Language Sensei

A Language Teacher's Journey

“Getting to Know You…” A “Find Someone Who” Activity to start the year off…

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Girls doing schoolwork.When students enter my Japanese 12 class they are in their senior year in the language. Some have been in the same classes all along and know each other well. Others are just joining in. I wanted to have an activity that makes them to get to know each other, reaffirm the value of ‘guessing’, create some interaction and let them know their classmates a little better. The classic for this is “Find Someone Who”  – where students are given a set of criteria and then try to find people who match it. Sometimes the ‘clues’ are generic as in “Find someone who has an older brother”. Interesting but not as personal as I want given that many of these students have some prior knowledge of each other.

I typically do this activity the 3rd or 4th class in – after a lot of other interactive opportunities – in which students have already learned a bit about their peers.

In-Class Preparation – I typically use the following stems (in the TL) for the student to fill out/hand in the class before:

I am a person who can__________

 I am a person who likes _________

I am a person who dislikes _________

I am a person who thinks doing _______is interesting

I am a person who finds doing ______fascinating.

I am a person who wants to try to ______

Pre-Class Preparation – I go through responses and pick 1 or 2 per student (In a large class I’d pick 1). Generally I input them into a spreadsheet so I can sort them alphabetically after (thereby scrambling the clues.) Remember to keep at least one ‘master’ and have one set, clue and space for name, for copying for students. I also make a list of student names to hand out (for me in the TL – spelling would be an issue!).

In-Class Activity – On the first day I divide the students into groups of 4. They are are given the clues and a list of students in class. They are asked to figure out who these people might be. Initially they all look for their own clues – and that starts them off. They are allowed to visit other students in class to ask “Are you someone who___________” but not to just ask “What is your clue?”. On the board I include prompts that encourage or reinforce guessing “I’m pretty sure that___.” “I think the ___person is definitely ___.”  “I’m not so sure that____.” etc.

2-3 Day Activity – The activity runs the first day for about 20 minutes each day. I don’t usually run it for the whole period as I want to keep the energy up in the room. Therefore typically this is a two or three day activity depending on the group size.

It is a chance to build relationships for students by getting to know them a little better. And it is a great way for me to reinforce the skills that I value – taking risks, guessing and working with others.

Colleen

 

 

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