Keeping students engaged in remote learning

 Here’s what English teachers in the department are saying about how they’re adapting to increase student engagement in low stakes ways:

1. The majority of teachers talked about using Zoom breakout rooms (especially with cameras on) for pairs and small groups.  One teacher added that accountability is key: “Randomly assign kids to break out rooms. Have them talk and then call them back. Then, randomly call on kids to hold them accountable.”
2. Having an informal but written product in the breakout room to share screen with the rest of the class in whole group. Collaborations in Canvas make this quick and easy for them, too. (KW)
3. I used Poll Everything yesterday with an assignment that usually a four corners of the room assignment. So after seeing where everyone stood using the poll, I then had people take turns unmuting themselves to further explain their poll opinion. (MB)
4. My kids are in semi-permanent learning groups. I pull each learning group, each day for small group work while the rest work asynchronously. It's not innovative, but it has been successful. (GC)
5. I did Write-Pair-Share through Zoom which worked really well for a Fahrenheit introduction discussion. Kids had 3 minutes to write on a topic, and then I put them in breakout rooms to discuss for 5 minutes, and when we came back to the main zoom room, kids took turns sharing out what their groups discussed. Yesterday, kids had 5 minutes in breakout rooms to find a "most important passage" from the first pages of Fahrenheit. When the kids came back together, I could still see the names of students in each breakout room, so we just went through each group sharing their passages and explaining why they chose them. To review the first few pages of Fahrenheit, I told each student they had to state 1 thing they knew for sure happened, so we just went in reverse ABC order through the "zoom" room. On a day that students had to do a webquest on 3 different articles to prepare for reading, I jigsawed the activity by breaking up the class into 3 breakout rooms for those kids in the same group to read 1 article and make notes on it to share out with the rest of the class. Breakout rooms have been my saving grace to help me teach the way I usually run my classroom. I just have to keep reminding them that if something happens that I need to know about, I am available through email, but I talked myself out of fearing this function when I remembered that kids can always find ways in class in front of us to be nasty or mean to others, so it's a risk I guess I am willing to take to keep class engaging and kids producing. (JS)
6. Canvas Groups — collaboration and conference in groups (Birthday Girl)
7. Asking questions that require use of polls, the chat box, thumbs up, etc to show that they are actually listening and there instead of pretending like they are. (KT, LO)
8. Have students collaborate on a Google Doc. We did an activity last week where students were all working on the same document in groups. (CB)