When new students join your school or your class it is a good idea be proactive in getting to know them.  For anyone who is new to a class or a school there is a significant amount of anxiety about entering the new situation so the more you can alleviate that anxiety the better.  One way is to help them to realise that you are interested in who they are as a person.  Depending on the circumstance you may know that a person or group is joining you in advance or in other situations they may just turn up on the day.  Having some resources ready to give or send out will help you to support your new charges effectively.  

Learn About Them

One way to quickly gather information is to ask them to share in advance of the transition.  Sharing a sheet with them to capture some key information can be a good way to get started.  Ideally you will have access to a pictures of the students so that you can be confident with names prior to their arrival. If you are able to use correct names, particularly where a group has joined, this will help them to feel welcome and noticed.  

Share Information If You Can

If you are able to (this will depend on school policies and parental and student agreement) share pictures and a little information about the other students in the class with the new student/s.  This will help them to get to know where they share interests with others, will give them an opportunity to learn names and will make the early days seem significantly less stressful.  As Dale Carnegie pointed out, knowing someone’s name is like music to their ears and will certainly oil the wheels of new friendship.  There are safeguarding considerations for this idea, however if they can be overcome then the benefit for the incoming student will be significant.  We have used a parental agreement on both sides (existing and new students) to ensure clarity over what the sheet can be used for.  

With the above in mind we have created a simple ‘all about me’ sheet, and an all about us frame that you could use for this purpose.  The all about me sheet has a space in the top right for your school logo as well.   

The best approach with the ‘all about us’ Google sheet is to make a copy (this is read only) and then either share it with the students and get them to populate it, being careful not to change the formatting, or get a staff member to complete the sheet and keep it up to date in the year.  Alternatively you could print the sheet and manually fill it in then scan/copy it for the new student.