EFL/ESL icebreakers

I'm starting lessons this Friday and so I'm digging out some exercises that I can use as first lesson ice breakers. As well as helping me get to know the students it helps them get to know each other. This is essential is developing a sense of community in the classroom and also has the added effect of making students feel more comfortable talking in English in front of each other. Here are a few activities you can use, if you wish.

Questionnaire

1 What makes you feel happy?

2 What's your most treasured possession?

3 What's you favourite song and why?

4 Who would you most like to meet?

5 Pick five words to describe you.

6 What do you want to do in the future?

7 What's your best quality?

8 What's your worst fault?

9 Describe your proudest moment.

10 What's the best advice you've been given?

The idea is that students first write down answer their own answers and then ask another student, preferably somebody they don't know.

MEME

1 Explain to students that they're going to write a meme. This is a list of answers to a question that people often post on their blogs.

2 Show the students the example below and ask them to write down three questions based on the list. i.e three things they would like to learn more about. E.g.

Where was the fire?
Why did you take only one suitcase?

Ten things I've done that you probably haven't:

1: Taught myself to read and write modern Greek
2: Once helped fight a forest fire.
3: Drove from Athens to Rome on a Vespa.
4: Hitch-hiked 8000 km in five weeks.
5: Lived out of a one suitcase for a year.
6: Saw inside my own heart, live.
7: Was interviewed on Italian TV.
8: Was once held by Czech soldiers in Vaclav Havel's back garden.
9: Spent my first term away from home as a university student on crutches (as I had had a motorbike accident one week before term started).
10: Took my driving test in a foreign language.

3 Students write down their own list. Remind them that it doesn't have to include extreme or unique events such as,"I survived a shark attack" but rather more everyday things, for instance, "I can play the piano" or, "I have four sisters."

4 You could reduce the list to five things or give it as a homework exercise then discuss it next time in pairs.

5 An interesting alternative is to include an extra "untrue" item and students try to find out which one it is.

CLASS PHOTO

Prof 1c 2005-2006

Don't forget to take your digital camera with you so you can take a picture of everyone there. This will be useful when you set up your class's blog. Encourage the students to take their own photos using their mobile phones.