Name Tent Activities

First, Students fold a sheet of blank cardstock or copy paper in half. Then on one half of the paper, have students draw a Circle Map (which sort of looks like a donut). Next, students write their name in the center, or the “donut hole,” of the Circle Map. Then, have them fill in details about themselves as the “sprinkles” on the donuts (see the image below). 

This activity serves multiple purposes. First, it lets the students introduce themselves while simultaneously helping you get to know them and learn their names. Secondly, it introduces students to Thinking Maps, a note-taking and organizing tool I love using. Finally, after you’ve learned their names, you can collect the tents and use them as cards you can shuffle and pick volunteers. It can help you make sure that you’ve had positive interactions with each of your students each week (just keep two piles of these cards on your desk for that purpose).  

If you have access to Chromebooks or other devices, you can have students do this with images that they can “show” rather than “tell” on a Google Slide template like this one (above, right). This is a great way to differentiate for English Learners, or with students who may have a hard time expressing themselves through writing.

A variation of this assignment has students brainstorm and doodle images that represent them, and add an alliterative epithet that says something about them, like “Caring Chelsey” and “Beguiling Benjamin” below. 

Regardless of which structure you use, you can have students do a structured turn and talk about each other's maps. For ex. "Rows 1 and 2, 3 and 4, etc... face each other. Odd numbers, talk for xx minutes. Then even numbers talk through your maps for xx mins." This also helps you learn names.

Inside the Tent (props to Kristin “KJ” Cole from Highland HS in Palmdale, CA for this idea) - If you are using name tents like the ones above, you can add some interactive activities like this one on the inside of the tent. In that particular “Inside the Tent” the teacher gave students a prompt as an exit ticket, and students responded in the appropriate box. Then the teacher hand-wrote a response to each student's response. While this was admittedly time consuming, it yielded great results as students looked forward to seeing what the teacher said to them individually.

The Name Game - The entire class--including the teacher--stands in a circle. Going around the circle each student says their name with the alliterative adjective, but they also have to say all the names/adjectives of the students that came before them, and the teacher goes last. 

See the doc titled “Get to Know Your Students with Maps” to see how you can use all 8 Thinking Maps to get to know your students while simultaneously introducing them to how to use these note-taking and organizational tools.