Discussion starters
Curated by: Elsa Backers
Why: To get students interacting with each other. Many parents and community members/school staff realize that part of what has made virtual learning in this pandemic harder is the lack of interaction between students. Students used to come to school and get a lot of time to interact with peers, but now with virtual learning, that has been decreased (students also sometimes have a hard time working in breakout rooms, which could be their only opportunity to interact with their peers). This is also good for students’ social emotional health.
What: Discussion starters
How: That’s me game. Some teachers have done this on zoom (This may work better with elementary students). Students start with cameras off. Students volunteer to share a fact about themselves. They will share, for example: “I have a sister”. Then everyone else who has a sister will turn their cameras on. You can repeat and have students turn off their cameras and choose another volunteer to make a statement.
Flipgrid discussion boards. Students can share about themselves on flipgrid. You can incorporate goal setting, share favorite parts of math, science, etc if you want there to be a connection to the content area. With that discussion board, you can create a virtual bingo board. As the teacher, you can watch the videos and fill in a bingo board with statements about various students. Students can watch the videos on their own OR live with screen share and fill in the blanks of students names. (might be some kinks in actually doing this bingo portion but could be fun!). It would work well with Google Classroom and using the “make a copy for each student” function so that they all have their own boards.
A truth and a wish. Create a shared google doc with your class and have students write a truth and a wish. After, students can put an asterisk next to the ones they think are the wish. Students can volunteer to share out the truth and the wish.