Insect Icebreaker

When deciding how to start out the first day of the semester of my insect diversity and evolution course, I devised a quick activity to get the students interacting over insects.

I gave a magnifying lens to the group with the point-mounted specimens.

I prepared a museum drawer with 20 unit trays.
In the week before the first day of class, I had collected several series of insects from my yard and pinned them. I distributed the 20 specimens into individual unit trays, making sure to include four individuals each of five species. The trays were flipped over before class, so that students didn't see what insect they were selecting.

For the first lecture, I had the students grab a unit tray as they arrived -- each tray was placed upside-down in the drawer. The insects themselves weren't anything special (though that could be a fun twist), but they served as a group-forming tool to get students interacting.

At the very beginning of class, students had to walk around and find the three other people with the same insect, and then they each spent a minute or two introducing themselves to the group. It is a more personal setting than immediately going around the room for roll call and introductions. Sometimes class-wide student introductions can be a little nerve-racking on the first day, so I thought it would be nicer to start in small groups before taking attendance.