Mapping Your Identity A BacktoSchool Ice Breaker Lesson

Mapping Your Identity: A Backto-School Ice Breaker Lesson Question: How can students create identity maps to introduce themselves to their peers?

Lesson Overview: • Create your own "identity map" to identify your own multiple roles, qualities and attributes. Then, you are to share your identity map as a means of introducing yourself to your peers.

After sharing their identity maps, students could discuss their observations. • What did they learn about their peers through this mapping exercise? • What roles do many students share? • What adjectives were the most descriptive or unique?

Materials: • • student notebook (For rough draft) Pencil or pen drawing paper (One sheet for final draft) marker (For final draft)

Warm-up: • Let’s start this lesson by looking at a historical figure's name, and displaying the map associated with that name on the overhead. • For example, let’s look at Benjamin Franklin on the next slide.

Ben Franklin • Mapping Ben Franklin’s Life

Instructions: • Introducing the concept of an identity map: Today you will be mapping your own identity, in a similar fashion to the word map you saw on Ben Franklin. Although you may not be well known or famous for your different roles, you will use this mapping opportunity to introduce yourself to your peers through your identity map. I will distribute a sheet of large drawing paper and a marker to each of you. You will use a marker to write your full name in the center of the drawing paper with large bold letters.

Brainstorming roles and nouns: • I encourage you to consider all the roles you may identify with in the different facets of their lives. You can think of your familiar roles (Big brother? Big sister? Baby of the family? ); your roles in school (Writer? Reader? Scientist? Historian? Artist? Class clown? ); your roles outside of school--on the playground, on the Internet, or among friends (Hoopster? Gamer? Confidant? ); or any other roles that may come to mind. You must draw a different line or ray on your identity map for each role you wish to include. At the end of each line, you should write the word that identifies that particular role. You should include at least four or five of these lines.

Incorporating adjectives: • You may wish to include adjectives on our map to describe yourself. 
Adjectives could be written at the end of lines that originate at your names and branch out (if they are adjectives that generally apply to their identities), or they could be rays surrounding a particular role (e. g. , the adjective "responsible" might be used to describe "big sister, " or "prolific" may be used to describe "writer"). 


Here is a sample identity map:

Wrap-up: Sharing Identity Maps: Once we have completed our identity maps, we will use the maps as a way to introduce themselves to our classmates. • In order to save class time, we will share the maps in a "gallery walk" format (where students post the identity maps on their tables and students circulate around the room reading the maps and can give feedback to students). •

Final Questions • After sharing our identity maps, we will discuss our observations. • What did we learn about our peers through this mapping exercise? • What roles do many students share? • What adjectives were the most descriptive or unique?