Building group familiarity

Introduce yourself to the students, share something about yourself or your work that will help the students feel comfortable and set the tone that students will be sharing and connecting within the group.

•  Have the students introduce themselves, perhaps name and hometown

•  Pair students up and have one introduce the other to the group. 

•  Pair students up and ask them to introduce their "ideas" about the readings, be it in the form of a question, or a statement of what they found most compelling about the texts.

•  Ask students to share something that the group does not know about them yet

•  Have students play Federalist 10 bingo.