Transition Tech Tools To Get To Know Your New Class.

This week, it’s been ‘move-up morning’ in my school, in which the children went to meet their new teacher.  How do you engage the children whilst getting to know them?  I found the perfect tech tools.

Firstly we played a few ‘get to know you’ games:

• Two truths and a lie: Each pupil has to say 2 truths and 1 lie about themselves.  The rest of the class has to guess which one was the lie.
• Okey-pokey: Sit the class in a circle, blindfold a child and stand them in the middle.  They hold a stick of rolled up card and after being spun around by the teacher, they point it at someone.  The child in front grabs it and says ‘okey-pokey’ in a disguised voice.  The person in the middle has to guess who it is (they get 3 tries).

• Who am I? Pin a well-known person (i.e. Justin Bieber) to the back of each child.  The children must go around and ask each other questions about who is on their back.

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Next we made ‘All About Me’ posters using the website Canva.com (also available on the App Store).

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How do you use Canva?

Watch my video tutorial to find out how to use Canva:

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Here is an example one of my students made:

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After the posters were finished, we wrote targets for the year using this sheet as a template. In each of the sections, the students wrote an English, maths, science and social target. Click to download the PDF: Target template.

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The final thing we did was an online questionnaire using the brilliant website Typeform . Before the ‘move-up morning’, I created a questionnaire with the aim of finding out what and how they liked to learn. Have a look at it: Typeform Questionnaire .

*Typeform also have tons of ready-made surveys which you can quickly adapt to suit your needs.

Here is a basic tutorial I created, explaining how to use Typeform:

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The results were really interesting and will help me when planning units and topics. Here are some examples of the feedback you get:

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In summary, we had a fantastic morning.  The students enjoyed themselves and we got to know each other better.  There were 2 main ways, I would suggest, that technology helped: the quality of the posters and also the feedback from the questionnaires gave me a really good insight into my new class’s learning styles.

Did you have a class swap this year? How did it go? Let me know by commenting below.