Mixers and Getting To Know You Games

How well do you know your classmates???

Back to School and Back to Seminary call for mixers, icebreakers, and getting-to-know-you games.

Many teachers ask their students to complete a form with information such as name, birthdate, contact information, etc.

I take this a few steps more and ask for where my students were born, the number of siblings they have, and what some of their favorites are such as candy bar, cereal, food, holiday, color, season, sports team, hobby, book, movie, school subject,person in history, etc. I ask them about their hopes, dreams, and goals.

Rather than file these forms away, I use the information for getting to know you games and activities. One example is:

I call 3 (or any number) of students up to the front and ask the class, "What do these students have in common with each other?" 

Even the students up front don't know the answer.

The class members start asking questions of the students up front and eventually they figure out the answer.

In this case, the answer was that all 3 of the students were born outside the USA.

The answers will be as varied as your students, for example, all of them like pepperoni pizza, all of them want to travel to Europe,  all of them have 4 siblings, etc.

Happy Back to School!