First Day of School: "Me In Numbers"

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One way to introduce yourself to a new group of students is to do "Me In Numbers."*



Here's how it works: 

1. Make up a few questions about yourself. List the numbers (out of order) at the bottom. Have some easy to figure out and others that could be several of the options. For example, my daughter is probably not 38 or 1884 years old... but she could be 2, 3, or 14. 

2. Display to the class and have them right down their guesses for each statement. Each number at the bottom is used once. (sometimes I like to set it up that they are going to have a "quiz" on this first day. I have a smile on my face so they don't get too nervous, and then obviously when I show them they questions they know it's not a graded quiz but just for fun).

3. Go over the answers as they "grade" their work. As you go over the answers, share a bit about yourself. I usually have a slide or two to go with each answer with some pictures of my family, cats, etc. Hopefully you picked some questions that relate to important things in your life. It's your chance to reveal about yourself as a person to help build that relationship and trust from the first day.

4. Have students work on making their own versions with important numbers from their lives.

5. I like to collect the students' versions and try answering them that night. Give them back the next day so students can see how you did guessing things about them. It's a fun way to get to know a little about them and also let them know you care!


There are a few other mathy benefits to this activity.
-Doing this on the first day lets students know that you will be doing things with numbers and math from day 1!
-This activity helps build number sense and gives you your first opportunity to talk about reasonableness of answers.



Want to know my answers? :)
How old is Mrs Forest? 38
How many cats do I have? 2
How old is my daughter? 3
How many Twitter followers do I have? 1884
How many years have I been teaching? 14



*I totally got this idea from a blog or Twitter, but I can't remember where. I thought maybe it came from Sarah's blog, but I tried searching and couldn't find it. So, if this idea came from you, let me know and I'll be sure to update this post to give you credit!

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