be doing an activity call Bag Your Personality. Your bag can be any size or any color. Pictures, models, words cut from magazines or newspapers or the actual objects may be used to illustrate each of the following points:
•Something that makes you laugh
•Something that makes you cry
•Something you feel has value or is important to you
•Your favorite TV show
•Your favorite singer or musical group
•Your favorite color
•Your hobby or hobbies
•Your favorite thing to do when you have spare time
•Your favorite sport
•Your favorite book
Place all of your items into your bag, and do not share what kinds of items you selected with anyone else in the class! I want to see how creative you can be in the selection of your items.
Note: Please refrain from bringing anything that is fragile or too large to carry. Take a picture of it instead and add it to your bag.
This activity takes around five minutes per student so break it up over the first few days of school. Students really enjoy this activity. Don"t forget to add yourself to the mix.( I always go first because I like to model it first for my students before I assign it.) Students always get a kick out of learning a little bit about their teacher (even though they still think we live in the school). LOL!
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1 year ago
Awesome idea for your blog and thanks for sharing... I love the 'Bag Your Personality' activity! I am definitely going to try this with my first graders in the next couple of weeks and let you know how it goes! Martha Miller
ReplyDeleteI started to use this idea with several emotionally disturbed students that I work with. I was surprised with their engagement and ability to sustain their interest with this activity. Thanks for sharing your Bright Idea! Carolyn
ReplyDeleteWhat an excellent idea! We have mentoring groups at our high school that meet twice a month. This would be a great activity for sharing in that group.
ReplyDelete. . . or what if I modified the activity so that students would guess whose bag was whose by their contents? The students are juniors who have been together for 2 years already.