Teaching in times of Covid: Breakout Rooms

This is the first post, I hope, in a series of posts where I would like to reflect on what is working for me and is not working in remote teaching. In a previous post, I wrote about my approach to teaching remotely: adopting a hybrid approach between live online lessons, mainly for Starters and Plenary activities, and independent tasks shared via Onenote which I can follow live and give feedback, while I am available on Teams to sort out questions.  Some of these independent activities also involve interactive videos where I introduce vocabulary, carry out a dictation, listening activity, translation etc.. as I would have done in normal lessons.  This approach worked brilliantly in March and is working extremely well now! 

However, we have a new kid on the block if you, like me, use Teams to deliver your lessons: Breakout Rooms!!! Inspired by the wonderful presentation from Ester Borin in todays' TILT show and Tell, I have decided to focus on how we can use Breakout Rooms in the MFL remote classrooms. 

The concept of Breakout Rooms is that you can divide your students who are participants in a Team meeting, in different rooms so students have mini meetings within the main meeting. I was very excited about this possibility which would allow me to add a personal touch to my lessons and create collaborative tasks for my students, making the whole process of remote learning less isolating!  I started using Breakout Rooms last week and this is a summary of my reflections:

TIPS 

1 To have the option of Breakout Rooms, you need the latest version of the Teams app in your computer. You cannot run them through the Web Version as the meeting organiser for your Breakout Rooms. 

2 For the Breakout Rooms to work, your students also need to have the latest version of the Teams app or use the Web Version. If they have an old version, they will not be added to a room and they will remain in the main meeting.

3 Students cannot see your main screen once they are in their Breakout Rooms, so anything you want them to work on, must be shared via the chat or, like I do, via your class Onenote.

4 You can manually assign students to the Breakout Rooms or you can allow Teams to do so, after you select how many rooms you want. If a child is left alone, close the room and assign that child manually to any of the other rooms. 

5 Hop from room to room to make sure students are on task and they don't leave the meeting!

6 Once students are distributed to rooms, Teams can redistribute then to different ones automatically, as Adolfo Suarez Fuente points out, if you do this in a time limit you’ve got a Speed Dating type of activity. 

I found this short Youtube Video tutorial very easy to follow to get me started from a technical point of view. Thank you to my colleague Malcom Ewan for pointing me out to the right direction! 

GOOD ACTIVITIES FOR BREAKOUT ROOMS

Many thanks to Ester Borin for the inspiration for some of these activities:

1 Battleships, or any Information Gap activity you would do in a lesson with a worksheet!

I share my Battleships worksheet on Onenote as part of my week's lessons with my Y10. (TIP: if you insert the worksheet as Print in Onenote and select the image as background, students can write direcly on it with a digital pen or type).

I create the Breakout rooms so I have 2 or 3 students in each room. Students play battleships against their partner, no one needs to share the screen etc. as each child will have their own Onenote open and write on the Battleships worksheet directly while talking to their partner and playing the game. 

2 Group Discussion with brainstorming of ideas

I did this with my Y13 class. They had to prepare ideas for a debate in groups of 2/3. Students were assigned to a Breakout Room and discussed their ideas for them to use in a final debate in a whole class activity. To write ideas, you can use the Collaboration Space in your Onenote or some of the wonderful slides from Slidemania , which you can share on Onenote (make sure that your PPT is editable when you share the link so everyone can write on the slides). This way at the end of the activity, everyone can see the ideas from all the groups. 

I used the same idea for my Y9 Erasmus lesson, where students had to come up with ideas for the Global Goals in Breakout Rooms and write these ideas in a particular Slide from a PPT (which I downloaded FREE from Slidemania)

3 Genially Boardgame 

I did this with my Y10 students. I created a Genially Boardgame which I shared in our lesson Onenote page.  Students were divided in groups of 3/4 in Breakout Rooms. One student (Señora Salgado's little helper) in each room shared their Onenote screen and game, rolled the dice and moved the counters while all the students played together orally.

4 Deck Toys Learning Path

I also carried out this activity with my Y10s. As in the previous activities, I shared my learning path in our class Onenote.  I divided students in Breakout Rooms and my little helper in each room, shared their screen with the rest of the group. Students went through the deck as a team while only the person who was sharing the screen was entering answers, on behalf of the group. Students will have the opportunity to complete the deck at another moment individually.

5 Playing Quizlet, Flippity Randomizer, LearningApps in groups.  

I haven't tried this yet, but as in the examples above, once I share the links in Onenote, students will get assigned to Breakout Rooms, one student will share their screen and all can work in pairs or as a group with the activities.

6 Any collaborative activity, really!

I think, Breakout Rooms is a game changer and can make our lessons more "human" and closer to the real classroom experience!!! In the case of MFL, being able to do oral work in pairs o small groups is priceless and so needed!  

Technical difficulties will occur but keep trying because when it works it is BEAUTIFUL!!!