Here's a game I'm using this week with my Middle 1st & 3rd graders:

Have one kid come up to the front of the class and face the board (away from everyone else).  Have everyone else stand up.

Ask the kid a question where they have to make a choice.  For example - Coke or Pepsi, Soccer or Basketball, Cell phone or internet, Twilight or Harry Potter.

The kids that agree with your player stay standing, everyone else sits down.  At the end you end up with just a few kids standing.  If you're lucky you can get down to just one.  If you wipe out everyone still standing have the last group stand up again and keep going.  When you want to end or get to one kid left turn your player around and introduce him/her to their new best friend.

If you have problems coming up with questions or want to make it more interactive have the students think of questions for the player.

The time for this game varies a lot, I've had rounds last anywhere from a few minutes to about 10.  It doesn't take a whole period, but I'm getting the kids in their new seats and all for the first part of class.

I find it odd you would go out of your way to contribute something negative, such as; 'doesn't sound very fun...'.   Activities/Lesson plans that work in some classrooms, don't always work in others, I think we've all experienced that.

If you don't like an idea or contribution, just move on.

I've done a game like this before and it worked well. You can also make it more high level if you like with activities (Build a house, Design a house, etc). Also gets kids up and moving. Another variation I've tried is where you have students go to either side of a room (Say, all boys on the side, all girls on the other). Then let the students move across the room. Active games are always good. May not be ideal for larger classes though.

It would be fun with fun, positive students who'd get a kick out of seeing who their "new best friend" is.  Sometimes something funny like that can motivate silly students.  The only problem is in some classes where there's a kid who gets picked on for dumb reasons.  If he/she was somebody's "new best friend", the other kids could be jerks about it.

This actually sounds really cool.

I'm curious though, do you guys have co-ed afterschool classes? I'm wondering if a group of all-boys would like something like this. I get the feeling that they might feel a bit awkward about seeing their "new best friend", especially since they are all from different grades and they don't mingle too much between grades.

That sounds like a wonderful activity and I'll def. try it during summer camp.  After the student has found their new friend, do you play all over again with a new kid?  I think I can make this work in a class of 12, but I'm hesititant to try it in a class for 36.

My classes are separated boys/girls, and all my classes are at least 36 kids.  They had a great time with the game.  I didn't have the last kid standing take over unless they wanted to.   After the first round I had plenty of kids that wanted to come up.

One thing that also helps is to let the kids throw in questions.  I got some great ones that way.

This DOES sound fun. I also think Klorptar's way of developing the idea sounds spot on. Kudos all round apart from post two but, hey, we can't all agree on everything, can we?

You never know what will/won't be fun.  I did the simplest game with my students recently: just make a list of words, where the first letter of each word has to be the last letter of the previous word.  Example:  School->lunch->house->early.  They loved it.  Easily passed 5 minutes.  Strange.

I was planning to do the same game for the coming weeks and maybe I can make it harder by specifying a category such as animals, school stuff, fruit, etc. Found the idea from Dave's Esl. Right now, I'm doing a 'compound word' game where students randomly picks a compound word and has to draw the 2 parts of the word then his/her team has to guess as many as they can within a time frame.

However, the first time i did the compound word game, it took much longer than anticipated. The students were a little rowdy and the whole game took around 20-25 minutes. Maybe cux it was Friday.

This lesson was a huge hit with my Grade 3 girls! I stared by giving them the format, "Do you prefer_____ or ____?" and "Would you rather______ or ______?" We then played a few rounds so they could see how the game was played. Then I had each student write down one question using, Do you prefer...? and Would you rather...? For all subsequent rounds the students asked the questions. They loved it. My only suggestion would be to read their questions before they ask to check that it is appropriate. Thank you!