The first days of the new school year can often set the tone for your class. Here are 5 activities to help you manage the administrative, social and academic components with ease. You can collect student bios, play guess who, brainstorm rules of conduct, evaluate current understanding and create a class motto or slogan.
Collect Student Bios
Build a Socrative Quiz to gather pertinent student information.
- Name
- Address
- Phone number
- Class schedule
- Parents’ names, workplaces and phone numbers
- Allergies
- Birthday
- Favorite Food
Remember: The report will be emailed to you!
Play Guess Who?
Ask students a fun question and project the responses using the Short Answer feature. Then have students guess who said what.
- If you could be granted 1 wish, what would it be and why?
- Which place would you definitely like to visit?
- If you could have dinner with anyone in the world who would it be and why?
- What is the greatest thing you have ever done, so far?
- What was the scariest moment of your life?
- What is the best book you have ever read?
Brainstorm and Co-Construct your Class Rules of Conduct
- Let students individually reflect on acceptable behaviors.
- Use Socrative Short Answer to make their ideas visible for the whole class.
- The responses are anonymous so everyone should freely participate.
- Highlight themes and build a collective responsibility to meet everyone’s goals.
- Capture the class rules and post them on the wall!
Take a Snapshot of Current Student Understanding
Get a pulse check of the overall level of your students’ current content understanding.
- Gather 10 Multiple Choice questions and make yourself a Quiz before class. The questions should be a mix of review and preview.
- Divide your students into small groups and have them come up with a team name.
- Have a Space Race!
- Review the data report to better understand your class’s proficiency. You may want to do this with your students to build a level of trust and openness.
Generate your Class Motto or Slogan
Create a bond amongst your students and identity for this particular group.
- Set the tone by providing examples for your students.
Today a reader. Tomorrow a leader.
Education is Power.
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Achieving Excellence Together.
- In small groups have your students brainstorm 2-3 slogans.
- Use Socrative Short Answer to make the ideas visible for the whole class
- Initiate the Socrative Voting feature to choose your class’s slogan.
- Make a banner or write the slogan on the top of the board. It’s your slogan!
“Good teaching is more a giving of right questions than a giving of right answers.” Josef Albers
MOST RECENT TWEETS
I love Socrative already and have not had a chance to use it. I checked out a box of iClickers from my college to use and never got a chance because the program to insert the questions gave me problems. I’ve tried this program individually and it works easily.
I love your suggestions above and will be looking at the rest of them. I have been searching and am doing a research project for our school’s Teachership Academy on including kinesthetic learners in my teaching activities. Being a Boomer and a kinesthetic learner, I learned to take massive amounts of notes. My kinesthetic Millenial learners don’t do that. Thanks!!!!
Last year through a school wide proposal I was granted 5 iPads for my classroom. During my research of how to use these devices I learned about Socrative. I have created at least 10 quizes, exit tickets, and rocket races. The races are a classroom hit.
As I prepare for the upcoming school year I love the idea of creating a classroom list using Socrative. First, it will be a great introduction to this tool. Also our school system, like many, use Blackboard as a means of communication. The email report I receive is going to save me at least 1 hour of manually entering contact information. Thank you Socartive!