I have talked with many educators who are anxious about creating breakout rooms for fear of inappropriate interactions, bullying, and being off task in breakout rooms. Although these behaviors are not only possible in breakout rooms, many feel less control when the kids are not all in one room. While it might feel like you have more control to keep students in one room so you can monitor the conversation and keep students on task, we lose so much when students don’t get the benefit of connecting with others and learning with and from their peers.
In the YouthTruth survey where students shared their perspectives of emergency remote learning in the spring only half of the students said their teachers give them assignments that really help them learn and 39 percent said they learn a lot every day. One reason for this response was that students were listening to lectures via zoom and disengaged, which highlights a key finding of learning sciences: collaboration and social interaction can be powerful learning experiences because they encourage deeper processing and engage the ‘social brain.’
Creating a community of learners to connect and collaborate with one another will be what keeps learners coming to class and what will sustain more powerful learning over time.
In most of the online collaboration tools (like Zoom), you can create breakout groups that allow for small group engagement. Yet just putting students in breakout rooms alone will not likely increase engagement and learning outcomes. Just like in our classrooms, group work, and collaboration need structures that provide clarity and allow for more engagement in the discussion and activity. Zaretta Hammond shares that “to grow students’ brainpower using academic conversation as a strategy, we need robust talk structures that allow more students to join in the conversation confidently, especially English learners, introverted students, disengaged students, and historically marginalized students. These are all students whose communication styles and funds of knowledge are not typically leveraged in classrooms.”
I love to use the Google Slides for breakout rooms with a variety of protocols because you can have teams discuss, probe, question, and clarify. Slides makes it easy to share their work to make their group’s thinking visible and the deck is visible and easily accessible for everyone so I can easily monitor group progress and see who needs help at a glance. There are so many other great ways to use breakout rooms to engage and empower learners.
Here are 5 ways that teachers are using breakout rooms to create more learner-centered experiences in distance learning
Build Relationships
Especially as we are creating community and getting to know one another, the small group connection is essential to building relationships. Some advice from my kids: Please don’t ask us to share our favorite color or animal or…” I have probably tainted my children’s perspective since I am also not a fan if ice breakers either but I do love people and connecting. I just know from experience that these surface-level questions make people feel like they have to have a favorite color or those things actually say much about their identity. If we really want to build connections and meaningful relationships that often requires actually getting to know people. Some connectors are powerful when they allow students to decide what to share based on their level of comfort. Instead of questions about your favorite color, you could use a prompt such like Two truths and a lie, A gift your bring to the community (Share something that makes you special), and 10 things about you. I love this idea from Yaritza Villalba to create your own album cover or you can try a virtual escape room like Kylen Strissel.
Small Group Instruction
Small group instruction is just as vital as small group discussion but with only one teacher and many students, often it can be hard to organize and facilitate this in a meaningful way. Stephanie DeMichele put together this amazing template for how to organize small groups with station rotation. She includes a template for directions and groups, a teacher-led station, online work, offline work, and extension. You could even through another round in there for small group collaboration that foster higher order thinking. (see the next idea for that)
Higher Order Thinking
It is hard to go deep with a large group in one zoom room. Like a whole class discussion, you may get one or two voices but it is hard to go deeper on a topic and ensure all learners have the opportunity to engage with the content and discuss questions, analyze text, or understand multiple perspectives. Marisa Thompson, an amazing high school English teacher has developed the TQE (Thoughts, Questions, Epiphanies) method where students read a text and make their thinking visible and discuss their ideas. She and many other teachers have adapted it for distance learning. Check out these examples from teachers here:
This doesn’t have to be done in high school English, it could be done with current events, math problems, science, historic events, and so many other topics.
Another protocol that is great for going deeper and mixing it up is QFT (Question Formulation Technique. Check out this example:
Critique + Revision
One practical way to connect learners and make the work more manageable for teachers is to provide opportunities for students to give feedback to one another. While students can give feedback asynchronously in google docs, dialogue about an idea, project, or work in progress can really help students to make it better. One of my favorite protocols is the Charette protocol. I use it with educators all the time to share their ideas and get feedback and it is certainly valuable for students as well. Here is a simple slide to add to your decks and revise the timing based on your goals.
Reflection + Celebration
When I asked a group of students what they wanted their teachers to know, and they shared that in addition to learning with and from others, the feedback and time to make the changes in their work and thinking is critical to their growth. When we have even less time, especially in person, taking time to pause and reflect can easily get cut but it is often the most valuable part of the learning process. Flipgrid is a great ways to capture reflections and for students to share their thinking. I also find it simple and effective to use slides and have small groups reflect and synthesize their learning on a google slide or on a Jamboard. Once small groups have synthesized and reflected on their thinking, a virtual gallery walk is a great way to share and celebrate the process of learning. Check out this great example from @Sharainfallad
When learning environments are organized to facilitate positive interactions and are designed to foster connection and collaboration, the community benefits from the collective expertise. I am so grateful for so many teachers who are sharing their work (struggles and successes) and working so hard to create amazing opportunities for their students. I would love to see more examples of how you are using breakout rooms and protocols to create Learner-centered opportunities in distance learning.
Great ideas, Katie. I’ve also written a post on how to use breakout rooms as a tool for feedback, collaboration and differentiation etc. You can read it here and let me know what you think 🙂 https://teflzoneracheltsateri.wordpress.com/2020/08/16/7-ideas-for-using-break-out-rooms/
I would like to continue receiving various resources and ideas for implementing virtual instruction using Asynchronous and Synchronous learning opportunities.
Very useful, thank you very much for sharing. I’ve also written a post with ideas for breakout rooms. You can read it here and look forward to your feedback. https://teflzoneracheltsateri.wordpress.com/2020/08/16/7-ideas-for-using-break-out-rooms/
I am very anxious about breakout rooms, but I do see their benefits. I’m afraid that kids will fool around and not stay on the task at hand.