Get to Know You

Sheryl Caldwell
Summer, 2004
Spokane, WA

Project: During the first week of school, I will incorporate games and ideas I learned from Ken Briggs' presentation ("Getting the Snooze Out of Your Classroom") to help my 2nd graders get to know each other so they will become comfortable working together.

Objective: By playing the presented "Get to Know You" games, the students will learn each other by name and will be able to share at least one fact the have learned about another student in the classroom.

Game 1: Bouncy Ball Introductions

1. Hand out a small bouncy ball to each student. Have the students write their name on the ball or have student's names already written on the balls before handing them out.
2. Have students stand beside their desks with their won ball in their hand. When the teacher gives a signal, the students will drop their ball firmly on the ground, allowing it to bounce wherever it goes.
3. Students will then find a ball other than their own and try to find the person whose name is on their newly found ball.
4. When all students have located the student whose name is on the ball they found, they should interview this person, finding out their name and one interesting fact about them.
5. After allowing a few minutes for sharing, the teacher has all students return to their own seats with the ball they found. The teacher then selects one student to introduce the student whose ball he/she found and tell the one fact about that person.
6. When that introduction is completed, the person who was introduced then introduces the person whose name is on the ball he/she has and tells one fact about them.
7. Introductions continue in this manner until everyone in the class has been introduced.
8. This game could be repeated, giving students a chance to introduce different people.

Game 2: Do You Know Your Neighbor?

1. Arrange students' chair in a large circle and remove one chair so one student has to stand in the middle of the circle.
2. Students sitting in chairs need to learn the names of the people who are sitting on each side of them
3. The student who is standing in the middle calls on a student sitting a chair. That student must then introduce the people sitting on each side of them. (Example: I want to know people who have a dog." or "I want to know people who have birthdays in May")
4. After that all the students who the statement pertains to must get up and find an open chair that is at least tow chairs away from the chair they were sitting in. While they are doing this, the person who was standing in the middle has to take an open chair
5. Whoever is left without a chair, then gets to call on a new person and play begins again with that person introducing the people on either side of them and telling what they'd like to know.

Culminating Activity: "Getting To Know Our Class" Book

Each student in the class will make a book page about one other student in the class. They must draw a picture of that person and write a sentence about something they have learned about that person. (Example: John Doe has a brown dog named Rusty.) These book pages will then be collected and made into a class book.