My Life in Five Sentences
ESL First Day Introduction Game - Reading, Writing and Speaking - Elementary and above - 25 minutes
This is a great icebreaker activity for the first day of class to help students get to know each other. In the activity, students use sequence words to order information about a partner. Write five sentences on the board in a random order about interesting things you have done in your life. Then, write some sequence words on the board, e.g. first, second, then, after that, finally. Tell the students that the sentences on the board are things you have done in your life but the order is wrong. Have the students put the five sentences in the correct order using the sequence words on the board. The students can do this verbally or you can have them write the sentences. Then, ask the students for their sequence until someone gives you the right order. Next, tell the students to write five sentences in a random order about interesting things they have done. Tell the students to avoid writing sentences where the chronological order is obvious. When the students have finished writing, divide them into pairs. The students read their partner's sentences and try to put them in the right order using sequence words. If the order is wrong, the student tries again until they get it right. You can make this icebreaker more challenging by using more sentences, e.g. 'My life in ten sentences'. When everyone has finished, ask the students to give feedback to the class on the information they found out about their partner. Any interesting findings can then be discussed in more detail.