Name

Liz Bitterman

Jaime Blair

Alison Feickert

Title

Description

Question Ball

Start with a beach ball and write questions

on it such as "Where are you from?" "Do
you have any siblings" and "What's your
favorite color?" Cover the beach ball as
much as possible. The students will then
get in a circle and pass the beach ball
around to each other. When a student
catches it, they will answer the question
that their right thumb is touching. Once
they have answered the question, that
student will pass the ball to someone else
in the group.

Two Truths and

One Lie

This game is a fun game that I enjoy

playing when I work the after school
program. The game starts out with one
person, normally the teacher, saying 3
things about them, two of them are the
truth and one is a lie. It is the classes part
to listen to the descriptions and guess
which is the lie. It is fun for the students to
find out about each other and the teacher.
My favorite one is saying I have been to
both Canada and Mexico in one year, I have
a cat, and I have been to DisneyLand. The
students get a chance to guess which one is
a lie, and then the student that guesses
correctly gets to be the one up in front
next.

Where do you
stand

Draw a line with chalk or otherwise mark

out a line down the center of your space.
All the children start by standing on the
line. Now call out opposites and point in
one direction for each. Children make their
choice and run to the correct side of the
line. Once the students make a choice, the
teacher can use the responses as a
discussion to get students to know one
another more. Try to think up some
opposites that will get all the children on
one side of the line! If you are playing
indoors and you want the kids to get a little
more exercise, you can also ask children to
sit down once they have decided

Vickie David

Heather Zins

What's o your
mind

This getting to know you activity would

work great especially in elementary, it is
called "What's on your mind." For this
activity the teacher has sheets of paper
with student's heads. The example I saw
had a various selection of hairstyles for
boys and girls. The sheet of paper just has
the outline of the head, with no faces on it,
so the student can express what is on their
mind in that space. Each student would
then either draw, write or even cut pictures
out of the newspaper/magazine of what is
on their mind. So if the student loves to
plays sports, they could draw a picture of
that, or if there is a certain food they like
they could put that down, or a favorite
color. This activity would be great to do in
the first week of school, it would not only
benefit the students by getting to know one
another but also the teacher.

index card
house

For this activity students will receive a stack

of note cards that are labeled with different
things they need to put on their note cards
about them. These topics will include name,
interests, goals, favorites, family, where
they want to go to college someday, and
what they want to be when they grow up.
On each of these index cards they can write
a description or they can draw pictures.
When each student is done writing on their
index cards they will cut slits in their note
cards to figure out how to build an index
card house or they can build it however
they want! When students have finished
their index card house they will share all of
their index cards with their neighbor and
one of their index cards with the class.

Destinni Girton

Cassandra
Schroeder

Kaylee Grayson

Stringing
Conversation

Cut string or yarn into pieces of different

lengths. Each piece should have a matching
piece of the same length. There should be
enough pieces so that each student will
have one. Then give each student one piece
of string, and challenge each student to find
the other student who has a string of the
same length. After students find their
matches, they can take turns introducing
themselves to one another. You can provide
a list of questions to help students "break
the ice," or students can come up with their
own. You might extend the activity by
having each student introduce his or her
partner to the class.

M&M or Skittles
Question

The teacher will have a big poster with

what question each M&M color represents
for instance, Redsomething about well.
Give each student a certain number of
M&Ms or Skittles and tell them to not eat
any till after the activity. Have one student
at a time pick a color and answer the
question. This could be a long activity
depending on how many students you have
and along with the age of the students.

Tangled Web

The name of this get to know activity is

tangled web. The object of the game is to
make a giant spider web with yarn. The
teacher starts first and says their name and
something about themselves. Then you toss
the ball of yarn to a student, this goes on
until everyone is done. When everyone is
done stand up and talk about the web, you
can talk about how you all had to work
together to make a web, and if someone
dropped their part of the web it would ruin
their web. They need to work together as a
team for this project and other projects
that are done in the classroom.

Jennifer Lease

Amanda Gerber

FaceBook all
about me

Give students a sheet and allow them to fill

it out. There are areas for name, age,
birthday, likes, dislikes (a like column with
a thumb up and a dislike column with a
thumb down - then a list of items like food,
color, sport, subject, drink, etc - the
student writes in one like and one dislike
for each item), questions like, "If you could
travel to one place in the
world, where would it be and why?", etc.
Once all sheets are complete, you could
either display them on a bulletin board
allowing each student to present theirs at
some point throughout the first week of
school, or give each student 5 minutes to
present their "Facebook page" to the class.

Partner Tell

This works for about any grade, I have

always been a fan of getting to know others
by doing partner tells. Each student gets
assigned someone in the class in which
they know nothing about. The students
then ask a series of questions in order to
get a background information. They will
then either tell the class or if you choose
they can do a poster on their new friend. It
is solely up to how much time the teacher
wants to spend on this. If it is something
that the students seem to not pay attention
with then a simple questionnaire afterwards
to make sure they are paying attention
works great.

Victoria Sopko

All about Me

If you do this during the first week of

school, ask students to bring pictures of
themselves or their family from home.
Then, give students numerous magazines
and invite them to cut out pictures, words
or anything else that they think is
something that would describe them as a
person. They can use these pictures or
words from magazines to glue or tape to a
sheet of construction paper (color of their
choice). Once their college is created, have
each student share to the class what
elements they chose and why they chose
the things that they did. Have the students
share why these elements were used to
describe them. The teacher can then hang
the collages around the room, or send the
projects home and invite the students to
show it to their family.

Kayla
Stoltenburg

Two Truths and

a Lie

Divide the class in a circle or have them sit

on pillows on the floor, Students tell 2
truths and 1 lie about themselves, The
other students guess which is the lie.

Toilet Paper
Game

You can do this either the very first day of

school or the first week. As the students
walk in tell them to take a piece of toilet
paper, don't specify how much they should
take. When they get to their seat tell them
that for each square they took, they have
to share one fact about themselves. Fun to
find out about your students, as well as
something interactive and fun for both you
and the students.

The similarity
game

You first start by finding someone who is

wearing the same color, then ask a variety
of questions and finding someone who has
the same answer as you, such as favorite
food, favorite book, favorite color, favorite
class, favorite tv show, etc. I think it is a
good way to get to know the people in class
and find people in the class that like the
same things as another.

Ryan Schlesser

Amanda Gums

Carissa Lewis

Krysta Becker

Animal Sounds

You give each student a slip of paper with

the name of an animal on it. Then give
students instructions for the activity: They
must locate the other members (2) of their
animal group by imitating that animal's
sound only. No talking is allowed. By using
the animal sounds, all the students should
find their group. When the kids are in their
group of three, the teacher will give them a
list of questions they can ask each other to
get to know each other. The teacher will set
a timer so that each child gets equal talking
time. I thought the activity sounded fun
because little kids love to make silly animal
noises.

Candy intro

For this game, you need candy with five

different colors or candy types. Examples
are M&Ms, Skittles, Life Savers, etc. You
can keep the candy in the bag or put it in a
bowl and pass it around the room to your
students. Instruct them to take 1-5 pieces
and don't eat them yet! If they took a red
piece they have to tell about their favorite
hobbies, green- favorite place on earth,
blue- favorite memory, yellow- dream job,
and orange is the wildcard where they can
tell about anything. You can always change
the colors if your candy doesn't have them
or what you want them to tell about. I think
this game would be a fun way to learn
about students and giving them a treat to
eat when they are done! I have played a
game like this when I was in high school.

Hannah
LaFollette

Mikaela
Kavanaugh

Jessica Carr

Student
Directories

In this activity, the teacher will have five

questions on the board. For example: 1.
What is your name? 2. Where do you live?
3. Do you have any brothers and sisters? 4.
When is your birthday? 5. Do you have a
pet? Then the students will think of five
additional questions that they would like to
ask someone. Then the teacher will pair
them up, and they will have 15 minutes to
ask their five additional questions to the
student who they are working with and vice
versa. At the end of the 15 minutes, the
teacher will have the person who asked the
questions share the answers they received
about their new friend to the class. Then
the other student will share the information
they learned about the other student to the
class.

Passing notes

To begin this activity you have students

partner up someone in the class. You then
explain the rules that you will take turns
passing a note back and forth writing down
information about yourself. The catch is
that you can't ask the other person any
questions and you can't talk. Students get
to know each other well by writing down
information about themselves and the
feeding off of it. Once time has been spent
on this you have each student quickly
introduce themselves to the entire class.
This activity is a lot of fun without letting
the class run wild.

Pop Quiz

Before the activity write a series of gettingto-know-you questions on some small slips
of paper. Be sure to only write one question
on each slip but you can repeat some of the
questions depending on the number of
students. Next, fold up the slips and place
them each inside a different balloon and
then blow up all the balloons. Give each
student a balloon and then let students
take turns popping their balloons and
answering the questions inside.

Courtany
Sykora

Amanda
Erickson

People Bingo

This game is called People Bingo. Each

student gets a paper with a 5 by 5 grid (25
total boxes) on it; each box contains one of
the statements below. As the students
move around the room, they talk to their
peers to try and complete their card. If one
of the items listed on the bingo card relates
to the person they are talking with, they
sign their name in that box. Depending on
the size of the group, the students could try
to get a blackout bingo (fill all the boxes) or
get a regular bingo (five in a row). Some of
the statements that are appropriate for this
game are the following: has brown eyes,
plays tennis, loves to ski, likes to get up
early, or is wearing blue.

Food for
Thought

For this game you have students sit or

stand in a circle around the room. Students
will say their name and a food that matches
the letter of their first name. For example,
my name is Amanda so I would say Hi, my
name is Amanda, and I like apples. Then
the next student would go. They have to
introduce themselves, and they also have
to repeat what I said. This will continue
until it gets to the last student. The last
student will have to go around the whole
circle and repeat everyones name and
matching food. This game is great because
students really have to pay attention to
each students name and the food that they
chose to match their name.

Evan Steemken

Krista Greer

Viewing Party

First, the teacher will create an adobe voice

video on the iPad that has information
about themselves that go along with
pictures and other items adobe voice has
on the app. The teacher will have the
school iPads in the classroom, after viewing
the teachers video as an example, each
student creates their own video about
themselves. The rubric will consist of the
students having their name, pictures of
themselves and their family, pictures of
things they enjoy and three interesting
facts about themselves within the adobe
voice. Once the students are done, they will
all upload them to YouTube. The next day,
the teacher will host a viewing party, where
they have snacks and watch all of the
students videos and learn about eachother.

speed dating

This would be a good activity for middle

school to high school students. The teacher
divides the class into two groups and seats
them across from each other in pairs. You
tell the students that they are working on a
special project and in order to be successful
they need to work with someone that they
are the most compatible with. Each student
gets a paper with everyone's name on it to
take notes on. The teacher starts the timer
for 2 minutes. Within those two minutes the
students must find the person they are the
most compatible with my asking questions.
At the end of two minutes, they move to
the next chair. At the end, after everyone
has had a chance to talk, they pick the 3
people they are most compatible with and
they write a paragraph on each explaining
what they learned about them and why
they are compatible.

Berin Pach

Get to know you

Poem

Though this is not a poem, I chose this

activity because I thought it would suit
middle-schoolers. It's easy to get little kids
up and moving but it's hard to break the ice
with 6th and 7th graders. As long as their
answers are appropriate, students fill out
the poem provided and then share with the
class. The poem gives statements about the
student they normally wouldn't thought of
sharing.

Tarynn Bickett

All about me
Cube

Give students a cube and on each side of

the cube they do something different.

Each one
introduce one

Students are randomly selected to spend a

few minutes getting to know each other and
then introduce their partners to the class. I
thought this would be a good activity that
everyone in the class can learn something
about one another. When students spend
time with one another I would have them
ask questions such as; dad and moms
name, siblings, animals, hobbies..etc. Then
they would present to the class what they
have learned from their partner. Students
who are listening would write down the
person being described and list the facts
they learned about them.

Kevin
Danielsen

Who did it

This game reveals interesting things that

your students have done. It is a pretty
straightforward game to play. The game
works best with a medium sized group
( 16-20 students). To start, the teacher
passes out an index card and a writing
utensil to every student. Ask the students
to writ down something they have done.
For example, "I went skydiving. I ate bugs
before. I have lived in 7 different states."
Tell your students to really think about a
fact that most people don't already know
about them. Next, Collect the cards,
shuffle, and pass them back out. The
students will take turns reading the card
aloud and guesses whose card they had.
The person must answer with a simple yes
or no. The next student then reads his/her
card and guesses. The game goes on until
all cards have been guessed.

Sharee
Galbraith

My name is

Go around the group and ask each young person

to state his/her name and attach an adjective that
not only describes a dominant characteristic, but
also starts with the same letter of his name e.g.
generous Grahame, dynamic Dave. Write them
downand refer to them by this for the rest of the
evening.

Alaina Reck

Dice Game

Like a lot of other versions, each number

on the dice gets a question assigned to it

Have you Ever

"Have you ever?": This game follows similar

principles as musical chairs. The person in
the middle who is it begins with the
question: "Have you ever: _____?" The
blank is to be filled in with something that
holds true for the person who is it.
Examples are: "traveled abroad"; "been to
rock concert"; "seen the ocean". Everyone
who the statement holds true for, must
exchange places with another person. The
person who is it must move to a spot as
well. One person will not be able to find a
spot. He or She is then it. Repeat game as
much as desired. This is a good way to
introduce people to each other in a way
that shows their experiences in the past.

Clara Schild

Kevin
Danielsen