Student ice-breaker bingo can help you learn about your students, help them learn about you, and the students learn about each other. You can create a custom bingo game board that contains fun facts in each square. For example, “I have a cat”, “I have a dog”, “I have a brother”, “I like chocolate”, “I like to swim”, “I play baseball”, “I like to go to the beach”, etc. Everyone will receive a copy of the game and the object is to go around the room and talk to each other until you find the matches. When a student or teacher finds someone who matches the description, that person has to sign their name in the corresponding square. The first student to find all of the matches and fills up the page gets BINGO! At the end, you can collect the game boards and review to see which student names were listed in the specific squares. This can give you some insight into their hobbies, siblings and outside activities. 

 

An idea for a journal writing activity is to ask the class “If I found $100, I would…?” There are no limits, and they can choose what they would like to do with the money. It would be interesting to see the responses but to also get some insight into their personalities. 

 

You can learn a lot about a student through their family, culture, and the types of traditions they have.  This can also be a learning moment for the other students in class, since they may be introduced to new cultures. For this activity, students would be given an opportunity to share a favorite family tradition or family activity. The students would each write a short story about their choice and draw a picture to go along with it. If the students are sharing a family tradition, they can bring in an artifact or picture to show the class. If the student is discussing a family activity, they can also bring in a picture or souvenir to share. The students can take turns telling their stories and sharing pictures. These will be added to a family gallery along with any pictures or objects the students would like to display.     - Karen Thomas                                  

Having One-on-One Student conferences is a great way to assess a student’s work and communicate to the student in a way that is more personalized and private. The student can then bring more specific observations about the class and the instructor can address these questions, concerns or opinions in an understanding, calm and private environment.

One great way to get to know your students for an English teacher is ask them to write something. A personalized in-class essay with a writing prompt or question can make students open up. The English teacher also gets a clear insight into the student’s voice or style of writing and can begin to build a social relationship through giving written and verbal feedback on the student’s work. Building a social relationship through a student’s writing can make a task that seems isolating and boring for the student into an interactive experience. Peer review can also be helpful in student’s getting to know one another.

Asking questions of the student like: How did this aspect of the book resonate with you? Is a great way to see if the student enjoyed the reading. A negative or positive response should be respected either way and the teacher can begin to understand the student by what they like to read, what they do not like to read, how much they can read, what their level of reading is and create a more personalized approach to helping the student learn to write and read in a way that is beneficial for the student and creates an open pathway of communication that creates a positive student-teacher relationship.                                   John Rogan

 

An important aspect of becoming an educator is knowing about your students beyond surface level. This is essential for students to become more personable with their teacher as well as finding comfort in any situation, especially through academics. Icebreakers are the easiest but most sufficient ways for teachers to better understand their students as well as their students getting to know their classmates. An icebreaker activity that students can participate in is providing questions cards such as, favorite color, animal, and explaining why. The students can either find another classmate who has the same question or talk to the person next to them answering those questions. Another icebreaker that would be really beneficial would be Two Truths and One Wish, which allows students to either go in front of the class, be with a partner, or with a group of classmates, and they would each state two truths about themselves and one wish and their classmates would have to guess what their wish is. Having the teacher play in this activity would be very interactive for the students because they would get to know more about them through their wishes along with their truths about themselves. 

An important first step in getting to know your students is naturally their names. And depending on the age level and maturity, you can make that process as intricate and fun or straightforward and efficient as is appropriate. But in terms of getting to know them on a deeper level like their personality and core self, one potential idea is having each student take on a small role in the class. Once again, for younger students, this might be as simple as line leader or handout distribution. Older students can take on roles with slightly more responsibility or investment. Of course, icebreakers are a classic tool for getting to know your students because they’re typically fun and actively engaging. If your icebreaker is designed to make students think quickly, creatively, and critically, they’re then using so much of their brain to engage with the exercise. And when a student truly commits and engages authentically, they will usually let any facade or mask fall away, allowing you to get to know their most authentic self. However, an important aspect of long-term relationship building with your students involves active investment, observation, and listening so that you can pick up on things that students may not openly share, things like their home life or areas they’re struggling. Because of the default student/teacher dynamic, students tend to only show a fraction of their comprehensive life, which puts teachers at a disadvantage in terms of a holistic awareness of their individual students. One idea which I think can help fuel this two-way relationship is when teachers choose to be open and vulnerable and not try to conceal so much about life or the world or what people experience. Obviously there are standards of what is appropriate to share with a student, but I believe treating them as tiny adults can empower them to feel comfortable challenging themselves and taking on more than we usually give them as well as being open and vulnerable in return. - Jack Sutorius

Assessment for each class is an effective way we can get to know our students. One approach is to create a "Post-it” activity during the end of class. Teacher could ask students to use academic language and notation to write down the most important thing they learn and one concern/question they have in mind on the post-it. Students will stick the post-it on the blackboard when they leave the classroom, and teacher will give feedback by writing comments and questions for each post-it. Students will need to response to the feedback during the next class by writing their thoughts or answers on the same post-t, and post it again before they leave the classroom. This method is effective and practicable because teacher can get to know each students, and teacher can modify the lecture based on the real-time progress of each students. Also, students will attach importance to this assessment activity, since they know teacher will read the post-it.  -Jimmy(Heyang) Liu