Fast new ways to break the September ice - acquaintance activities - includes related article

Make it easy and fun for your new students to get acquainted with activities that team beginning-of-the-year introductions with technology.

The first weeks of school can be a scary time for kids. After all, they've been thrown in with a room full of relative strangers--including you. But when you combine getting-to-know-you activities with something kids are naturally drawn to, like the classroom computer, fears fade and friendships form. See how technology can help break the ice in your classroom at the beginning of the year with the activities that follow.

A BOOK ABOUT US

For Upper Grades

Dolores Choat of Grand Avenue School in Chickasha, Oklahoma, puts her third graders in the teacher's seat for a round-robin book-writing activity that introduces students to each other and the computer. Here's how it works.

First Steps. Dolores gives one child an introductory lesson in how to use the classroom word-processing program. That includes learning commands such as delete, space, shift, and save. That child then types in his or her name and a response to the question: "What do you want your new classmates to know about you?"

Each One, Teach One. The process continues with the first student teaching the second student the same basic commands. That child writes a response, teaches commands to the third student, and so on. When all students have taken a turn at the computer, Dolores prints out their stories in a class newsletter; every child gets a copy. "After they've read a bit about their classmates, students are much more likely to initiate conversations with kids they don't know," says Dolores. "It really breaks the ice!"

Benefits Beyond September. This exercise gets kids word processing and printing the first day of school. "It also sets a good example for the year," says Dolores. "Kids start out in September helping each other, working together, and learning to follow directions--tools they'll use all year." At the end of the year, Dolores reopens the file and teams up students for a final activity. This time, students add a postscript to their partners' information, telling positive things they've learned about the other person. Students leave third grade thinking good thoughts--about others and themselves.

For Primary Grades

Cheryl Peden is another believer in kids' abilities to teach each other. Cheryl, a first-grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary in Colorado Springs, Colorado, invites children from her previous year's class to serve as mentors to her new students. Together they publish a class book about the first graders. "Students learn how many kids are in their class, what their names are, how to take turns, and how to write on the computer," says Cheryl, who also gets some anecdotal assessment information on each child.

Flexible Features. Cheryl's students use Kid Works (Davidson) to complete sentences that tell something about themselves. Cheryl displays a model sentence, such as "_____ likes _____." The program allows for a range of responses. Kids can complete the simple sentence (Stephen likes pizza.), add more sentences (Stephen likes pizza. His favorite is mushroom.), or select from pictures to tell something about themselves.

Timesaving Tip. Rather than print out a separate page for each child's sentence, Cheryl uses the Kid Works scroll feature to fill whole pages with student work. "Program pages are lined like primary handwriting paper," explains Cheryl. "You can fit about eight to ten responses on a page." To make books for each child she just prints out a class set of each page, has students add and illustrate cover pages, and binds them.

Families Meet Classmates. This book-making activity helps families get into the swing of school, too. "Sharing these books with families makes an important home-school connection," says Cheryl. Families gain an awareness of the school environment and can help a child gain a feeling of familiarity in a new class: "Oh, look," parents might say, "here's someone who likes some of the same things you do!" or "We know his sister. She delivers the paper to our house."

RAKE AND WRITE

Dave Avila, a fifth-grade teacher at Dighton Middle School in Dighton, Massachusetts, starts the year by "hiring" students to do his fall yard work. They all get a lot out of this experience--though Dave doesn't actually get his yard work done. It's an exercise in business-letter writing that introduces students to the computer and helps him get to know his new students, too.

Letters Speak Volumes. The idea was inspired by a friend of Dave's who was hiring sales help for his business. "He said he could tell a lot about a person from the letter," Dave explains, so he adapted the ideas to get to know his students. Dave gets the activity going with a classified ad: Wanted: someone to do my fall yard work. Write a letter telling me what makes you the best person for the job.

Triple the Results. As students compose their winning letters, a few other things happen, as well.

* Dave gets a look at his new students' writing skills, while his students have an opportunity to share some of their personal strengths and interests with him.

* Students learn some of the most useful commands for editing their work on the computer.

* Students learn how to generate a template for letter-writing that they can use all year.

* You can get just as much payoff out of a letter-writing exercise like Dave's. Just dream up a job, place an ad, and ask your young entrepreneurs to respond.

SURVEYS TO SPREADSHEETS

"Kids have opinions on just about anything you ask them," says Joanne Howard, computer teacher at Head-Royce School in Oakland, California. That's what makes spreadsheet software a great get-to-know-you tool for September. Programs like The Cruncher (Davidson) and Microsoft Works let kids get acquainted by conducting surveys on anything from cafeteria food to world problems. "Students learn new ways to report statistics in colorful, practical, and meaningful ways," says Joanne. And even the shyest students feel more comfortable meeting new classmates.

Survey Starters. With The Cruncher, says Joanne, changing a survey topic is as easy as clicking on the title and replacing it. Joanne suggests trying a built-in survey project to start, then building your own. A few ideas to get the opinions flying in your classroom follow:

* What's your bedtime? How late do you think kids should be allowed to stay up?

* Do you have a hero or a role model? Who?

* Should teachers assign homework on weekends?

* If you were president, what one problem would you try to solve?

* What food do you think the cafeteria should stop serving?

Round-robin Surveys. Try setting up the spreadsheet program and have students take turns inputting their responses to survey questions. As students enter new data they can watch figures and graphs change instantly. Expand your survey to other classrooms to gather even more information.

UNCOMMON PORTRAITS

Students in TyAnn Morehead's class at New Hampton Middle School in New Hampton, Iowa, pour over photo albums to learn more about their classmates. But you won't find them thumbing through cellophane photo pages. They compose their "photo albums" with help from a computer, video camera, Zapshot camera, scanner, and a variety of software.

Tell About Yourself: "I wanted to get to know the kids better, faster," TyAnn says, so she combined introductions to technology tools with student presentations about themselves. Three popular approaches follow:

* Students working with HyperStudio (Roger Wagner) and Pagemaker (Aldus) combine text, existing photos, and Zapshot images to create a slide show about themselves.

* Students can create bulletin boards, displaying photos, Zapshot images they import into the computer, graphics (using Print Shop or Bannermania), articles, captions (using ClarisWorks), and more.

* Students can borrow a video camera to showcase stories about themselves on tape. They can present their work on a TV or combine clips with a HyperStudio presentation.

Get-to-Know-You Classroom Quilt

If a picture is worth 1,000 words, the quilt that students in Martine Wayman's sixth-grade class at Kenmore Elementary School in Bothell, Washington, make says a lot. Martine's students get to know each other in September by creating a quilt about themselves. They learn even more by videotaping presentations of their quilt squares.

Warm-up: Students pair off for prequilting interviews. "It's a great way for kids to get comfortable with each other," says Martine. This exercise also helps students form clearer pictures of what they want others to know about them.

Draft Designs: Students use information from interviews to sketch quilt squares on paper. "Partners make sure key information is represented," explains Martine.

Transfer to Cloth: Students create final portraits of themselves on broadcloth quilt squares using fabric markers, paints, fabric scraps, and embroidery thread. Martine invites parents to help piece the quilt together.

Tape and Tell: When the entire quilt is put together, students take turns telling about their squares. They capture their presentations on videotape.

JOAN NOVELLI, a former teacher, is a contributing editor to Instructor.

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