I love activities that get students moving and sharing. I do this all the time in my classroom, especially at the beginning of the semester with get-to-know-you activities. One great example of how I use this is with Find-Someone-Who activities that I’ve bought from Allison over at Mis Clases Locas.

So, what to do when my semester begins fully remote, teaching from home over Zoom? This week, in a class of 16 Spanish 2 students, I opened up 8 breakout rooms under the setting “Let participants choose room”. I told them they had 12 minutes to talk to at least 6 different people, and that no more than 3 people could be in one breakout room at a time. I was so impressed by the beautiful, chaotic conversations that ensued! It didn’t replace the movement piece that would happen in the classroom, but it retained the energetic vibes and Spanish conversation that’s been lacking in my Zoom classroom this year.

On the subject of movement, I’ve been a lot more serious this new semester about having lots of brain breaks, and kids have been so much more focused. I know it’s obvious, I know we’ve known about brain breaks for years, but man. This online teaching stuff is so new, that I need to be reminded of so much.

How have you been injecting energy, conversation, and movement into your Zoom/Meet/Teams Classrooms?