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How can students get to know you, their teacher, while giving them a task to keep them engaged when they arrive? Try this activity at the beginning of the year. Welcome students to your classroom by having a word search about their teacher on their desks! Immediately a connection is made and students can settle into the classroom with a familiar activity.


Simply write a short paragraph about yourself and/or about the coming year, type it up, underline some keywords, and then create a word search using Discovery Education's free Puzzlemaker. Have you used this website? 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8s-ePBDaxBOc3hfZDNZQ0FCLU0/edit?usp=sharing

Once the word search is created, copy and paste it into a document and type the paragraph underneath. Or print it off and attach it to the paragraph.

This activity can easily be adapted for younger students by varying the length of the paragraph, the complexity of the words used, and the number of words used in the word search. When making the word search, you can set the size of the of word search to have fewer letters overall. You also can choose whether or not the words will share letters.

One activity to consider is to have students create their own paragraphs about themselves or their summer and have them create their own word search. The completed word searches make a great classroom display for the beginning of the year! Another idea is to have students place their word searches into plastic sleeves and switch with a partner. Using a dry erase marker, students can learn about their classmates while completing a word search!

Have you ever used Two Truths and a Fib? This can be used as an icebreaker/get to know you activity for the beginning of the year. To help students get to know some things about their teacher write two statements that are true and one statement that is a fib. Picking the not so obvious truths about yourself make for an interesting introduction. Share with your students. Have students guess which is a fib.  Then have students create one about themselves to share with their classmates. This activity can be used later in the year during a novel or content area study. Click on the image below to grab the freebie.


Wishing you all a great start to the new school year. 

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