There is an activity I do with kids (8-11) on my first lesson, which ultimately focuses on them drawing on a piece of paper a self-portrait, with the things they like, and answering to simple questions such as "what's your name?" and "what's your favourite toy?"
However one of the questions on the piece of paper is: "how tall are you?", which of course kids for the most part cannot answer.
Hence what you see on the "greenboard of the day": one by one the kids come to the board and I measure their height. I use a short classroom ruler, of maybe 30 centimeters, and a lot of addictions and subtractions, which I ask the students to calculate in my place.
At the end, when we finally have moved to the presentation of the next activity, the students have practiced numbers, calculations, the metric system... while enjoying a bit of celebrity status in coming to the board and having their name written on it, proof of the complicity between them and the teacher.
Naturally there is also a secret purpose to this, which is allowing yours truly, the teacher, to learn at least some of the names of the students on the first day.
When two of them are the same height I put them back to back and we all decide whether they're really the same height... what's most amazing to me is that never in this activity I've witnessed the slightest hint at competition to "be the tallest".
As to the mermaid and the name of the the local teacher above it... they're leftovers of the following activity and of the copious drawing it involved.
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