Last week was the first week for the September cohort and in my first face to face lesson with my new group, I did a substantial getting to know you activity.

Step 1: the name game

The first step was getting them better acquainted with one another’s names (also indispensable for me getting their names down off the bat!) – I did my old reliable standby in which I start with “My name is Lizzie and I like running” and then Student 1 says “This is Lizzie and she likes running. I am X and I like y.” Student 2 says, “This is X and s/he likes y. This is Lizzie and she likes running. I am A and I like b. And so it goes on. With 15 students, it was a good challenge! And by the end of it, I knew all their names and they knew more names than they did before.

Step 2: the interview

I gave each student a sheet of paper with some questions printed on it. The questions had gaps in so that the students could complete them with their own ideas provided they fit grammatically. They were free to discuss their ideas together as they did it. Once they had done this (preparation), I moved them around so they were working with a new partner. With that partner they asked and answered questions and made a note of their answers, knowing they would be reporting to the whole class subsequently.

Step 3: the reporting

Before starting this stage, I gave each student a piece of paper with a table on it – one column for student name and one column for notes. Each student took a turn to introduce their partner. Those who were listening had instructions to write each student’s name in a new row and in the notes part, they had to note down anything in the report that was the same for them. So for example if the report said “Student x’s favourite animal is a dog” and the listener’s favourite animal was a dog, they’d write down “his/her favourite animal is also a dog!”. The purpose for this part was two-fold: one, give them a reason to listen, two enable them to find things in common with everyone in the class (useful for helping them on the way towards becoming a cohesive group).

Step 4: Filling in the gaps

Once they’d finished, they might have gaps next to some students’ names (either because they had missed what was said or because there was nothing in the report which was the same for them). The final part of the activity was for them to fill in those gaps. They had to do this by approaching the students for whom they had gaps and finding something in common with them so that they could write it in the gap.

At the end of the final lesson of the week, I had them complete short reflection handout (What I learnt this week… Good things for me this week were…because… Bad things this week for me were…because… Next week I would like to…) – prompts adapted from Dornyei and Murphy’s Group Dynamics in the Language Classroom. And the most commonly repeated good thing was around making friends and getting to know new classmates. This activity was a part of that.

It was a 2hr lesson and I think it probably took somewhere in the realm of 1.5hrs in total. There wasn’t time for a lot else in the lesson (just my sequence where they brainstorm ideas for studying effectively while they are at the college, I feed in a few more that I feel are important and often missed, and then introduce them to mindfulness meditation using a short video which explains what it is, how to do it and the benefits of it. Then we do an example one together. In future lessons we will start the lesson with that short meditation to give them time to draw breath after rushing in from their previous lesson.). Obviously the length of time it takes corresponds to the number of students.

If you try it, let me know how it goes! 🙂