A Teacher’s Guide to Zoom
Zoom definitely is not your traditional classroom setting: how can you replace desks with beds and school uniforms with pajamas? Plenty of resources that we as students and educators took for granted are difficult to recreate online. For example, how can you break out into small groups around the room when you’re all in one giant call? We can’t answer all of your questions about Zoom, but we can give you an introduction to using Zoom to make your transition to a virtual classroom as smooth as possible.
Now, let’s get back to our earlier question: how can you break out into small groups when you’re all in one call? Lucky for us, Zoom offers a breakout room feature. This feature assigns members of the call into groups by removing them from the main room and sorting them into what you might think of as “sub-rooms” within the call. As the teacher, you can move between rooms and check in on each group. Maybe you already know about this feature, but perhaps you haven’t considered all of the ways that you can use it:
Group Projects
Any student can tell you that group projects fall apart when roles are poorly coordinated. Ideally, students would be able to arrange calls with their groups outside of class through email or text, but this isn’t always the case. To remedy this, you can give your students some time to chat with their group members using the breakout feature.
Debates
If you hold debates in your class, holding breakout rooms can be a great way to let your students meet with their teams. If you want, you can use the randomization feature to randomly assign students into one of two rooms. When the two teams are ready, you can close the breakout rooms and move everyone back into the main room to begin the debate.
Check-Ins:
It can be difficult for students to stare at their computer screens for hours on end (even though they spend hours each day on their phones). In order to break up the monotony of lectures, try incorporating check-ins or worksheets / activities that can be done in small groups. This will give students a chance to collaborate with their classmates.
Ice Breakers
When we transitioned to online learning last year, most of your students were probably familiar with one another. After all, their classes met in person for at least half of the school year. However, next year is a fresh start. Some students may not know anyone in their class, and this can be a serious disadvantage if they need notes, have questions about the homework, or are looking for a study buddy. To help students get to know each other, you can use the breakout rooms to play ice breaker games during the first class.
There are many more ways that you can use the breakout room feature, and we hope that reading this article inspired you to incorporate it into your class. After all, virtual teaching is relatively uncharted territory for most teachers, so creativity is the name of the game! If you want to learn more about how you can use Zoom features to make your transition from in-person to virtual instruction as smooth as possible, check out our article under the Lotus Premier Education Group. There, we will introduce you to some additional Zoom features and explain how you can incorporate them into your class. Best of luck next year!