The more comfortable I become with online teaching, the less conscious I (and hopefully the students) become of the technology itself. However, in order to get the most out of class time, it's necessary to approach some activities slightly differently.
Breakout rooms
The breakout room feature on Zoom has been a real game-changer for communicative classes because it means students can talk and work together in pairs and reduced groups. It is not quite as simple as pairing off students in a classroom though because, once groups have been assigned, you can't discretely monitor the whole class in the same way you would in the classroom. Here are some things which I’ve found helpful:
Clear and complete instructions
Understanding
Once students enter the breakout room you want them to be able to immediately start work on the task set, rather than waiting for you to reach them on your frantic "clarification tour" of the rooms. Give clear staged instructions and, if necessary, put them in the chat box for learners to refer back to.
Avoiding counterproductive short cuts
My teenage students tend to see many of the tasks which I give them as obstacles to be overcome rather than vehicles towards greater English (to be fair, this ultimate goal is much vaguer and more difficult to measure). So, if I want them to get as much as possible from the journey it is important to specify the route. What phrases should they use? How long should they speak? How many sentences should they write?
Motivation and measurable targets
If learners know that they will have to produce or demonstrate something at the end of the task, it makes the preceding stages more relevant.
So we have moved on from:
Talk about something you can cook.
To:
Describe how to cook one thing in as much detail as possible.
You must use all of these words first/second/third/next/after that/ finally
You may use some of this language: Boil/fry/stir/chop handful/spoonful/small pieces golden brown/about 5 minutes/soft/crunchy
and added:
You will then have to explain your partners recipe in at least 5 stages.
By giving the staging language (first, second, etc.) and giving an end task (describe your partners recipe) we have ensured a minimum level of communication from less motivated students. It also means the teacher is able to focus their assistance more on the language which comes up rather than just the mechanics of the task.
To keep things snappy, I tend to type out more detailed instructions in word prior to the class so that they are ready to copy and paste into the chat box.
Switching groups
For me one of the best things about the breakout room’s function is the way you can change up the groups without the disruption and angst that sometimes comes with moving students around the room. Rather than bringing everyone back to the main room, you can just go into the breakout room menu and move half the students, whilst leaving the other half in the original room. This gives communication activities a fast-paced dynamic feel that works well with teen classes.
So in the set up on the left:
Albert, Marie and Elon stay where they are.
Sergio moves to Group 2
Joe moves to Group 3
Bob moves to Group 1
After a couple of minutes Sergio, Joe and Bob move again and in a short time all the students can speak to each other in a classic mingle activity.
In the example above, students have changed their names for an activity. I have posted a fun speaking lesson which uses this feature and the breakout rooms here
The Chat Box
1,2,3 SEND
Ask students to answer a question in the chat without sending it. Then say 1,2,3 SEND and everyone sends it together. I’ve found this is an effective way to gently increase the pace as the time shortens and prevents the fastest student from constantly giving away the answer. If students are less confident, they always have the option of holding back a little to see what their classmates put. Sandy Millin mentions this and other online tweaks in her excellent blog here.
Fast Finishers
I often put a couple of questions in chat for faster students to reply to when they complete an activity. I tend to keep a bank of these on a word document so I can quickly copy and paste them in when required. For example, here are a couple using the second conditional:
If I could be any animal ……………………… because ………………….
If I had a pet dragon …………………………… because ……………….
Mr and Mrs Smith
This is the game where you have to guess your partners answers, but it works really well online. Everyone completes a sentence about a student and (on the count of 3) send it to the group. The subject of the question sends it privately to you. For example:
Lei Wei’s least favourite food ……
Alba’s worst fear …..
This is nice because it encourages the students to take an interest in each other (especially if you repeat the question in a future class) but make sure they write the full sentence to make sure that they are learning the target language.
Keeping a record
With communicative classes, I always try to keep a record of any phrases which come up or corrections/reformulations in the chat box (sending it either individually to the student, or to the whole group) and after class I copy and paste the contents into a word document. It’s then ready to turn it into a quick gap-fill or quiz to kick off the next class.
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