Class introductions are usual for the first day. Here’s the way I do mine [and why I do it this way]: Students interview each other (someone they don’t already know) and then introduce this person to the whole class. [Rationale: Building community begins with knowing who's in our community. Listening to someone else, especially a new person, is something we'll be doing all semester. Talking about someone else instead of yourself foregrounds the "get outside of your own experience" expectation I have for my students.] On the board, I write the interview questions [Rationale: Consistency of data gathering; helps me find out what I'm interested in finding out about my students]
- Name, major, year in college, hometown (in other words, basic ID and demographic info) [Rationale: Begin with the things least likely to require deep soul searching; find out who you might carpool with!]
- Job(s), family, hobbies (in other words, how do you spend your non-school, non-student time) [Rationale: Acknowledge that being a student is just one part of any person's identity, and I'll respect that.]
- Other English [or other subject] courses you’ve taken [Rationale: What previous experiences with our subject matter students have had, how long ago, how prepared are you for our material]
- Your personal goal(s) for this course (why did you pick this option to fulfill your gen eds, and “getting a good grade” isn’t the kind of answer I’m looking for because that’s obvious) [Rationale: Force students to foreground their personal stake in the course rather than only my agenda; provide an opportunity to fulfill a first class assignment, which is to add to the Course Goals list I have on the syllabus - I leave a couple of blanks that they must fill in themselves before midterm time.]
- One usual characteristic about yourself (nothing illegal) that you think no one else in class has/does/likes [Rationale: Provide an opportunity for students to stand out, differentiate themselves, perceive themselves as individuals within this community we're building. I almost always have to help some folks figure out what to say: "Do you collect anything? Like any weird foods? Have webbed toes? Traveled to an unusual place?"]
Students take notes during these conversations, and then I ask for volunteers to stand up and introduce each other. I ask them NOT to read everything from their notes; rather, after telling us the ID info, students need to tell us the two or three most interesting/important things about their interviewee. [Rationale: begin the critical thinking skill of selection and evaluation; also we don't have enough time!]
I make some kind of feeble humorous comment after/during each introduction [Rationale: Acknowledge that I'm paying attention; indicate that I have a sense of humor? 
]
]We applaud each introduction [Rationale: Praise is good!].
With classes that meet frequently, I ask students to take some notes during the introductions because we’ll use this information later. [Rationale: Reinforce listening skills.]
My observations after doing this for over a decade:
- Students almost always find someone who’s from their same town, neighborhood, etc., or same major/profession/workplace.
- Students almost always use this person as a groupmate for later group activities.
- Students like to perform.
- Students like to move around.
