[alawton]

That is a good idea. Between the Spanish and ESL classes I teach each semester I have many students. It takes me a while to remember all of their names. Adults can sometimes be more offended if you forget their names. During the first week of class I walk around with my class roster. I ask questions pertaining to what we are learning. I'll choose a name that I am unfamiliar with to answer the question. Eventually the names stick!

[zeynept]

On the first day of the school, I use a puppet and I say "It doesn't know your language so you have to speak English. (They are 5-6 years old.) So they learn how to tell their names.

[cjtayl891]

One activity I've used before is "How good of a liar are you?" Students get a kick out of this because it's not something that they're often asked to do.
What they have to do is come up with three sentences about themselves. Two of them have to be lies and one of them should be a true statement, or vice versa. The object of the game is to try to fool the other students into thinking that the lies are true or that the true things are lies. In order to do this, students might decide to put seemingly normal things down as their lies; i.e. 'I went to the cinema yesterday.' in order to mislead the others into thinking that these are the true statements.
The fun part about it is you end up finding out some pretty unusual things about your students, and they really enjoy it.

[jlg53]

I taught in China for several years and at my last school had 64 grade 1 students.
First, I had the Ss. write their English names on desk cards (many Ss. did not have English names) - send note home to parents etc.

Then I took a picture of each S. holding their name card.

I used the pictures to learn their names, but also for parent interviews - when you have 4 Tom's ....

While I was taking the Ss. pictures, the class was drawing a picture of themselves and printing their English name on a sheet which went up on the classroom wall.

[sidewalker]

One of my favourite activities for older, more advanced learners is to give each student a bunch of cards with different opinions on. If the opinion matches the student's own then they hang on to the card. If they don't agree with it then they must get rid of it by finding a student who does share that opinion and giving them the card. Usually, you get lots of interesting sharing of opinions and students get to know each other a little.

At the end of the class, go around the group and see what opinion cards each student is holding. Lots more discussions will probably spark up along the way.


There's a set of opinion cards on my website which you can download and print.