Back to School - Breaking the Ice

Image Credit: Marcel Germain
via Flickr

Another school year starts soon – very soon – and even though I’ve been teaching for about 20 years, I always get a bit anxious about the best way either to break the ice with a new class or simply to loosen (former) students’ rusty tongues.Therefore, an easy task, a familiar topic but still with a different approach.

After some browsing, a suggestion for the beginning of this school year is as follows.
Knowing beforehand that our first lesson is usually in our mother tongue and filling in some forms, a simple question designed to make introductions easier and spark ideas:

AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...: AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?... AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...: AnswerGarden: What word(s) best describe your last summer holidays?...
YOU, go ahead, try!
Now, this can be used as homework once you embed this onto your blog / website / wiki (in this case, ask them to type their initials so that you might know who wrote what) or, done in class, if you prefer to have an instant overview of the results, make sure they really DO it and have a computer with internet connection. Obvious!
At http://answergarden.ch/ there's no need to sign in, we can quickly and very easily collect our sts' feedback and their contributions are necessarily short (20 characters); TIP: tick the "Multiple answers per id per day" ;)

2nd step: Why? Elicit reasons to explain their choice of vocabulary.

3rd step: To further brainstorm ideas and start preparing a written activity, consider using
http://www.bubbl.us/  a free web application that, as they put it, allows you to

• Create colorful mind maps online
• Share and work with friends
• Email and print your mind map
• Save your mind map as an image

For you to have an idea...

With the usual questions: Where / When / How Long / With Whom...

Or with the sts' names and we write down their data - one by one.

4th step: After oral eliciting and topic form registration, sts can be asked to write down their own essays. However, depending on the level / age group / … we can introduce a model, ask them to write down their essays for homework or in class and then take them home to correct. It’s up to each one of us to decide what will suit best, right?
Hope this might be useful - if not now, for some other time.

Image Credit: http://safetykitsplus.wordpress.com/

Why don’t you leave here your suggestions as well? I’d love to hear your thoughts, your comments, your suggestions.

Anyway, a great school year for all! May we keep the passion and energy to engage our students :))