Description
Make the first week back to school fun with this T-shirt All About Me art and writing activity. This all about me icebreaker really engages upper elementary and middle school students, helping with community building and reducing anxiety during the first week back to school.
Using these low-prep T-shirt art and writing templates in the classroom, you will learn exciting facts about your students. Classmates can enjoy sharing about themselves and getting to know more about each other, whilst gently exploring goal setting too.
Check out the video below!
What’s included in this all about me back to school activity?
1. T-shirt drawing activities
- There are 15 sections to respond to prompts with mini drawings and doodles. Prompts include self-portrait, name, age, grade, favorite color, fruit, vegetable, sport, movie, song…
- A selection of creative template options are available, you can choose according to the age and ability of your students. For example, confident students can use a blank template and draw their own lines and boxes to fill in.
2. T-shirt writing activities
- There are 15 questions / prompts to respond to in written format. These include my top 3 goals this year, something I like at school, something I find challenging, if I were a superhero, I can make the world better by, I feel happy when, I feel sad when, I aim to, I wonder if…..
- Choose from additional writing templates to explore goal setting and summer memories
- Untitled lined T-shirt templates are included for you to use in your own way
Learn about the artist Piet Mondrian
- The T-shirt templates are inspired by the artist, Piet Mondrian’s abstract work.
- This resource includes a poster and garlands to help create a colorful, welcoming and inspiring classroom.
- You can also extend the learning by studying Piet Mondrian
Mondrian-inspired early finisher activities
- Additional fun doodle pages
- Bookmarks to cut out and decorate
- Help cut out and display classroom garlands
Additional information
- Completed and partially completed T-shirt examples are included for display purposes and to give direction to students who may find this helpful. I used a black ball point pen and colored markers to create a modern, illustrative style to appeal to middle schoolers
- UK/Aus/Can templates with ‘colour’ and ‘favourite’ spellings are included in the packet.
- The templates will match up when glued together, back to back.
- Please note that activities have been designed to complete on separate pieces of paper, they are not formatted to be printed back to back on one sheet of paper. Accurate two-sided printing cannot be guaranteed as paper tends to move slightly while printing
Size of templates
- The T-shirt templates are designed to fit US Letter and A4 paper size for printing
- They measure approximately 25cm and 20cm / 10 x 8 inches
- Work big! If you have access to a larger printer, you can scale up to 11×14 or A3 depending on the paper sizes that you use.The templates are vector files so they won’t pixelate when you enlarge them
Ideas for use
- Build a strong sense of community during the first week back
- Safe for shy or nervous students to share about themselves
- Meet the Teacher
- Open House
- Bulletin board displays
- ESL students
- Students with learning disabilities
- Encourage creativity in those less confident
- Goal setting and growth mindset
- Social and emotional – help students explore their feelings
- Welcoming new students
- New teacher introduction
- Helpful low prep project for substitute teachers
- End of Year reviews
Display ideas
- These T-shirts make a fabulous display on the bulletin board or pegged up on a line as a garland or ‘washing line’
- You could also decorate your door or use the T-shirts for personal journal covers or to label students’ locker doors
- Glue back to back, and laminate them if you would like to refer back to them throughout the year
Here’s the activity in more detail
Happy teacher feedback
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Diana Y says,
“This is adorable! It’s visual which makes it very accessible to students. It also helps them to personalize the work they’re doing in the place of a traditional intro form.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Victoria K says,
“This is the perfect size for my students to use; it is not too large or small. This makes learning about one another fun and not intimidating. Great to use at the beginning of a year.”
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Cedee Teaches says,
“This is easily my favorite back to school activity so far. You really learn a lot about your students and they are so proud of their shirt when they are done. I like to post their creations all over the classroom door when they’re all finished.”
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You might also like to view these popular seasonal resources:
View the Google Classroom™ digital version of this resource here
View my Back to School Bundles here – save 25%
Stay in touch!
Newsletter (with a cool freebie)
Please get in touch with me if you have any questions regarding this resource, I am always keen to help,
Thanks!
Diane
Copyright ©The ImaginationBox/Diane Pagan 2019.
All rights reserved by the author.
Permission to copy for single classroom use only
