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New School Year - Getting to Know You Activities for the First Day

September has arrived again! The summer is almost over in this part of the world and many teachers start their classes with new students. It is time to build new relationships, a relationship of confidence between our students and us, but between students and their peers as well.

No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. James Comer.

After many years of teaching English to students of different ages and levels, I must admit that I still get butterflies in my stomach on the first day of class. However, thanks to all those generous teachers who are online and share their successful activities on their blogs or on Twitter, I have learnt a lot on how to create an atmosphere of trust, respect and learning from day one. Now I would like to share some of those activities with you:

36 Interesting Ways to Get to Know Your New Class Different ideas and tips provided by teachers.
10+ Getting to Know You Activities for Teens and Adults and 10+Getting to Know You Activities for Kids by Shelly Terrell. In her blog post you will find different kinds of activities to build relationships and a community of trust.
A Personality Test is a lesson plan created by James Taylor. I think it is an original and useful idea mainly for Intermediate level groups, but it can also be adapted for lower levels.
Powerpointing Me is a lesson plan that I like a lot. It has been created by one of the most active teachers on the net, Karenne Sylvester. It includes different kinds of activities so that your students know you better and you know them as well using different tools or just without technology.
A Map of Me is an activity that Sandy Millin shared in her blog some months ago. I tried with my adults students last month and it worked perfectly. At the beginning they were a little bit puzzled because it was not an activity they were used to, but after a while they started to enjoy it because it is quite interactive and useful to review question formation.

I hope you find these ideas useful for your first day. If you would like to share your own ones with other teachers, don't forget to leave a comment!

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