I'm sure at this point, a year into the pandemic, you have watched a lot of "how-to" videos and learned many many different platforms. I just thought I'd take a minute to share with you how I use the platforms Nearpod, and Great Minds In-Sync(Eureka Math) in my virtual classroom. So this more of how I specifially use the platforms throughout my virtual instruction, and less of a how to get started type of a thing!
Nearpod
Nearpod is a digitial platfrom that allows you to make any of your lessons interactive. You can use any lessons you have already created (ppt, google slides, word, even YouTube vids!) and make them interactive. You can also create lessons through Nearpod. It really increases student engagement, especially through the use of Collaborate boards, or the Draw It board feature (like a digital whiteboard).
I create Collaborate boards across the curriculum. I make them for Socio-Emotional Learning (morning circle discussions). I make them for most componenets of a Eureka Math lesson: Application Problem, Student Debrief, and Exit Tickets. I also create them for ELA to use with our Wonders curriculum for the "Making Connections" questions that are throughout the anthology stories. I also create them with the vocab skills in mind, such as: similes, metaphors, greek roots etc.
Additionally I often create a collaborate board for a digital version of the Kagan strategy, Jot Thoughts. This is a strategy traditionally done in the classroom where kids work in table groups with sticky notes. So instead, this is done with digital sticky notes on the collaborate board. Watch the video below to see a more detailed explanation of this strategy as well as examples of the above mentioned ways I use Nearpod.
Great Minds In-Sync (Eureka Math)
Great Minds is the parent company to Eureka Math. They have created a full digital, interactive version of the Eureka Math Curriculum called "In-Sync." This platform has been a life-saver as they have high quality engaging lesson videos. These encompass the full concept development component of a Eureka math lesson. Also, all student pages: Sprints, problem sets, succeed pages, etc are included as writeable PDFs, which make it really easy to use with google classroom. Watch my video below where I talk more about how I specifically use the different features within the In-Sync site.
If you have ever considered using either of these platforms: Nearpod or In-Sync, but weren't really sure how exactly to implement in your virtual classroom, I hope this helped! Both of these platforms have been a life-saver for online learning and have really helped me boost engagment with my virtual lessons.
In pre-pandemic times, we know the importance of cooperative learning structures and cooperative grouping. We know that that these routines keep students engaged and optimize their learning. We know it is essential to teach kids how to work together to achieve a common goal, and to learn from one another, while building relationships. The question is, how has this been working with online learning? For many of us who are simply struggling to survive this pandemic and new world of online learning, it may be something that has been forgotten, or just plain difficult to achieve.
I believe that now more than ever, it's so important to ensure that we are implementing team building and class building exercises even into our online learning. Children are being isolated from their peers and have minimal social interaction. Not only do we know that collaborative learning structures help students learn more efficiently, it's also essential right now to focus on helping students to have that peer interaction with one another. And as Kagan has taught us so well, cooperative/collaborative learning only takes place once effective team building/building relationships has occurred. The students need to know each other and feel comfortable with each other in order for them to effectively open up and work together.
So that leads us to this important question, HOW can we implement team building exercises through virtual/online learning?? I know that team bulidng and class building has really been a struggle through virtual instruction. I am going to give a few ideas here in this blog, that will hopefully help you out, if you're looking for some new ideas!
Class Building
First you want to start by building relationships with the class as a whole. You want to get to know each of them as much as you want them to know each other. This can be done through something as simple as a morning circle. I teach 5th grade and we start every morning on zoom with our morining circle question. Usually, you will want to start with questions that will be fun and engaging to the kids. I often use the "would you rather" question prompts. The kids LOVE these. Here is one great resource I found that has a very conclusive list of "would you rather" questions for kids:
1) Type the question in the chat, they can send their response to me privately or to everyone. I can further this discussion by asking for students to raise their hand and elaborate or share their responses. I can also use the spinner to call on students at random after they've been given time to respond. Additionally I can call on a student to share and then ask them to call on the next student to share, etc. Once they get a little more comfortable with each other, I'll often throw them into quick random breakout rooms in pairs or groups to discuss the question as well.
2)I often use Nearpod which is an interactive white board site. Here I will send students the link, which will take them to the Nearpod board with the question displayed. They then type their answer on their virtual sticky note and everyone can read everyone elses responses. I read them aloud as they post them, and elevate or highlight any of participular interest, thus sparking further discussion.
These questions help to bring about a positive attitude when starting the day. The students really look forward to them and will start to engage in the dialogue voluntarily after a while. At this point in the year we have all learned so much about each other, things we like or don't like. I often see students referring to something another student likes in the chat. It's really cute. Morning circle questions are fun, simple, and a great way to build your class community and sense of belonging. Below is a video of my students engaging in one using Nearpod.
Team Building
Once you have spent a bit of time building relationships with your class a whole, you can move into team building. You first want to establish norms for the breakout rooms so that students know what is expected. Then you always want to start with fun, non-academic tasks. The purpose of this again is to help students build relationships and get to know each other so that when it comes time to now complete academic tasks as a group, they will feel comfortable talking and sharing with one another.
One GREAT way to do this through virtual instruction is through the use of "virtual escape rooms." You don't need to make them yourself, there are TONS out there already created. I have purchased a few off of Teachers Pay Teachers. The purpose of these activites is that students have to talk and work together in order to complete the tasks in the escape room to move onto the next room. The goal is to be the group who finishes first. The kids absolutely love these- they love anything that's a race right? They really have a lot of fun doing them. Below You can watch a video of my students working to complete an escape room project.
Kagan recommends doing 1 non-academic team building activity once a week just to help students continue to build those relationships. That's not always possible, not even in the classroom. If I can do a non-academic team building activity once every couple weeks I feel pretty good about that. My kids work collaboratively to complete academic tasks on a daily basis through breakout rooms. I have really seen them grow in the way they talk to each other, feel comfortable with each other, etc. I definitely attribute this to the time we spend class building and team building- building relationships with one another.
I hope this helps you get started, or further supports you in building relationships with students!
When we started distance learning this school year, I felt like the most time during my day was spent filling in attendance records and tracking participation. It took HOURS of my day; there had to be an easier way. I tried using the Zoom attendance report or the Zoom chat to track participation and attendance but it still required quite a bit of work on my end to manually cross-reference my roster and the reports.
That's when I showed my husband what I had been doing. He took a look and immediately saw an opportunity for improvement using automation through Excel. He and a friend put together a template on Excel where all attendance and participation counts are automated based on chat and attendance reports.
I make it a point during my Zoom lessons to ask students to respond to questions in the chat. This encourages whole class participation and students can select to respond privately to me or the whole class. With Middle School students, it's not always easy to tell if they are actually paying attention to the lesson so this allows me a way to keep track quickly and easily so I know who to follow up with.
Now I can take attendance in under 30 seconds and can also track participation in about the same amount of time. It gives me an immediate idea of who is engaged and who isn't. It has been a complete and total game changer! See below for a video walkthrough of what it can do or skip ahead for a step by step guide. Here is a template you can use yourself.
1. Set up the spreadsheet in columns A and B with student last names and first names. You can copy and paste these from your roster on Q. The template will automatically switch the names as they appear on Zoom (First then last name).
2. To take attendance, open the Zoom report and click on "show unique users" then export it. It will open in Excel. Copy column A which contains the student names. Then paste it into column F of the spreadsheet.
3. To track participation in the chat, open the saved chat from your files. It will open as a text file. Then select all and copy the text. Click on cell H3 of the template and paste. This will paste all student responses from the chat. The spreadsheet then extracts student names from the chat history and counts how many times they responded. The counts then show up in column D of the spreadsheet next to each student's name.
I personally feel like the ONE worst aspect of online learning is that the kids are missing the social interaction and collaborative learning structures they so desperately need. As we know, students learn the best when they are working collaboratively in highly structured groups. This has been especially hard for me as a teacher, because I live and breath Kagan cooperative learning structures in my classroom on a daily basis and have truly seen the growth in my students both academically and socially over the years that I have implemented Kagan into my classroom.
So today I'm going to talk about Breakout Rooms on Zoom! It doesn't fully replace in person collaboration of course, but it's a really good option to support our kiddos talk time, during this period of online learning. Let's get started!
How to Train Your Students on Breakout Rooms
Well just like with live in-classroom instruction, you can't just throw kids into groups and expect them to work together successfully. You want start with some fun, non-academic teaam building activites that they can do in their groups to get to know each other. This is important for helping them build relationships with one another so that they will feel comfortable talking and sharing with each other. I would suggest starting small and having them work with pairs for a while before moving into largers groups. Also modeling how to discuss with a partner and providing them with response frames/stems will help them verbalize their thoughts into words.
Next, you want to set clear expections so they know what is expected of them. I display this slide every day before our first breakout room of the day (they need lots of reminders.. lol)
Most importantly, once you send them to their Breakout Rooms, you want to pop in and out of as many rooms as possible and help reinforce those breakout room expectations. Once they know you'll always be popping in to check on them, they are much more likely to do what they are supposed to do! This is also a great way for you to observe your students and evaluate their strenths and weaknesses.
Tips and Tricks!
So now how do you go about setting up these Breakout Rooms??
So once youre logged into your Zoom meeting with your class, you want to click the breakout room button on the bottom of your Zoom toolbar (be sure you have enabled this option in your Zoom settings). Now, you can select to create the groups automatically or manually. If you want them in pairs and you have 28 students, you will select to create 14 groups. If you want them in groups of 4 you would select to make 7 groups.
As it sounds, "automatically" means it will randomly group the students together, whereas "manually" allows you to group them as you'd like. I would suggest selecting manually and creating your groups intentinally and specificially. However, there is often a time and place for the automatic option as well. Once my kids are all logged onto Zoom in the morning, while they are working on iReady, discussing the morning circle topic, or another independent task, I quickly create those breakout rooms manually and then they are set for the day! As kids join or leave the meeting, you can choose to swap or move kids to other rooms, rearranging as you see fit!
Under the "Options" dropdown, when you select the time for the Breakout Room, I would aim to keep it around 5-8 minutes or so, just having them discuss one or just a couple of questions. As mentioned before, always making sure you are popping in and out of the Breakout Rooms to support, and reinforce your rules. You can also adjust the amount of time you want them to have once the timer is up. I usually set mine for 15 seconds so that we don't have to wait for kiddos to be dumped back into the main room. I do however "broadcast" a message warning them how much time they have left.
You can end the breakout rooms at any time as well, you just click the red button that says "close all rooms." You do not have to wait until the timer is up. Likewise when the timer is up for the Breakout Rooms, a notification will pop up asking you if you want to end them or keep them open. So they don't have to automatically end just becasue the time is up. You have control over that. Aditionally, if there are kids who you dont want to put in a breakout room, you just simply don't assign them to a room and they will then remain in the main room with you.
I hold the kids accountable by letting them know I'll use the random selector to have them share out after they've had the time to discuss the question in their breakout rooms. Also, usually whatever they are working on with their partner/group in the breakout room is something they are also typing and submitting to me in some form or another. This ensures that I can monitor they are all working and participating.
If the students have a question while in their Breakout Room, they have the option to click "ask for help." This picture to the left shows you what it looks from from the students view of the Breakout Room.
You will then get a notification that looks like this image below here.
So these are the basics to help you get started setting up Zoom Breakout Rooms with your students. I truly feel that students need this interaction with one another for so many different reasons. They really need the social interaction with each other. Our English Learners as well as ALL learners need to get their "talk time" in throughout the day. Research has also proven that kids learn better when they are working collaboratively with their peers. The Breakout Rooms option in Zoom really does provide us with that missing piece of social interaction and collaboration that these kids are so vitally missing with online instruction! I hope this helps!
Well 2020 didn't quite start off they we could ever have imagined, but here we are! Distance Learning has been both a blessing and a curse. A blessing in that we've been given the time for self-care, the ability to take care of things at home, and spend time with our families. As well as the fact that we still have jobs and are getting paid whereas many others are not. A curse in that, Distance Learning is HARD. It is not what we as teachers signed up for, but I think we're rockin' it for the most part. This has been a HUGE adjustment for parents, teachers, and kids alike. It is a daily struggle to get ALL kids and parents participating. It also lacks the joy of teaching, seeing the kids make connections, and the daily face to face interaction.
On the bright side, I still get to see their smiling faces on zoom and that helps me feel a little better about not being able to see them live in the classroom each day! I thought I would just blog a little bit about what my Distance Learning classroom looks like!
Google Classroom
In my Google classroom, I post their assignments weekly. I have them grouped by each week of distance learning. Each assignment has it's due date posted next to it. All assignments are posted on Sunday night, and then I make an announcement in Google classroom attaching their 5 day schedule for the week, which explains what exactly they should be completing each day.
This is just a snapshot of the 5 day schedule. This shows the kids exactly what they need to complete each day and the links are embedded. This gets posted Sunday night in Google classroom as well as in my parent app (ClassTag). Then we Zoom on Monday to discuss, go over, and make sure they understand the assignments, answer questions, etc
I also post exercise and mindfulness video links for them to do if they would like. I always ask them to leave a comment and tell us which one they tried out, if they chose to do any. They LOVE Go Noodle in the classroom so many of them are enjoying that they can do it at home!
I have also posted a few step-by-step drawing video links and had them share/post their creations. I think it's important for them to have something fun to do and talk about besides schoolwork. 😊
Zoom
I zoom with the kids two to three times per week. Always on Monday to make sure they understand their assignments and what's due for the week- we go over the daily schedule. Then again on Wednesday to follow up, answer questions, make sure kids are on track completing assignments. Then sometimes again on Friday to again address students who haven't completed work and to remind them things are due, to answer questions, provide help, do something fun, etc. I had assigned the kids a book report project back in February that would have been due Monday 3/30. I gave them an extra couple weeks to complete it and we shared them over zoom this past week. It was cute they were so excited to share them!
Zoom tips and tricks:
-Arrange your settings so that all participants are muted upon entry
-Toggle on the waiting room switch. This makes it so that you have to "admit" each student. This way you are away if anyone suspicious is trying to join.
-Also in the settings toggle on the switch that notifies you with a doorbell sound every time a participant enters or leaves. This helps you keep track of who's coming and going.
-Type a question in the comment at the start of the meeting this way they have something to read and and answer while they're waiting.
-Also if you noticed that the "chat" feature disappeared- it didn't! When you log into zoom you need to go to your "setting" and just scroll down to where you see the chat feature setting and click the toggle switch to on. Kids Learning at Home
I have a large part of my parents and kids messaging, calling, or emailing on a daily basis. And although at times it's exhausting, it is so rewarding to see so many of my families working hard to support their children and make sure they're still learning. I have had many of them express their gratitude to me for my help and support and it truly makes all of this worthwhile. Likewise, I appreciate all their effort and support with their children at home! I asked my parents to send me any pictures of their kiddos doing Distance Learning at home, and here are a few I received 😍💖
