Write a Profile About a Classmate: First Day of Class Getting to Know You Lesson

(TESOL Worksheets--Getting to Know Your Classmates)

Google Drive Folder HERE

Lesson Plan: drive, docs, pub

Worksheet 1 (survey questions): drive, docs, pub

Worksheet 2: (write a profile): drive, docs, pub

Premade Questions: docs, pub

[Notes: This lesson is not mine, but was given to me by a couple of colleagues.

I first heard about this lesson from an experienced CELTA tutor, who did not have any materials, but explained the process to me.  First, the students all come up with a question, and interview each other, and write down each student's answers.  Then, they are given one students to profile, and must get information about that student by asking all the other students.  Then, they must write up a profile of that student with the information they got from the other students.  Finally, the profiles are posted around the room, and the students have to find the profile of themselves.  (Does that make sense?  That's my attempt to summarize the process, but if I didn't do a good job, check the full lesson plan HERE.)

Anyway, it sounded like a good first day of class lesson, but I never did it at the time, and after a while, I forget about it.

However, more recently, another colleague gave me materials for this same lesson, complete with a lesson plan and worksheets.

I asked this colleague where he got it from, and he couldn't tell me.  (He had gotten it from a previous coworker, who got it from another coworker, etc.  It was one of those activities that just got passed around the staffroom,)   He thought it might have originally come from the Delta materials, but he didn't seem too sure.   

If anyone knows who to give credit to for this lesson, let me know in the comments.

I tried it out for a first day of class lesson the other day, and it worked fairly well.

There are, however, a few things to be careful about.

It's a good lesson, but it does have a series of steps, and because these steps build on each other, if something goes wrong at any one of those steps, then the whole thing falls apart. So it requires a lot of monitoring on the part of the teacher.  You can't be half-asleep while you're doing this lesson, you have to be really awake and present in the classroom.

Also, the lesson is also a lot of work for the students, so they have to be game for it as well.  I suspect it works best with very motivated adult students.  (This would make sense if the lesson came out of the Delta materials, as Delta is usually for adult learners.)  I did it with a class of high school students, and several of them wanted to get lazy at various steps, and I had to intervene at times to force them to complete the tasks--which was a bit awkward, because I don't usually like being too strict on the first day of class.

Also, timing is an issue.  Specifically making sure the students finish the various tasks at more or less the same time, so the class can all move on to the next steps together.  (That is to say, watch out for fast finishers and slow finishers on this one.)

...all that being said, this activity still worked out relatively well.  Some of the students got lazy, and did poor jobs on the profiles, but that's the glass half-empty side of it.  The glass half full side is that they all spent a lot of time talking to their classmates throughout the activity.

The colleague who gave me this lesson plan advised me that the more you run this lesson, the easier it gets.  He said that after you do it a few times, you become more aware of where the potential pitfalls are, and how to avoid them.

He also advised me to avoid some of the more inappropriate suggested questions in the lesson plan, like "who in the class would you must like to kiss?"

Update: September 24, 2024: I've talked to the CELTA tutor again to check how he runs this activity.  He added these variations.

* Don't get students to write come up with their own questions for stage 1.  Too difficult to monitor, and students have too much trouble thinking of unique questions.  Instead, give them preplanned questions.  He has a list of questions that he cuts up and gives out one per student.  I've made a modified version of his list HERE.  This is for a specific context (university students) so you may have to change it for your context.

* In stage 1, when students are asking their question to classmates, they are supposed to come up with follow-up questions, and try to get more information.

* For the final stage, when students look at the profiles, in addition to finding their own profiles, they have to find someone who is similar to them, and someone who is different from them.

LESSON PLAN

Aims: For teachers to be better able to….
Materials: Whiteboard, A4 paper (coloured is better), a small bag with cut up pieces of paper
Learning outcomes:  For learners to learn something about their new classmates
TIME 10 mins 10-20 mins (budget 1 min for every ss) 20 mins (again, 1 min per ss) 5 mins 20 mins 5 mins 10 mins	ACTIVITY Write 3 questions on the board (appropriate to their level) Do you like shopping? What job would you like in the future? What is your favourite colour? 2 Qs are dull and uninteresting and 1 is interesting. Task ss to find out which is which. Task ss with writing one interesting question of their own. T MUST monitor and check for (1) interestingness (I know!) and (2) no duplicates. Avoid “Why?” questions This stage can eat time as ss are horrible at being creative, the T can feed in some ideas (If you were President…/If you could be an animal…/What do you regret most…/How would you like to die…/Who in the class would you most like to kiss… etc.) Ss mingle and ask EVERY ss their question They MUST write down WHO said WHAT ICQ this!! T must monitor and check that ss (1) are writing down their answers (2) are asking the questions – not just showing the question to their partner and (3) that their interlocutor is giving (grammatically) appropriate answers (i.e. not short answers) The teacher has a bag with the name of every ss on a small piece of paper. Ss take a piece of paper.  If they pick their name, they swap it for another one. Ss can show their name to other ss – this isn’t overly important Ss are instructed to (1) mingle and find out as much information about their person as possible.  This means asking everyone in the class EXCEPT the person whose name they pulled out of the hat They MUST write down: Who they talked to What question they asked your person What their reply was Ss are now given a piece of A4 paper. Instruct ss to fold it in half, draw a line at the top and a box (about the size of a cigarette box) Ss write the name of their person at the title of the page and then draw/sketch a profile picture of them (Some ss can really go to town on this – this is a peripheral task and is not integral to the linguistic aims of the task so best try to keep this short) Ss then write a paragraph of (hopefully) connected coherent prose about their person Ss selotape profiles to the wall and then they mingle to (1) find ‘their’ profile (i.e. the profile about them) and then (2) check it for (a) grammatical/lexical accuracy (b) factual accuracy. Encourage them to correct any grammatical/lexical problems

Why this is a good way to start a group off:

• It gives ss a chance to get to know each other!

• It gives you a written record of where they are at the start of day 1.  You can use this to feed into your course.  It tells you if ss need more focus on X and less on Y which is useful.

• At the end of the course, this written record can be used as a measurement of course effectiveness.

• You get to decorate your classroom straightaway – makes it more homely for ss.

This is also a useful activity for practicing conditionals, reported speech, question forms, would like,