Challenge – Speaking activities online have a tendency to be stilted. Students can find it unnatural and awkward to converse. Equally, it is difficult for the teacher to provide prompts as students are in break-out rooms.
Tools Used – Zoom Breakout Rooms, Google Forms
Activity Outline
In this example learners were asked to have a conversation about their principles as an introduction to the theme of the lesson. Prompt questions were provided via a Google Forms Survey.
Instructions
Before the Lesson:
1 – Ensure learners are comfortable with joining Breakout rooms and also that they are aware of the ‘call for help’ button in the Breakout Rooms (if necessary show a screenshot of this)
2 – Copy the link to the form (using the ‘Send’ button to the top right of your Google Page). Ensure the form is ‘Accepting Responses’ (click on ‘Responses’ at the top of the form to toggle this on / off).
3 – Make sure your learners are able to share screen in the break-out rooms.
Lesson:
1 – Introduce the topic your learners will be discussing by sharing your screen and displaying the Google Form (do not share the link yet). Ask the students to ask / answer some examples and ensure that key vocabulary is understood.
2 – Create your break-out rooms (ideally with 3-4 students in each) Do not open the break-out rooms yet.
3 – Nominate one learner to share their screen in the break-out room. This student will be sharing the Google Form with the rest of the group and will be responsible for be submitting their reply.
4 – Using your own share screen, demonstrate to the learners that they need to choose an option for each question and click ‘submit’ once they have finished. Emphasise that they need to agree as a group. Only when they have agreed as a group can they submit their answers. This is essential to encourage debate / discussion.
5 – Open the breakout rooms and share the link to the form. To make sure that each group only submits one collective response you can share the link only with the learner tasked with sharing his/her screen. This can be done by sending the link privately via the chat function in each breakout room.
6 – You can follow the form submissions as they come in on Google Forms. Once all groups have completed the survey, close the break-out rooms and feedback as a class. Google Forms will automatically collate the information into charts in the ‘Responses’ tab – share this via the ‘share screen’ function on Zoom so the class can see how other groups have answered (see below).
Online Refugee Education Toolkit 