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5 First Day Activites

' 5 First Day Activites
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( September 16, 2012

) Adults , All levels , featured , First Class activities , games , Ice breakers , Teens , very young learners ,
Young learners

* DavidM + 20

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The first day of term is probably the most difficult day for any teacher but especially so for
new teachers. Having been there myself, I decided I would put together a post of some
easy first class Ice breakers and activities. This post is for kids and young learners but
also includes activities for teens and adults.

1. Question Me

Activity Time: 10 minutes +

Materials required: White board and marker.
Skills practiced: Listening, Speaking, question forming and Vocabulary.
Level: Young Learners, Teens

This first activity is simple to set up and take very little preparation time. Its a great way for
the students to get to know you.

Method
1. On the board, draw a stick man/woman to represent yourself (Those more artistically
gifted can of course make a more interesting creation!)

2. Draw lines coming from your figure. At the ends of these lines, you write numbers,
nouns etc that have significance to you.
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A rough example of what you should have.

3. The students now take turns in asking questions that these words and numbers may be
the answer to. i.e Student: Have you two brothers or sisters?
Teacher: Yes, very good. I have two brothers.
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4. Next student asks a question. Only answer if they have guessed the correct question.*
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5. Follow up by students doing the same exercise in pairs etc.
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2. Class survey.
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This can be a great mixer activity and can be used in conjunction with the activity above.

Activity Time: 10 minutes +

Activity type: Group work Archives

Materials required: White board and marker, paper and pencils for each student .
Skills practiced: Listening, Speaking, question forming and Vocabulary. Archives
Select Month
Level: Young Learners, Teens

Method
1. On the board draw up the following grid with information you would like the class to find
out about each other.

You can add as many questions as you like. Review last years topics etc.
2. The class copy the grid into their notebooks and begin by filling in the information about
themselves.
3. They then go around the class and ask each other the questions and find who in the
class has the same information as they do. To extend this activity further, you can get the
class to tell you who shares the same information.

This is a great way for the class to get to know each other and for you to get to know the
students as well.

3. This summer I
Activity Time: 10 minutes +
Materials required: White board and marker, pictures(optional)
Skills practiced: Listening, Speaking, Vocabulary.
Level: Young Learners, Very Young Learners.

This is a great activity for young learners and very young learners on the first day of term.
It gives you a great way to practice, refresh the past tense and the students vocabulary.
Its particularly good for young learners because it allows the use of pictures as their
vocabulary may be lacking.

Method
1. On the board, either draw six to eight pictures or print pictures that represent your
summer. Look at the picture below.

2. Illicit the vocabulary from the class. In this example, it would be pizza, beach etc.

3. Then write a model for the young learners. i.e This summer I went to the beach.

4. Go though each of your own examples with the class and then have the students create
their own summer chart with sentences to go with them.

4. Hot seat

Activity Time: 10 minutes +

Activity type: Group work
Materials required: A seat facing the class.
Skills practiced: Listening, Speaking, question forming and Vocabulary.
Level: Teen, Adults
Method
1. Each member of the class gets one minute in the hot seat.

2. The other students ask the person any questions they want for one minute.

*This activity depends on the country that youre teaching in and the type of class you
have. Dont force anyone to do it if they dont want to and avoid this activity with very low
levels. Otherwise, it can be a fun way to get to know each other. I would also suggest that
you, as the teacher, go first. Be careful with teens they often ask awkward questions!

5. 5 Questions

Activity Time: 10 minutes +

Activity type: Group work
Skills practiced: Listening, Speaking, question forming and Vocabulary.
Level: Teen, Adults

Method
1. Ask the class to collectively write five questions that they would like to ask you as the
teacher.

2. When the students have decided on and written five questions, select one student who
is going to pretend that they are you.

3. A student volunteers to take a turn of going to the board and writing a question. As a
class, the students decide if the question is correctly formed using the correct verbs,
spelling etc.

4. The students then ask the student playing the role of the teacher the question.

5. If the student answers correctly then the teacher writes the answer beside the
question.

That concludes this post. If you would like more suggestions or posts on this topic or any
topic, please get in contact either through the comments form below, via Twitter or on
Facebook.

Dont forget to check out the Kids and Teens sections for even more ideas.
 Share this:

20 Comments

Punky
September 25, 2012 at 8:14 pm

Great ideas! Thank you!

/ REPLY

David Mulcahy
September 25, 2012 at 9:17 pm

Thanks for the feedback Punky. I appreciate your kind words. Much more on the
way!

/ REPLY

Punky
September 26, 2012 at 5:29 pm

I used the first two ideas in my class last night, and it was a lot of fun! Thanks
again for sharing, and Ill be checking back !

/ REPLY

Yeny S. Corza
July 8, 2013 at 7:31 am

practical and amusing

thanks a lot!

/ REPLY

Micheline Boutrin
August 21, 2013 at 2:07 pm

Excellent! Will try this on monday! Thanks for sharing

/ REPLY

AR Garca
September 19, 2013 at 3:16 am

Thank u! Greetings from Colombia.

/ REPLY
chay
December 15, 2013 at 3:01 pm

Thanks a lot for the great ideas! Starting a conversational course for tweens in
Italy and this will be very helpful.

/ REPLY

DavidM
December 15, 2013 at 3:27 pm

Im glad it helped! Best of luck with the course.

/ REPLY

Katy
August 17, 2014 at 2:24 pm

Tomorrow will be my first day at a new school so Ill see how this will go but it
looks very promising ! Thank you!

/ REPLY

DavidM
August 17, 2014 at 3:53 pm

You are welcome! Im sure they will go well. Best of luck in the new
school.

/ REPLY

Katy
August 19, 2014 at 2:45 am

It went great! The kids liked to share about their lives

and to learn a bit about mine. It worked well for my 3rd
graders too !

/ REPLY

Ryan
September 6, 2014 at 9:53 am

Great ideas! I am going to try some of them in my first week here in Spain.
Thanks so much!!

/ REPLY

muna
September 28, 2014 at 3:45 pm

Thanks a lot, really useful ideas.

I am going to use them with my students
 / REPLY

DavidM
September 28, 2014 at 3:47 pm

Thanks Muna,

Glad you found them useful. Good look with your classes.

/ REPLY

Rebecca
October 22, 2014 at 12:36 am

Thank you for sharing! It was really helpful!

/ REPLY

DavidM
October 22, 2014 at 8:38 am

You are welcome. Thanks for the comment. Im glad it was helpful.
David

/ REPLY

hinda khogali
March 3, 2015 at 4:07 am

Really useful! Used them in my first class here in Korea! Thanks so Much!

/ REPLY

DavidM
March 3, 2015 at 9:11 am

Hi Hinda,

Im glad they worked well for you. Good luck with class and
hopefully there are more activities here to help out.

/ REPLY

Susan Pinkston
September 9, 2015 at 7:09 am

Thanks for posting these activities. Ill definitely try them.

/ REPLY

DavidM
September 14, 2015 at 8:48 am
 Thanks Susan, I hope they work well for you.

/ REPLY

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