[Micro67]

I use a variation of that game that I think is as much fun for me as the students sometimes. I have several objects that I don't think the students will be familiar with (a hockey puck, the face mask from a football helmet, a plum line, etc.) and I break the students into small groups of 6/2. Each student gets a card that has 3 things written on it. Lie, lie and the truth. For the ones that they need to lie on they get 1 point for their team if they can convince the other team that it is not what it really is.

I don't really suggest this for a first day activity (per the thread) but it's good for practicing when to use (for and to) and a few other lessons.

[schmilly]

I work with an after school group of english as a second language learners, k-2nd. One of the first day of afterschool activities I like to do is best and worst about school. I do this a couple of time a month actually (sometimes about school sometimes just in general), the answers change as they kids feel more comfortable with me and their peers. Alot of my children have never been asked what they do and don't like, this gives them a voice and helps them feel valued. I can also learn how they feel about things, which helps me understand the best ways to respond to them with their homework. I can also try different approaches to things that they don't like to try to change the way they view them.

[isleepwhenican]

Hi. I just wanted to thank you for a great idea. I am a Purdue University student majoring in elementary special education. I am currently working with deaf education students who have difficulties understanding question words. I thought this would be a great activity for this class. It did not go as well as planned because I did not realize the students did not even understand when to use who instead of where for a question. I would do it differently than I had planned and actually did if I would do this lesson again with these same students. I then took this activity and turned it into a formal lesson plan for another class. Thanks for the great idea. If you or anyone would like to see the lesson plan please e-mail me at isleepwhenican@verizon.net

[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.