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!!!

Online Teaching: Tips to save time!

This is a short post to give advice, after lot of people asked for this in private messages, about how to manage time following the approach I suggest in a previous blog (hybrid approach between synchronous and asynchronous teaching via the use of Onenote and Loom/Screen Casting lessons). 

My Golden Rules to be time efficient!

1. Use a platform to share your resources, mine is Onenote, but it could be Google Classroom, Canvas, Sway, your School Website or even Padlet and stick to it! Padlet is a great alternative as it allows you to embed content nicely! 

2. If using Onenote (I thoroughly recommend it), create a template of your lesson/lessons (a Onenote page) and copy and paste it for subsequent ones. In my case I always have a picture of my virtual classroom and a description of what we will be covering that week.

3. Plan activities for a week's worth of lessons, it saves time! Distribute the work at the beginning of the week.

4. Combine the work on Onenote, or any other platform, with Teams so that you can give instructions at the beginning of the lessons and do a whole class fast Starter/ Plenary activity.

5. Reuse resources you already have! Your word worksheet can work fantastically well with Onenote, for example. If you insert any Word Document  as a Printout on Onenote, and make the image background, students can just write on top of it: with a digital pen or typing! Also you can just use PPT and record a voice over or just use your PPT with different hyperlinks to your activities, which you can share with your students directly. In that way your PPT  be becomes your platform (Virtual Classroom) Start small!!! If going for the PPT route, check slidesmania as it offers many great FREE PPT templates which will make your content stand out! 

6. Use Snipping Tool! (IT IS PART OF WINDOWS 10) With this app, you can screenshot any  section of your digital textbook, worksheet, PDF past paper and save it as an image which you can then paste into Onenote or any other tool, such as PPT, word, Canva etc...

6. Think of ways to practice the language in an interactive way to engage students: Quizizz, LearningApps, Flippity, Wheel of names, MS Forms/Google Forms, Deck Toys, Genially, Padlet, Screen Casting and Flipgrid are brilliant options for that and just add the links. 

7. Do not reinvent the wheel!:SHARE THE ABOVE RESOURCES WITH YOUR DEPARTMENT. Teams or a Departmental Onenote with resources for each Year group is great for this. Also, make sure all teachers in your department do have access to each other's Onenotes so that they can copy and paste ideas and resources from each other. 

8. Use as many platforms as possible that would help with your marking: Google/MS Forms, Quizizz, Quizlet, Deck Toys and LearningApps are fantastic for this! So they are a great alternative for H/W tasks. Also, why not giving students the answers and they mark it themselves in another lesson? Carousel Learning is also fantastic for that. 

Remember, you are creating lessons that you will be able to reuse in consecutive years in a blended learning environment! IT IS A DEPARTMENTAL INVESTEMENT! YOU WILL SAVE A FORTUNE ON PHOTOCOPYING WHEN YOU ARE BACK TO FACE TO FACE TEACHING!

Look at this post about how to blend learning. 

Let's teach for the BIG MATCH: Let's keep ERASMUS!

I am a passionate MFL teacher and I love teaching my native language, Spanish, but most, importantly, I am an educator. I influence lives and MFL is a wonderful vehicle  to instil tolerance, cultural awareness and break barriers among my students. MFL helps to educate global, tolerant citizens.

I see my job as a sport coach, say football: my lessons are the training sessions leading to the big football match. What is the big match? Real life experiences that allow students to put what they learn in lessons into practice. My job is to create these experiences! Why? Because we do not tend to remember our training/ coaching sessions, we remember the big real event: the football MATCH.

I believe that my students' big matches are real life situations when they will be required to put their linguistic skills to the test and learn from the experience! How do I create these experiences in the educational context? How to create experiences that are 100% memorable? Via  ERASMUS Plus supported by eTWINNING.

I have been involved in several eTwinning projects over the last 20 years and every single one of them has made a difference in my students AND my teaching.

In 2018, my school and two of our partners in Spain and La Réunion decided to apply for an Erasmus project. It was a one-year project, based on the heritage of our three countries and the teaching of MFL (French, English and Spanish). THE PROJECT WAS OUR SCHOOLS' BIG MATCH AT THE TIME. We did not only learn MFL in our language lessons, but we embedded our project, United in Diversity, in the delivery of such lessons. As a consequence the learning curve, motivation and impact in our students, teachers and parents were phenomenal. WE CREATED MEMORIES, FORGED FRIENDSHIPS, OPENED HORIZONS AND BROKE MISCONCEPTIONS AND BARRIERS! 

See this video footage to see it by yourselves

Or this one!

Or the parents' response to our project

The experience was so positive that we applied for a second project: The Village, which was approved for funding in September. This time a two-year project involving the teaching of the SDGs via MFL.

That's why I was in shock when I heard from our Prime Minister on Xmas Eve that Britain had willingly decided not to take part in the Erasmus scheme anymore as it is too expensive to run for the UK. Instead, he confirmed plans to launch a domestic scheme, the Turing Programme, to help British students to visit universities around the world. 

In my view, this is catastrophic news! We surely cannot duplicate a 34 year old scheme from scratch, on our own, and expect it to be cheaper and at least of the same high calibre that Erasmus is. Referring to the Turing Programme, Boris Johnson was talking about University students, benefiting from visiting the best universities around the world, not just Europe, but let's not forget that Erasmus Plus offers funding for projects involving not only higher education but also vocational education and training, schools, adult education and youth, while providing extra funding for those with disabilities.

Erasmus Plus also offers funding for activities and projects under three Key Actions: Mobility of individuals, Cooperation for innovation and exchange of good practices and Support for Policy Reform.  That is a big umbrella and a lot of projects and actions to benefit from! To emulate this, as effectively, sorry Mr Johnson, would require a monumental effort and capital injection and still we will be 35 years behind what we have achieved so far.

Having the Turing scheme involving, potentially, projects with the whole world, not just Europe, as attractive as it may sound, could not possible deliver the same highly wide range of activities, currently available under the three Key Actions. It seems that Boris Johnson is just focussing on Key Action 1: mobility of individuals and only under the context of higher education.

The concerns raised from a potential British scheme to substitute Erasmus were presented to the Lords Committee back in 2018. This was the summary. Such summary concluded that Erasmus presented good value for money and its strong brand, trusted reputation, and common rulebook for partnership agreements could not be fully replicated by a UK-only programme.  

It is a huge loss! Our British students, who overwhelmingly voted for Remain, are being punished by the system. School aged students will be the biggest victims. The Turing Programme may well, eventually, reach the standards of Erasmus Plus, but it will take years and years to do so. We will be failing our students in the process. We are taking the experience of the big MATCHES OUT OF OUR BRITISH SCHOOLS, especially those schools in the most deprived areas, which depend on the big MATCHES to turn lives around.

Let's act on this. We must spread the word and make a big deal of the situation: WE MUST NOT FAIL OUR SCHOOL STUDENTS, WE MUST TEACH FOR THE BIG MATCH, WHICH IS ALREADY HERE: ERASMUS.

Let's take action: share your Erasmus experience, contact your local paper and MP. Let's fight for the big match!

Gamification in the MFL classroom: Deck.Toys

I believe in gamification, especially in MFL as the subject relies in constant drilling and practice of structures and vocabulary until these are embedded in our linguistic corpus. It is not easy, especially in the UK with limited curriculum time. Languages can be perceived as challenging and, worst of all, boring! 

Structured and careful planned game activities can be key to engage students, practice the language from different angles and help students to transfer information into their long term memories! 

Gamification can occur in many ways and shapes! Any element of competition, even in zero preparation activities involving oral input can be a game changer! 

I play games all the time! From the modelling stage, to controlled practice to spontaneous production! However, in this post I would like to talk about Deck Toys. 

Deck toys

This lovely tool was introduced to me by Jimena Licitra a few weeks ago! The concept is that teachers create a learning path or deck. The deck is full of different challenges or online activities that students must complete while they advance through their path, normally simulating moving around some idyllic landscape or boardgame!

But this is not all, the app is very powerful as it allows you to create two types of activities:

Study set games, based on some vocabulary/structures input (you can transfer your Quizlet courses for this) or

Slide Activities which allows you to upload any word, PPT, PDF or worksheet/presentation and make it interactive by adding different functions to it for students to interact with: polls, text input from students, drawing input, photo, oral input or multiple choice questions. 

The app also allows you to add some cool elements such as a treasure keys collection function, which allows students to collect different hidden keys along their learning path, which will open certain locks at the end of the end of the learning path; locks to enter different activities, timers, web links etc...  

You can also embed your own activities from sites such as LearningApps, WordWall, Flippity or Wheel of Names to include listening, filling gaps etc.. as part of your learning tasks challenges! This feature is super important as it allows me to recycle other activities in a different setting, saving me time!

Once created, you need to make sure you create a class and assign your deck to this class. The app generates a unique class url that you share with your students. When students click on it, they join the activity signing in with their Google/Microsoft accounts, or just as guests. 

The app also allows you to interact in real time with your students if working remotely!

You have access from your class, to the answers that your students submitted as part of their deck, which you can review and check for understanding.

You can do three decks for free before going pro, paying around £8 per month.  This would be great for a department to generate, end of unit practice! 

How do I use it? 

Creating a meaningful Deck!!! Students start by practising the language we are working on via the Study Set Games (flashcards, matching, memory game, multiple choice, jigsaw etc..), whose content I just copied and pasted from my quizlet courses!!! to move quickly to activities including Reading, Translation and Listening using LearningApps, Wordwall or Flippity which allows students to practice the studied language within context in a controlled way!

I like the feature of collecting keys!  You can put these keys at the end of any activity as a reward! Once collected, students can enter them into specific treasure boxes, giving a motivation to your activity, a little bit like a Escape Room! Students get points too as they advance through the deck! 

If you add Locks to your activities, then you have a Escape Room, as you cannot enter the following activity until a code is entered (I use Verbs in different tenses). 

The final activity of my deck would be a freely produced oral or written activity, using all the structures and verbs practised via the reading, listening and translation activities of the deck.  This does not need to be part of the learning path, but the subsequent activity and the purpose of the deck!

Look at this example for the topic of School in Y10:

Link to ALL my DeckToys activities

Tutorial on how to use DeckToys

Final Veredict!

I like it. I like it a lot! but it can take some time to set up if you go for a complex Deck from scratch!  However, if shared among the department, it is fine! Three Decks is not a lot! so if you like it, you will need to go pro! It takes some time to get used to the way it works but it is not difficult at all, just some time consuming for the first time, but the same issue I find with Genially!

You can use Decks from other educators and modify them or just use them!

Overall, this is a great app that can really enhance the learning experience of the students but you need to plan carefully all the activities that you will use in your deck and to maximise its use, reuse those old worksheets or those great activities in other apps!!!

Link to a postblog written by me for DeckToys

Embedded retrieval practice: the next level

You may think I am obsessed with retrieval practice but it is so important in order to keep students motivated and make progress that a big percentage of my lesson time is dedicated to this. 

A few weeks ago I read an article by Marc Enser on some research on retrieval practice. In the article Marc explained how two departments in their school (History and Geography) wanted to see the impact of retrieval practice in their students’ results. They used quizzes in their lessons for this. Both departments got an improvement in their test results but Geography’s were much higher. When they analysed the data and tried to explain this discrepancy, they discovered that History used to do a quiz in each lesson from previous knowledge but not related to the content of the actual lesson. Geography, on the other hand, did also a quiz but this was embedded in what students were learning in the lesson, hence, helping students to consolidate and embed learning in this long-term memory more successfully than the History department. This is powerful and it relates to my own practice.

Retrieval practice must be embedded with new content constantly so language becomes automatized and students can transfer structures freely from different contexts!

All activities done in lessons with new material should include structures from old topics applied to these new contexts while also making reference to the content from past topics. Planned activities and homework tasks should give students opportunities to practise past content as a matter of fact:  When asking students to practice sentences on school topic, why not including sentences from holidays and, most importantly, adapting those structures from holidays into the new topic of school?  When planning activities for Y11 students on the topic of festivals, why not including also content from work, free time and holidays? why not applying structures seen in the topic of free time "juego al fútbol desde hace 3 años" in this new topic "trabajo de canguro desde hace 3 meses"?   

Digital tools for embedded retrieval practice 

In this post I wrote, extensively, about different apps that I use for retrieval practice but I would like to add a few which I have used since while still mentioning the old ones! 

Spiral.ac

This is the new kid on the block in my teaching! Introduced to me by Laura Causer during the Show and Tell Webinar of the Language Show, this tool has revolutionised my retrieval practice strategy and saved me time!!!! 

Spiral is basically, like Wooclap or Mentimeter, an interactive response tool. What’s the difference with the two previous apps? You need zero preparation if you use the QuickFire light option! 

Basically, you open an account, create a class (you don’t need names), select the QuickFire light option from the home menu, select your class and share a special URL and code with your students (these will also be the same for that class every time you launch the QuickFire, so my students have bookmarked it). Similar to Kahoot, Mentimeter etc....

Pupils log in with that special code (not additional login required) and you will start seeing their names appearing on your screen. When you are ready to ask questions to consolidate and retrieval previous knowledge, you just press the green go button!

Students then start writing their answers to your question, which will appear on the screen, only when you click on “reveal answers”. This option is great as students cannot copy each other and you can wait to reveal answers once everyone has submitted their input. To increase pace, I encourage early birds, either to check their answers or to extend them so they do not sit down doing nothing while partners submit answers, great for differentiation too! 

At this point you may select “show names” too or “hide the names”: I find this little action powerful as sometimes you may want to give confidence to students who tend to make mistakes and you may decide not to show their names until a later stage. 

However, when you decide to do so, the students’ names will appear with their answers on the screen! Big plus from Mentimeter or Wooclap and students can also modify/ improve their answer if you prompt them to do so. Great tool for feedback too.

Spiral is basically an interactive mini whiteboard and it is ideal for hybrid situations when you have students online and students in the classroom! Also no need to sanitise mini whiteboards after single use! In action it looks like the pictures below:

LearningApps

In my previous post I explained in lots of detail all the activities that can be achieved with this tool. The golden rule is to use these activities blended in the learning experience and incorporating structures and vocabulary from previous studied topics! Below there’s a how to video guiding you how to use the tool. 

How to use LearningApps video

Flippity 

Another great free tool for Retrieval Practice! The randomiser and Random Name picker are great tools for retrieval practice! Instructions are straightforward and you will need a Google account. 

Extended uses of how to use Flippity can be found in this Post. 

Quizizz

This tool allows you to create personalised interactive quizzes, incorporating sound too so great to revise oral questions while also checking listening comprehension! 

How to use quizizz video 

Carousel Learning

This is another of the new tools I have started to use in the last month. Designed by Adam Boxer, creator of Retrieval Roulettes, which Julia Morris talked about during the Show and Tell Webinar in the Language Show, Carousel Learning is also a free tool which allows you to upload a spreadsheet with as many items (Qs) as you want to include, and topics. As my input, I use short sentences that students need to translate into Spanish.

 In your spreadsheet you must include your question (English sentence for me), the answer (Spanish translation) and the topic it refers to. There is a template in the site to get the setting right! Once this spreadsheet is uploaded, Carousel Learning allows you to create specific quizzes on particular topics, which you can rotate and assign to different classes. There are also many quizzes questions from the learning community for you to use too!

Why do I love Carousel learning? Because students do not get immediate feedback but they are presented with the right answers at the end of their quiz. Students then must decide if they were correct or not. I think this feature is extremely powerful for independent learning and making students take ownership for their own mistakes and improvement!!! What did I get right? What did I get wrong? Why? And look for help! Although it needs training! 

Jane Basnett has created this súper video on how to set up a quiz on Carousel learning. It is extremely informative and well explained so a must watch! 

Genially

I love this tool!! There are many talented Genially people in the UK such as Marie Allirot or Julia Morris who actually make their own genially activities from scratch! 

However, I am lazy, so I use the templates provided in the gamification section! You have many interactive free games such as Snakes and Ladders or Escape Rooms, which you only need to modify to fit your retrieval practice input! I love genially because through games students reinforce those key structures! Genially also embeds smoothly into Onenote, which I use for my lessons, although you can just share your genially game with your classes the way you want to!

You can also embed your LearningApps to the genially game questions! How cool is this?

How to use Genially video (using the app templates)

Joe Dale and Marie Allirot webinar on Gamification in the classroom through Genially. A must watch!

Wheel of names

One of my favourite apps! For an extensive explanation on how to use Wheel of names in the classroom and in a blended learning situation have a look at this post.

To find out how Wheel of Names works, have a look at the video below:

How to use Wheel of Names video

Textivate

Let’s not forget the basics! This is not free but it is brilliant for retrieval practice! I love every feature of it! It is very affordable. It is an improved online version of Taskmagic: same creator Martin Lapworth. 

Example of Textivate activity based on Tourism and Transport (embedding principle).

Other tools you can explore!

BLOOKET 

This is a tool which allows you to create your own little games, which you then share with students. Students get tokens and rewards for completing the games. In my opinion, more suitable for KS3. My only reservation is that the games are based on multiple choice, which, I, particularly, am not keen on. However, still a great tool to revise those key structures, especially similar ones in different tenses!

WORDWALL

Similar to LearningApps but you can only create a limit of activities unless you go premium! You do not have the embedded audio facility, which is a shame! However, the activities are very eye-catching and attractive for young learners!

GIMKIT

Many people are using this! It is not free and I have not used it myself yet!  The Intruders game seems like a hit on twitter and many people have recommend it to me.  I need to explore this one!

DECK TOYS (thanks to Jimena Licitra for this) 

This was introduced to me only a few weeks ago by the amazing Jimena Licitra and it has lots of potential! However, it will require some time to create your resources.  This app allows you to create interactive learning paths for your students! It looks very, very powerful and engaging but you will need to dedicate some time to it! You can have some free decks, or learning paths for free but after that there is a premium to pay. You can also use decks created by others! If structured well, this should be an extremely engaging tool for topic revision and retrieval practice of key structures. Watch this space!

So, retrieval practice is important, very important. So important that it should be present in every lesson you do by embedding content and structures from all topics all the time. Using these tools allows me to do so in a motivating and engaging way! However, do not get me wrong, retrieval practice can be done without technology. 

Embedded Retrieval Practice must take place at all stages of learning, ALL THE TIME and it must be planned thoroughly via meaningful activities, especially in the Practice Stage of learning!