Digital Collage and "This is Me" Poem: A Back to School Getting to Know You Activity
Welcome back to Day 2 of getting to know you activities that actually work.
Today's is my favorite independent activity, the kind where students work quietly on their own and you get to walk around, peek over shoulders, and learn something new about every single kid.
But first, I'm going to date myself.
I started teaching in the era of overhead projectors and Vis-à-Vis markers.
This was before the classroom tech boom. We had one computer lab for the entire school, and I'd take my students there once a week for a technology lesson. Everything else we did was paper and pencil.
Now, I sometimes miss the days when I didn't have to monitor kids for sneaking in a game or using AI to write their essays.
But there are a few things technology genuinely made better. My This is Me poem and collage activity is one of them.
Back in the day, I'd haul in magazines from the library, and students would flip through them hunting for images that represented who they were. They'd cut them out and glue them onto a piece of 8.5x11 cardstock.
If you've ever done any cutting and gluing in a middle school classroom, you already know where this is going.
By the end of the day, my floor looked like a magazine exploded. Scraps everywhere, abandoned glue sticks rolling under desks, and stacks of magazines with half their pages missing.
It was a mess. But I kept doing it every year because I loved the final product.
Students folded their cardstock in half. On the left side, they used a template to write their This is Me poem. On the right side, a collage of images that represented them.
It made a fantastic bulletin board, and more importantly, it gave me a real window into how my students saw themselves.
Then COVID hit, and we started the year remote. I still wanted to do this activity, I just had to figure out how to make it work without magazines and glue sticks.
Thankfully, Google Slides was there to save the day.
Here's how you can build your own version of this great getting-to-know-you activity, step by step:
Step 1: Set up the template.
Split the canvas in half with a line down the middle. The right side holds boxes for images. The left side holds the poem template.
Step 2: Create your This is Me poem template.
Insert a text box and title it This is Me Poem.
Students fill it in with words and ideas that represent them. Here's the first stanza of the one I use:
I Am (two special characteristics and/or adjectives)
I Wonder (something you are curious about)
I Know (something you know to be true)
I Am (first line repeated)
Step 3: Set up the frames on the right side.
Mine has seven boxes for students to insert images into, plus a "This is Me" banner at the top.
Step 4: Teach students how to insert images.
Give them an instruction slide to reference, but also model it live. Some students just need to see it happen once before it clicks.
Step 5 (optional):
Add extra collage slides.
I keep a few more templates in the same deck: Friends & Family, Interests, Hopes Dreams and Aspirations, and Favorites.
Students are required to complete the first slide (poem plus This is Me collage), then they choose one more slide to fill in.
Step 6: Print your favorites.
Pick the ones that really capture a student's personality and turn them into a bulletin board display.
Resources to Help You
This activity is part of my full First Week Plan for Middle School ELA, and you can grab it for free.
Fill out the form below, and I'll send you a copy so you can walk into the first week with a plan already in place.
Find it on TpT
If you want to skip the building and jump straight to the good part, I already put this whole thing together.
My Digital Collage and This is Me Poem activity comes with all 5 collage templates (poem, friends & family, interests, hopes dreams and aspirations, and favorites), plus student-friendly instructions for inserting and cropping images.
No magazines, no glue sticks, no mystery scraps on your floor.
Grab it on its own over on TpT.
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✅ Weekly plans
✅ Engaging Bell Ringers
✅ Standards Based Mini Lessons
✅ Articles of the Month
✅ This collage activity plus other relationship building back to school resources.
