Conducting a ‘Running Dictation’ Online

Challenge – A ‘running dictation’ is a useful way for learners to improve listening skills, memorise text, and speak clearly with correct pronunciation. Whilst it is an easy activity to set up in a physical classroom, it’s harder to recreate in an online setting. This online version achieves most of these criteria by using movement

Using Google Forms to Facilitate a Speaking Activity

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

Using Zoom Breakout Rooms to Facilitate Online Mingling

Challenge – Mingling can be difficult in the online environment.  Sometimes learners have little control over who they speak to, for example when making breakout rooms, the teacher or the computer decides on the groupings.  The solution presented here is to use the ‘Let participants choose room’ function and a speaking exercise.  This will enable

Class Presentations Using Webquests and Breakout Rooms

Challenge – Giving presentations on subjects which they have researched themselves is helpful for learners, giving them applicable life skills both for future employment and further study. In the physical classroom the teacher might make use of selected printed texts for research, and then enable groupwork and a concluding classroom presentation. In the online classroom

Webquest (Version 2 – Group Work / Pair Work)

Challenge – Pair activity online seemed somewhat cumbersome at the beginning. One activity which lent itself to teamwork was a webquest used to introduce the lesson topic. The resources available online are perhaps too broad and had copious amounts of information (Wikipedia or Google). It can be difficult to sift through the amount of data

Using Padlet to Facilitate Peer Assessment and Learning

Challenge –It can be challenging to get students to assess and learn from other’s work  in online platforms like Zoom. That’s because it can be difficult for peers to share work in Zoom, especially when students are accessing learning via their phone and cannot share files so easily.   The solution presented here is to use