Like all our lessons, my teaching partner and I delivered this lesson online using the video-conferencing service called Big Blue Button. For our first activity, we decided to use the whiteboard function to facilitate a game of Pictionary with the students. We directly messaged students with a vocabulary words related to the short stories we had previously examined; then students used the multi-user whiteboard to draw a picture of that item or concept while other students competed to guess the correct answer first. Students enjoyed drawing on the multi-user whiteboard, and I believe students enjoyed watching their classmates draw as well.
Next my partner and I read a new short story to the students. When we read through this story, we didn’t linger for too long or take breaks to discuss passages. We thought that this might make the narrative feel smoother and more cohesive, but we ended up finishing ahead of schedule and sent students for an early break.
The second “half” of the lesson began early as well; however, my partner and I found that the rest of our exercises still filled the time well. We decided that we should postpone the break until after the next activity if we find ourselves ahead of schedule again. This would give students a predictable schedule that they can easily plan activities around.
After the break students performed another matching exercise and then went to breakout rooms to answer questions from a worksheet provided by our practicum sponsor prior to the lesson. This time, we instructed students to choose a leader to speak on behalf of their group, this worked well as the leader of each group felt accountable and thus ensured that productive discussion took place.