TeachersFirst's First Day of School Icebreakers
Other TeachersFirst Special Topics Collections
No matter what level you teach, establishing rapport with a new group of students is key to knowing how to help them learn. Here is a list of reviewed resources that offer a chance for you and your students to get to know one another.
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Kid Activities - Barbara Shelby
Grades
K to 6This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Bookmark and save this site to find many ideas and activities for your classroom. Then, share this site with parents when planning classroom parties or field days. Many parents enjoy receiving ideas for things to do at home with students; include a link to the Kid Activities website in your newsletter or share an activity each week or month. Consider creating a webmix with Symbaloo, reviewed here, to share with parents that includes a variety of at-home activities for parents.You must be registered and logged in to add items to your favorites.
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Adobe Express Video Maker - Adobe Spark
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Consider using videos in your classroom in a variety of ways. Upload your slide presentations and add audio to create flipped and blended learning experiences for your students. Engage students and enhance their learning by asking students to create videos as an alternative to book reports or written presentations. Share videos on your class website for students to access when away from the classroom. As your students create videos, use a bookmarking site such as Padlet, reviewed here, to share and organize information for students to use when researching. Include Adobe Express Videos as part of a larger presentation using Book Creator, reviewed here. Embed your video along with images, text, drawings, and other media into your digital book creation.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Twitter Chat: Tech Tools to Enhance School to Home Communication - TeachersFirst
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Find resources and information about how to use tech tools to enhance school to home communication. Share this chat with your colleagues looking for resources related to school to home communication.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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7 Things All New Teachers Need to Know - Adam Gordon/USC Rossier School of Education
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Share with all teachers, not just new teachers, as part of back to school planning and activities. Create your own list of advice for new teachers in your school and district. Share with student teachers as a starting point for discussing how to handle different situations they will face as new teachers.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Training Games - Thiagi.com
Grades
7 to 12In the Classroom
Use this resource for Back to School getting to know you activities. Choose games labeled "Opener" as activators for prior knowledge on any topic. Be sure to check out "Structured Sharing" activities for ideas to use with group projects. Use ideas to incorporate into professional development sessions.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Teampedia - Seth Marbin
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use this site to find Icebreaker activities and options for the first week of school community building. Bookmark this tool for the first week of school or any time that you want to experience some "team-building" in your class. Use this site if you have weekly classroom meetings to build relationships among students. Share this site with students and have them create their own games based on research projects or as a review for major tests. Share this site with parent helpers to find ideas for classroom parties.Comments
So wonderful to develop creativity using tech. Love the idea of creating games based on research.Patricia, NJ, Grades: 6 - 12
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Quotes Cover - QuotesCover.com
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Create posters with students' favorite quotes, book titles for a bulletin board, All About Me information, or whatever your imagination produces! Have students include a poster as part of a research project or choose a favorite quote from class reading materials to "cover" a book talk. Create a poster with a quote from any figure in history and personalize it using Creative Commons images. In primary grades enter sight words and other basic vocabulary to create word posters. To find Creative Commons images for student projects (with credit, of course), try Wikimedia Commons, reviewed here. Have students create a poster for Back to School night to share with parents. Use this tool for students to make posters of the class rules they agree upon during the first week of school. Create quote images to use as Facebook "cover" photos for a famous person or fictitious character. World language teachers and students can create clever vocabulary or sentence posters to help master the new language.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Cube Creator - Read Write Think
Grades
2 to 12In the Classroom
Use the Cube Creator for virtually any lesson or activity as a substitute for a paper and pen project. Try printing on heavier card stock so cubes are durable. Create a cube to practice math problems, describe habitats, outline important story events, and much more. Have students create a cube and share with other students to practice retelling, summarizing, adding synonyms, or review for tests. Have each of your students create an All About Me cube for parents to view at Open House or to get to know each other during the first week of school. Have others guess which cube belongs to which classmate. Create a cube review game where others must answer the question that comes up when you "roll" the cube. The possibilities are endless. Challenge your gifted student(s) to create a "Who Am I?" cube about a famous person they research. Use the Bio Cube option with one variation: DO NOT include the person's real name. Share the cube as a game for the rest of the class to guess (and then create their own similar cubes). Your gifted students may also come up with new ways to Create Your Own Cube that could become a class game! Invite them to try their creativity.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Diamante Poems - ReadWriteThink
Grades
2 to 8In the Classroom
Diamante poems are a fun format to write about a single topic or to compare/contrast two topics. Review parts of speech and then apply these concepts with writing diamante poems. Work the idea of cause and effect into the diamante poem format for a challenging activity with your poets. Provide students with diamante poems with a few words missing and have them fill in the blanks to complete the poem. Compare or contrast text passages for any subject area or use the diamante format to summarize a selection. Provide your students with images, and have them write diamante poems about the images. Make homemade greeting cards with your students to give using this format of poetry or write "about me" poems using this tool at the start of school.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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How Do You Play - howdoyouplay.net
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Use this site to find games and activities for classroom centers or review activities. Icebreaker activities include options for the first week of school community building. Bookmark this tool for the first week of school or anytime that you want to experience some "team-building" in your class. This is a great site to use if you have weekly classroom meetings to build relationships among students. Share this site with students and have them create their own games based on research projects or as review for major tests. Challenge students to describe their "creations" using the models shown on this site. Share this site with parent helpers to find ideas for classroom parties.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Quick Picture Tools - QuickPictureTools.com
Grades
K to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Bookmark and save this site for easy image editing for you and your students for any classroom projects. No registration is required, and images are saved directly to your computer for immediate use. Make simple reminder posters or classroom signs using the text emboss tool. Invite students to create image/text combinations for bulletin boards, such as types of leaves or insects. Make introductions of students as a first day of school activity using digital pictures and the text tool.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Fakebook - Class Tools
Grades
4 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
Engage and create interest in classroom learning with Fakebook. Fakebook is terrific for creating interest in many subjects. Instead of a typical biographical report in social studies, students create a Fakebook page about their famous person. Write about presidents, founding fathers, famous scientists or artists, Civil War soldiers, and more. Have students create a timeline of any historical event (name the page for the event, such as World War II). Use Fakebook to outline a book, play, or film plot, then share with students while studying the material. To use Fakebook to study literature, create a page for the central character, the book's author, or the book's setting. For a unique twist in science class, create a Fakebook page for a periodic element or another science topic. Use the page to describe "the life" of that atom or element. In world language classes, have students do this activity (about themselves) in the second language they are learning. Create a Fakebook page for the first day of school to introduce yourself to students or at Open House for parents. Challenge students to create and share a page about themselves during the first week of school. Share a Fakebook page with students to demonstrate proper netiquette and social sharing. Be sure to share a rubric with students for all expectations of what should be included on their page. Make Fakebook one of the options for your gifted students doing projects beyond the regular curriculum. With no membership required, this tool is simple enough for younger gifted students with parent permission to post work to the web.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Make an Animation - ABCya!
Grades
2 to 8This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
This site is useful for both teachers and students. During the first day of school, create a simple animation to share with your class. Highlight information about yourself, class rules, highlights from the year, and more. Create math animations showing different geometric shapes on 2-3 slides (just click to copy a frame, rather than remaking the slide) and giving the students a chance to guess the shape before the answer is provided on the next slide. Challenge students to create their own animations "introducing themselves" to the class. Students could also create animations to demonstrate what they have learned about a piece of literature, a science unit, social studies theme or unit, or more. Save the students' work and share the animations on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Challenge your gifted students to create animations about their in-depth interests or curriculum concepts they have pretested out of so others in the class can learn from them. This tool is simple enough for bright students in early elementary to navigate on their own, a real asset when your gifted ones are working alone while you teach others.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Reel Life Wisdom - Doug Manning
Grades
5 to 12In the Classroom
Reel Life Wisdom supports character education programs with a parent PDF offering useful tips. Use relevant quotes in discussions on theme, choice, and empowerment. Lead your students to understand they are in charge of their lives. Improve reading comprehension of any text, by making connections or comparisons to a movie. Strengthen writing skills by critiques, explanations, and point of view essays. Challenge students to reach a deeper understanding of theme by finding a quote to match the theme. Use movies as an example for positive, effective goal setting strategies. Develop written or oral language by using the quotes as writing/speaking prompts. Challenge students to discover the many choices available to every individual. Encourage a meaningful sense of story development while connecting to each student's interest. The movies also offer a personal story into the study of people, government, and values. Create a thematic bulletin board of quotes on a topic, or have students generate word clouds from several favorite quotes on the same theme. Use a tool such as WordClouds, reviewed here. Post the clouds for class inspiration. During the first week of school, share this site and ask each student to share a favorite quote on a class blog or wiki for students to get to know each other.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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Getting to Know You Ideas from TeachersFirst - TeachersFirst
Grades
K to 12In the Classroom
Try these activities from TeachersFirst to help you and your students get to know each other early in the school year or for a "fresh start" for a new semester or move-in students.Comments
I love the ideas and activities for helping students get to know each other early on in the new school year. In the Headstart program we focus on parent involvement and I like to do activities that involve the parents and help them to get to know each other as well. The classroom and education experience is so much more successful when everyone is working together: children , families, and teachers.Teresa, FL, Grades: 0 - 1
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Blabberize - Mobouy Inc.
Grades
1 to 12This site includes advertising.
In the Classroom
If your students have never tried to make a Blabber, select Browse to share the an introduction blab on the home page on a projector or interactive whiteboard. You may want to create one of your own to share, and then have the class create one, all projected on your whiteboard. Browse a few examples first to get ideas on how to make a mouth on your photo to move and "talk." Be sure to turn up your sound! Have a student demonstrate uploading an image from a safe and legal source. You may want to use a single, whole-class account you create with your "extra" email account. Be sure to spell out consequences of inappropriate use/content of blabs. Have students enter the site through the "Make" page link provided in this review to steer clear of the "latest" blabs. You may want your students to make their blabs "private" so they do not show on the public areas, depending on school policies. If you are implementing technology in your classroom, this is an augmentation tool.Blab the homework directions on your teacher web page. Have your students use photos or digital drawings to "blab"! Have students draw in a paint program, save the file, and then make it "speak." Spice up research projects about historic figures or important scientists. Have literary characters tell about themselves. This tool is great for gifted students to go above and beyond the basics with an independent project. Create entire conversation sequences of blabs between people in world language or ENL/ESL classes (with students speaking in the language, of course), then embed them in a wiki. Have speech/language students make blabs to practice articulation and document progress over time. Promote oral reading fluency with student-read blabs. Create book "commercials." Have students blab what the author may have been thinking as he/she wrote a poem or literary selection or as an artist painted. Blab politicians' major platform planks during campaigns for current events. Blab the steps to math problem solving. Even primary students can make an animal blab about his habitat if you set up the blab as a center. Make visual vocabulary/terminology sentences with an appropriate character using the term in context (a beaker explaining how it is different from a flask?) Students could also take pictures of themselves doing a lab and then blab the pictures to explain the concepts. This would be a great first day project (introducing yourself and breaking the ice). Share the class blabs on your class web page or wiki! Give directions to your class (for when a substitute is there). Use at back to school night to grab parents' attention for important information.
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20 Questions - 20Q.netInc.
Grades
5 to 12When you arrive at the site, click your language (there are MANY languages from which to choose). Enter your gender, age, and location (optional). Then choose the "game" you wish to try. Some are more commercial (Disney, The Simpsons, or Star Trek). Others have educational value (Harry Potter, Earth, or Classic, Famous people). This is an interesting and challenging activity. There are disclaimers that the "game gets smarter" the more you play because the game compiles facts over time. It is involving and entertaining to play. The site does include some advertisements.
In the Classroom
Share this site on your interactive whiteboard or projector. Teachers could have students research a person, place or thing and then use their research to play twenty questions against the computer. It could also be used as review if posted to the class wiki and then completed independently by students at home. Use this as a first day or first week activity, have students try the 20 question game about names and see if the computer can figure out their name. Use the Earth activity for geography practice in cooperative learning groups or as a class activity. In world language classes, choose the appropriate language to practice vocabulary about animals and other categories of information. Extend learning by having students create their own 20 question activity and quiz the class! Use Involve.me, reviewed here, What a great culminating project in any class. You will be teaching HOTS (higher order thinking skills) as students use classification to create their questions.Add your comments below (available only to members) | Become a Member
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