Title – “All About Me” With a Twist

By – Jose Resto

Primary Subject – Other

Secondary Subject – LA (ESL)

Grade Level – 4-5

Introduction:

This is a great idea for reducing first day anxiety.

Procedure:

Since I am a new teacher and none of my future students knows a thing about me, I decided to put together an 11 X 17 paper poster about myself. I used MS Publisher and printed it in full color at Kinko’s (any high quality color copy service would do). I ran off one for each of my incoming students. I will mail them to my students in a Blue Tube container along with a welcome letter, an invitation for coffee and desert the night before school starts for the parents (no kids allowed) and a blank page so the students can create their own poster and share it on the first day of class.

Details:

If you try this idea, be sure to include pictures on your poster that your students can relate to such as family, pets, favorite food, favorite sport, favorite book, interesting hobby or talent, best summer vacation, etc.

All of my students are ESL students and their biggest fear is not knowing anything about their teacher, especially if he or she will speak their language. So, my poster is in English on one side and Spanish on the other – both with the same graphics.

I start with “This is Where I was Born” under a picture of a landmark of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the center, I put a professionally taken picture of me with my data underneath: “Born on March 30, 1961.” Next is a picture of my favorite vacation spot – Cancun, Mexico. These pictures are even more appropriate, because most of my students will be from Mexico or Puerto Rico. In the row below, I put a family picture of my wife and kids and their names and ages, a very formal close-up picture of my wife and I on our 10th wedding anniversary (she looks like a princess in it) and a picture of our two dogs with their names and birth dates below.

The bottom three pictures show some of my favorite things. For my favorite sport, I posted a picture of a bowling alley depicting Cosmic Bowling. Then I added pictures of my favorite foods and finally, a picture of my dream car, an Excalibur Phaeton IV 1994.

Notes:

The purpose of this poster is to
1. show my students that I am human; I have a life outside of school
2. model what I wish they would construct about themselves and
3. enable me to get to know the class faster.

My principal loved this idea and she even kept a copy of my poster to share with the staff.

E-Mail

Jose Resto

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