Getting to know your students is a traditional part of the beginning of the school year. But when we’re teaching in an online or paperless situation, how can we get to know our students in a digital environment?
The good news is that we can use a lot of the same resources and ideas by shifting them to the digital environment. The shift to digital or hybrid is full of us being willing to be flexible and to be patient with ourselves and our students. This new way of doing things is new for everyone, including the most seasoned teachers. I firmly believe that we can all can get through this and build relationships with our students in this new environment.
In this post we’d like to share some ideas for how to get to know your students in a virtual learning environment. You can use these ideas, or maybe they’ll spark an idea in you that’s perfect for your style and way of teaching.
Get to know the teacher knockout game
This knockout game is played through PowerPoint. It can easily be played in person or online. I played this with students during a video conference with the share your screen option.
To play, simply share your screen with the class and then play the game similar to how you would in class. The game is lead by the teacher and the students will keep track of their answers and points on any piece of paper.
The game itself has 16 questions about the teacher. They differ in degree of silliness that students can make guesses about as they get to know their new teacher. Some of the questions have multiple choice answers. Here’s a few examples:
- What year did Mrs. Johnson graduate from high school?
- True or false? Mrs. Johnson had a pet goldfish when she was a kid.
- Where does Mrs. Johnson want to travel to?
Students write down their answers and then you can reveal the answers. One twist that I added is I had the students label a paper with A-B-C-D in the corners, and then show me their answer choices on camera. It was a simple and fun way to keep checking in with students, similar to response strategies I use in the classroom.
The Get to Know Your Teacher game itself is editable. You can change the questions and supply the multiple choice answers for the questions because they are unique to you. This will give you a chance to have some interesting conversations with students and help to start a relationship with them. Plus, kids just love playing Knockout Games. This game let’s students know you’re going to be a teacher who adds a little fun to class 😉 .
All About Me Digital Math Activity
The All About Me Digital Math Activity is an interactive activity in Google Slides. Students use the Google Slides as a work mat to write expressions that when simplified are the answers to some questions about themselves.
You may have seen this activity before on paper, but now it can also be done online. The basic idea starts with students answering 6 questions about themselves that have numerical answers. Then, they create expressions that are equivalent to the answers to their 6 questions. These can be shared digitally with a partner if your video conferencing software allows them to work in small groups. Also, you could have students share their document with someone in the class.
At this point students simplify the expressions of other students and reveal the answers. Students get to do a little math practice and get to know each other at the same time.
One teacher suggested having students turn in their work and then using one each day with the whole class, asking them to guess who the classmate who went with that day’s Figure Me Out. What a great way to combine getting to know each other, and practice a little math!
You can purchase this activity (in both printable and digital formats) in our TPT store here.
Student Inventory
I’ve always had students complete a student inventory during the first couple of days of school. For me this has been on paper, but this activity can easily be done in a Google Form. Basically, a Google Form is a way to survey people. Students answer different types of questions and it’s all recorded for you in a spreadsheet.
We’ve created an editable beginning of the year student inventory in Google Forms, or you can easily create one yourself. Our inventory has a variety of questions and can be edited to suit your needs. My favorite question is:
What do you want your teacher to know about?
I’ve received some pretty personal and important responses to this question. Students will tell you about their inner-self and their fears and anxieties. Knowing this information can be especially helpful when students aren’t in your classroom. It might be more difficult to see their personalities through a computer screen. Also, I believe asking students questions like these lets them know you care.
As a teacher, you can also share your answers to some of these questions. This gives you a chance to humanize yourself. The student inventory form is a simple approach that can really help as you establish relationships with students from the beginning of the school year.
Student Emotional Check-in Form
In every classroom there’s a social and emotional side to learning. We have the power to embrace that fact and recognize that learning is not all about content. Students will be better able to learn the content if they feel safe and comfortable emotionally in your class.
We’ve created an Emotional Check-in form to use with your classes online. Students can complete this once or twice a week giving you a simple way to check-in with them emotionally. This seems like an especially important part of a digital classroom during a global pandemic. Students probably have more or different emotions than they had before the pandemic.
Using a check-in form will give you a chance to validate students’ feelings and let them know you’re going through similar emotions. Our Emotion Check-in Form is a set of 8 emojis and students choose the one that best matches their mood and briefly explain their answer. You’re sure to learn a lot about your students with this approach.
Flipgrid
Flipgrid is a website where teachers can pose questions and have students respond through recording a video. This could also work as a way for students to introduce themselves.
This program is a great way to see your students and get a chance to hear all of them in a short period of time. You can have them view each other’s video and get to know each other. One heads up- some students will be reluctant to film a video of themselves and you’ll need to coach them to help them be comfortable.
You could have them create a video about one object in their house that symbolizes them. This will get them to do some creative thinking and give you some ideas of who they are.
Two Truths and a Lie
I love to use Two Truths and a Lie in class with math answers, but it’s also a classic icebreaker that can be adapted to a digital learning environment.
To play, have students submit 2 truths and a lie about themselves. They can submit those through Flipgrid, a Google Form, or on a slide. Then, take those two truths and a lie and show them to the class and have students try to figure out which fact is the lie.
This is a fun way to engage students and to help them get comfortable in your class. Also, students love the idea that you are asking them to create a lie. Seriously- more than anything else, their favorite part of this activity is the permission to tell a lie. Two Truths and a Lie can be easily adapted to online learning and can be used in a variety of ways, especially through video conferencing.
Polls
Polls can show what the class likes as a whole. They’re less personal, but fun for kids to do. You can have a poll about anything.
There are a lot of polling software and website out there. One website that has easy polling is https://www.mobpoll.org/. It takes about a minute to create a poll that can be shared through a link or can be embedded into a website. It’s so easy and takes very little technical knowhow. Below you will see an example:
A poll like this is great for a conversation starter. It’s fun and silly and a great way to break the ice.
About Me Collage
All About Me collage activities have been a part of back to school activities since I was a kid. We spent a lot of time drawing and coloring our crest or cutting out magazines to make a collage. This is another tradiational activity that can easily be adapted to digital learning. In fact, students can create a crest or a collage a lot faster in a digital world.
You can have students create a slide that represents them. This can be very structured or less structured. Personally, I lean to the more structured side, so that they know what I expect and they don’t take forever completing the assignment. You can have them find pictures from the internet and create a collage on a slide.
Some things they can include in their collage are hobbies, likes and dislikes, fashion, sports teams, pets, music, words, favorite math topic, and quirks. I would definitely put a time limit on this one or some students will be working on it forever. This is a fun, low stress activity to get to know your students.
Wrapping things up
So, this list doesn’t have absolutely everything you can do online to get to know your students, but hopefully it has gotten your brain thinking about what to do in your class. With a few simple adjustments, our classic back to school activities can be used in a digital environment. Even if we’re online with our students, we know that establishing real relationships is just as important (if not more important) as ever.
Remember, no matter what is thrown at us this school year, you’ve got this!
