[fishead soup]

Simply right key words of the board that relate to yourself example
Birth dates hometown hobbies wifes name husbands name birthplace
favorite singer food music

You simply tell the students that these are answers to questions about yourself. Put the students into teams and award a point each time someone guesses the question correctly. After each question is guessed erase the key word. Do this until all the key words are gone.

[marymary]

another good one (especially for high school students who get a kick out of the initial surprise) involves a fresh roll of toilet paper. bring it in and at the beginning of class pull off "as much as you need." then pass the roll around and ask the students to pull off "as much as they need". after everyone has what they consider to be a sufficient amount of t.p., explain that they need to give one piece of introductory information about themselves for every square of toilet paper that they are now holding. start with yourself.

this is best for smaller groups (it can get a bit tedious with a bunch of people) and for groups who don't already know all about each other.

[Eric]

That is hilarious, marymary!

[little sage]

Marymary,

Funny!

I wish I had known about the TP game when I was teaching high-school boys! I hope I get "just the right class" to try it with in March.

Karen

[aidagol]

This is fun! I have done it but with M&M, which they really love, so they take a lot!!!!. Another possibility is doing it with cards. They take a card and then they say as many things as the number in the card.

[kmsah]

You are a genius

[fatma123]

Great one really!
I'll try it..

[michèle 2]

Toilet paper game , great!!!

[Siemens]

Yeah, I have tried this game as well as it was really funny. The thing is that I couldn't find toilet paper where I used to work, so I went for napkin papers. I have to admit that it would have been funnier with pieces of toilet papers.

Another thing that I did differently was that I asked them to write an adjective per each napkin paper that they had picked. Afterwards I asked them to write sentences using these adjectives and they seemed to enjoy this activity a lot.

[scheyda]

wow! really great ideas! thank u all !

[nandomfreitas]

Yeah, it's definitely nice! I did it and I also added this: sts were supposed to put true and false info about themselves and the others had to tell them which was true and which was false. They loved as well!!!

[alawton]

I can't imagine the looks of your students when you pull out the toilet paper on the first day of class. I teach middle school students and I think I am going to try this. These younger kids get a little wild, but this one may be worth it!

[Hellosir]

Haha, excellent! Learnt that toilet paper is both a useful and financially viable teaching tool on my first thread after registering.

Can only go down from here! Will try it next semester when my students return from their holidays, more paper means more stories from their Chinese New Year holiday.

[deswita]

wowwwww this is brilliant!!!!!!!!1

[qamsakon]

I love it, definately will try

[qamsakon]

"anything"

this is an icebreaker I use just before I start my lesson. everyone stand in a circle. the first student shouts, "anything" the next student shouts "like what?"
the third "animals". any category is ok. example
1st studend "anything"
2nd student "Like what"
3rd student " boys names
4th student " peter"
5th and so on must shout any boys name they know until some1 decides to change and say "that's all. then the student next to that one starts from the begining...anything then the circle goes on "like what"......"animals".......sheep, donkey and so on. everyone must clap 2 times to make a rythm. clap.clap "anything" clap.clap,clap..."like what" and so on. 1 mistake, you sitdown until 1/2 students remain then they get a candy or anything.

[mgforty3]

I really like the sound of the "anything" game. I'm going to try it out next week with my high school's English Club. Thanks very much!

The toilet paper game looks good too. It's just a shame that here in Japan toilet rolls aren't divided into squares! ^_^ (I might try the deck of cards though)

[liebkostdrache]

I can't wait to try the TP icebreaker with these kids! That's completely awesome! Thanks!!!

[liebkostdrache]

By the way, this went over magnificently with the kids group Too bad they only took 1 square

[oceanpatience]

Quote qamsakon

"anything"

this is an icebreaker I use just before I start my lesson. everyone stand in a circle. the first student shouts, "anything" the next student shouts "like what?"
the third "animals". any category is ok. example
1st studend "anything"
2nd student "Like what"
3rd student " boys names
4th student " peter"
5th and so on must shout any boys name they know until some1 decides to change and say "that's all. then the student next to that one starts from the begining...anything then the circle goes on "like what"......"animals".......sheep, donkey and so on. everyone must clap 2 times to make a rythm. clap.clap "anything" clap.clap,clap..."like what" and so on. 1 mistake, you sitdown until 1/2 students remain then they get a candy or anything.

thaks for the idea.. i love it, and want to try it.. but i cant understand the 2 claps. is it like this?

anything (clap,clap)
like what (clap,clap)
animals (clap,clap)
dog (clap,clap)
chicken (clap,clap) and so on...
that's all (clap,clap) (then back to anything)