Getting to know you activities for young learners

Starting the school year with new groups of young learners? Here are a few activities that encourage children to find out more about each other.

1. Show and tell

- Bring in several objects/pictures that represent your personality.

- Let the children interact with the objects, make predictions and ask questions to check their ideas.

- Give a little presentation and explain why the objects are important to you.

- Invite the children to bring an object from home that is meaningful to them.

- The children give a little presentation to their classmates.

2. Helping hands

- The children trace their hand onto different colours of construction paper. Write their name in the middle and five short answers about their age, hobby, pet, siblings, favourite food, etc. on the fingers.

- The children cut out the hand.

- In pairs, they practise asking and answering the questions.

- Display the hands on the wall.

- Use the hands when you need to choose a volunteer throughout the course.

3. Bingo

- Prepare a bingo sheet for each player .

- The aim of the game is to get signatures to cover the squares, and to be the first to cover 5 squares in a row (horizontally, vertically or diagonally).

4. Token for a thought

- Prepare a list of questions to get to know the children.

- Arrange all the tokens in boxes and ask questions to children in an order.

- For each answer, they receive a token.

5. Swap-it cards

- The students are each given a card with a question on it. They walk around the classroom, find a partner and take turns asking and answering the questions on their cards.When they have finished, they swap cards. Both students now have a new question card and seek another partner.