With so much uncertainty this fall, there is one thing that connects educators everywhere—regardless of where we live, the subject or grade we teach, or how we are planning to deliver our instruction, we are all teaching in a way that is different than our old “normal”. For many, virtual or remote learning is the plan for at least the first 9 weeks, and many other educators are facing the potential of some form of hybrid model.
The first few weeks of school are so important when it comes to lying the foundation for the entire school year. This is the time we build community, learn about one another and develop trust. For educators teaching remotely this is a challenge in and of itself due to the fact that the group will not be meeting in person together. How can we build relationship and create interACTIVE learning experiences for our students while distanced and apart? Community is defined as a feeling of fellowship you share with others, and this feeling is built as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals. As educators of remote learners, who don’t necessarily need to be together in person to build community as long as we are giving our students opportunities fo share their interests, attitudes and goals with each other.
Remote Learning Community Building Activities
Flipgrid Introductions: When building community it is important for students to see, hear and share with each other and Flipgrid is a wonderful platform to do this in. Day 1, model how to get on and give students a fun, non academic way to share about themselves. Two of our favorite activities to do with students is All About Me and 2 Truths and a Lie. The first is just as it sounds—students get an open invitation to use the engaging tools Flipgrid offers (filters, stickers, font, images, frames, etc.) to share about themselves. With 2 Truths and a Lie, students share three statements about themselves and then classmates have to decipher which statement is untrue and respond back with their guess. Both of these activities can be found for you to use in Flipgrid’s Discovery Library. (and they are also linked above too!)
Get to Know the Teacher Gimkit: Gimkit is a great game to play LIVE with your class regardless on your platform. (Zoom, Teams, Google Meet, WebEx) Since the first week is all about community building, make the questions about you the teacher and use the game time as a way to have fun while also letting your students earn about you too! If you prefer to keep students from friendly competition in the first few weeks, try making it a competition where students play against each other, you could have students play towards a team goal where they are all working towards a specific goal together.
Wheel of Names: This free resource makes any remote learning lesson personalized and fun. Combine it with one of the get to know you activities above and when each students’s name is chosen they can share which of their statements was a lie. You can customize it to fit any type of lesson and
All About Me Graffiti Wall: Giving students a brick wall to upload for their own background, have students take advantage of the new fonts and filters to create “graffiti” sharing all about themselves. When finished, students can voice over their artistic masterpieces explaining all about themselves. Check out the Topic in the Discovery library to customize for your own students here!
Breakout Rooms with Book Creator: Many video platforms now allow you to group students and give them a separate break out space to share and talk together. Try grouping students together and giving them time to collaborate on a book in Book Creator together. They could be setting goals for the year, developing a set of class rules to share with the class or targeting a specific learning goal specified by the teacher. While working together and communicating through their breakout rooms, the teacher can pop in and out as needed to assist them while they work.
Wakelet Wall: Wakelet is an easy way to curate and why not use it to build community with students. Within the platform teachers can turn on collaboration, which gives all students with the code the ability to add content to the same Wakelet. Try giving students some form of creation challenge—possibly in a platform where you would like them to take time to learn their way around. (ie. Google Slides, PowerPoint, Adobe Spark etc.) Once students have finished their assignment, have them come to Wakelet to post it alongside their classmates. Add creations to Wakelet through links, by uploading an image or even as a PDF! Simply turn on the collaboration mode within Wakelet and watch as their own “class wall” begins to fill up. Try with a simple activity such as this where students can share about themselves.
Mentimeter “Morning Meetings”: Mentimeter is an interactive presentation platform that allows you to prepare, present and analyze presentations in real time. Ask questions and then allow the audience to respond in real time. There is a free version, but you are limited to the amount of questions per presentation you can ask. For around $7 a month you can access the basic educational plan which gives you options like unlimited questions, the ability to import PowerPoint and Google Slide presentations, and much more. This would be a fun way to conduct meaningful morning meetings each day where students can “check in” and let you know how they are doing anonymously. The teacher may ask for adjectives to describe their feelings which are put into a class word cloud, or ask students to rate an assignment on a scale of 1-10. This is a great tool to help us keep an eye on our students mental well being in a way that fosters engagement, connection and the ability to engage with the teacher.
Flipgrid Playground: When learning remotely, students will miss out on the opportunity to engage and socialize on the playground each day. So why not create a safe space where those types of conversations can still be had? Create a new Topic titled “Playground” where students can simply share cool things, hobbies, funny jokes, toys they like and other non academic things with one another. This will give them a way to find commonalities between themselves and others while apart. Check out the topic example in the Discovery Library!
Tip: It is a good idea to keep this Topic moderated at first so that the videos are viewed by the teacher before being published to the class.
Student Selfies: Taking selfies with the teacher on the first day of school is a staple for many elementary classrooms. Take fun PNG frames and attach them in a simple Flipgrid Topic. Students can download the one they like, use it to take their first day of school selfie and then share with the class. They can even download their own video/selfie to keep as a classroom profile photo. To download the free frame below, and several more, click here!
What’s In My Bag?: Remember the old activity you would do in person with students where they had to go through and guess items from the teacher’s bag, then hearing how each item revealed something about the teacher? Why not do this digitally with students? In the same way you would set up Student Selfies, attach the PNG file frame of the bag for students within the topic, and then allow them to “add” things to their bag as they fill it up with things about themselves. Then they can share for their classmates to watch and learn more about them! To download this free frame, and more (including the frame above), click here!
Flipgrid “Paper, Rock, Scissors!”: Build your classroom community and encourage honesty with this fun spin on this traditional game. Have your students record them selves saying, “Rock, paper, scissors…” and then share what they picked. Their friends can watch the videos back and participate “virtually” (without cheating - of course!) and reply with what they selected and whether or not they were defeated - again encouraging honesty! If you’d like to incorporate this activity with a fun read aloud, we love the book The Legend of Rock Paper Scissors by Drew Daywalt.
Tip: If you’re worried about students cheating, have them chose a Flipgrid response to reply to. But, instruct them to not watch the original video before responding. Then, after the second student has left a response, they can go back and leave another response indicating whether they won or lost the match.
Video Conference Creativity Spark!: This is a great way to spark creativity with your students - which can be quite challenging in a remote learning setting. Pick a letter from the alphabet, and have your students draw a quick picture of the first thing they think of when they hear that letter. Repeat this three times, then have them look over what they illustrated. Then, ask them to come up with a story that connects all three images. This can be shared on Flipgrid, or even used to create a writing piece.
Heads Up! Warm Up: Before diving into a content area lessons, take a few minutes prior to play Heads Up. Created by Ellen DeGeneres, this game reinvents charades for the app generation. Pick a category, then hold your device up to your head, screen facing outward, and guess the words using your friends’ clues. You can even record and share videos of your friends’ increasingly frantic efforts to clue you in. You can create your own deck of images too. Try adapting the game by using images of words related to the lesson or just play from the deck given on your device. Don’t want to use your device? No worries! You could also just print out a set of images to play with live.
Buncee Bitmoji Postcards: “Meet” students before the school year even begins by popping up in their mailbox. Students love to receive mail, and how special would it be if it were from their new teacher?! Buncee is an a super easy design platform to create fun postcards. You can choose to either have the message on them, or you could leave them blank to handwrite as you go. Start the year off with a simple gesture showing students how much you care.
Tip: Not interested in mailing them? You can choose to email your postcards or other greetings to families!
Stay #interACTIVE!
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If you’d like to learn more about interACTIVE teaching and learning, check out our book The InterACTIVE Class today!
