🗑 10 "get to know you" activities

💻 NEW PD SERIES: Capture and hold student attention

You know what’s tougher than ever right now? Capturing — and holding — students’ attention.

The good news? We’re not helpless.

This fall, I’m teaming up with RocketPD for a brand-new five-session cohort called:

Tech Like a Pirate: How to Create a Buzzworthy Classroom That Captures Students’ Attention — and Holds It.

We’ll talk about attention, relevance, and motivation — and how to connect your instruction with the digital world your students actually live in.

This isn’t about gimmicks or tech for tech’s sake. It’s about using platforms, tools, and strategies with purpose.

📅 Starts November 5, 2025
💡 Five live virtual sessions + access to recordings
🎟️ Discounts available for teams of 5+

Hope you’ll join me — or pass this along to someone on your team who’s ready to rethink student engagement.

PS: Let me know if you’ve got questions — just hit reply and ask!

🗄 TEMPLATE 🗄️

👀 Get 100’s of free Slides/PPT templates

As the school year gets back in full swing, I have a question for you …

Why do all of the work when you don’t have to?

We have hundreds of free templates in Google Slides, PowerPoint, Canva, Adobe Express and more in our free templates library.

• Download or make a copy of a template.

• Adjust as necessary. (They’re all editable.)

• Assign to your students.

It’s that easy!

This is the kind of stuff you’d have to pay for on Teachers Pay Teachers … but we make it all available for free.

So … what are you waiting for? Check them out … find something great … and save yourself some time!

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

❤️ 10 easy ways to get to know your students

Building learning experiences students will love means understanding what makes them tick. But that's not the only benefit to knowing their interests.

When you learn what they're passionate about, their hobbies, and their curiosities, you build trust. Trust creates influence, rapport, and motivation to succeed in your class. The first rule of teaching is always relationships.

So, how do you find out what students are into?

Give them lots of opportunities and various ways to share.

Below are 10 activities you can use to get to know your students those first few weeks of school.

1. Interest Surveys

Understanding what interests students helps you connect what they're learning to their own lives. For one, it helps you make analogies. Compare relationships and concepts they understand in their lives to new content. Show how they're similar or different. That helps tether new ideas to something they already understand deeply. It also helps create more relevant examples.

Make a copy of this Google Forms template. Once you make a copy, you can edit and adjust it however you'd like before sharing it with students.

• Learn more: Student interest surveys to connect learning to their world

2. All About Me poster

This ready-to-use Design a Poster About You lesson from Google Applied Digital Skills walks students step-by-step through introducing themselves to their classmates by creating a poster you can print (or "hang up" digitally) with Google Drawings.

• More All About Me ideas: Beyond All About Me: Community building activities you can use tomorrow

3. Unboxing video

It may sound crazy, but ... people love unboxing videos! Knowing that this is a trend, ask yourself ... What could students unbox in a video -- and describe it all the while? Ask students to fill a box with things that tell about them and create their own unboxing video to introduce themselves to their classmates.

• Learn more: The Unboxing Video: A fun classroom video activity

4. Top 3 list

There's something that just clicks with our brains and lists. We love a good list, and we love to know exactly how many things are on those lists and why! It's a great cognitive exercise -- pick a topic, identify criteria, rank them, and justify your rankings. A simple way to start is a little top 3 list where students share the top 3 things about themselves. You can put a criteria on the activity and ask them to share their top 3 summer activities, top 3 moments from last school year, or just keep it open and ask for a Top 3 About Me.

• Get the template: Top 3 Graphic Organizer Template

5. Class profile and learning preferences

Through sharing their profiles, students will discover common interests in and out of school, encouraging a deeper understanding of one another.

In this FigJam template, students will create personalized profile cards, complete with their photos and interests, fostering a sense of community and connection within the class.

At the end, the class will engage in a fun activity focused on discovering and appreciating the diverse ways people learn and prefer to work, promoting a collaborative and inclusive learning environment.

• Alternate Template: Google Slides Learner Preferences Survey

6. Google Classroom banner quilt

In this activity you’ll give each student a square blank Google Drawing and have them decorate it. Then you can download each square and put them together to make a "quilt" or collage Google Classroom banner. Alternatively you can have each student add their name to a collaborative Google Drawing Classroom banner by making the file "anyone with link can edit" and asking students to add their name using word art. Don't forget to revisit this activity when any new students join your class.

• Get the Template: Blank digital quilt square

• Get the Template: Google Classroom banner template

7. Design a locker

Students can design a locker to introduce themselves to classmates in this fun template. They simply copy items from the other slides in the template to add to their lockers. Then they can explain why those items are important to them and represent them.

• Get the template: Design your locker template

8. Icebreaker trading cards

Get to know the faces of everyone in your class. Use these icebreaker trading cards from FigJam to have everyone share a little bit about themselves with one another and get on the same page.

• Alternative Template: Google Slides character trading card

9. Code a “Me Project” in Scratch

In this unit from Experience CS, students will explore the basics of Scratch, personalize sprites, and develop programs to create an animation that tells a story all about themselves! They will explore the basics of animation by creating storyboards that focus on sequencing and dialogue, and give and receive peer feedback throughout to help shape the development of their Scratch project.

• Learn more: The me project from Experience CS

10. Back to school digital book

Give students the opportunity to introduce themselves to you and their classmates while helping them learn how to use Book Creator in a fun way.

• Get the template: Back to School book template

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!