Go Small to go Big!
Since our return from Spring Break last week I've seen a significant drop-off in the already low engagement of my students in virtual learning. I thought maybe I was just noticing it more since my return to one day of in-person learning (despite it only being 4 students) reminded me what teaching and learning are supposed to be like, but in asking my colleagues I've heard the same. Somehow even fewer cameras on, somehow even fewer questions and comments in chat, and somehow even more tardies and absences.
So, I can sit in, wallow in it, or I can try to do something. Necessity is the mother of invention as my recent post showed, so today, I picked a lesson that has always been interactive and made some small adjustments to make my best attempt to make it interactive virtually as well. I didn't solve all the world's problems (or even my classroom's) but I did make for a pretty great lesson and a ton more interaction than I was getting otherwise.
Let's talk about Chinese Inventions. When I do this lab in class I print and laminate the pictures of the inventions. I divide students into groups of 4 and set up 4 stations around the room with the pictures (or I just have the groups pass the pictures from group to group depending on the situation.) It's always fun to listen in their conversations. Kids can't wait to see who is right at the end and the lesson helps paint a picture of just how incredible the scholars and inventors of China were. Since we are fully virtual for instruction that model wouldn't work. So, the first thing I did was remake the lab into a fully digital one using PearDeck.
The students were certainly engaged and largely amazed at Chinese ingenuity. However, the lab went much faster this way as it didn't have the same levels of discussion as in-person collaboration did. While I could see student answers in the PearDeck dashboard, they really weren't interacting in chat with one another (or with me) all that much. It was more than with other lessons last week but still not a ton and that meant we were done in about 30 minutes. If I had them do the final 3 analysis questions we wouldn't have time to start anything else, so I cut the lab off there and decided to start the China Bracketology activity I created last year at the start of distance learning.
Last year, back in the olden days, polling wasn't built into Meet and I didn't have a Zoom pro account so I used Strawpoll.me to set up polls for each round of our bracket. Students would vote on which invention they thought was the most impactful. The first, for example, was Gun Powder vs. Shi Huang Di's tomb. I made two tweaks to the polling this year. First, I was able to make the polls on the fly using the built in polling in Meet. That meant that instead of having pre-made polls that said "Upper Bracket 1 winner vs. Upper Bracket 2 winner" I got to put the actual terms in offering more exposure to those words (and a lot less confusion) for my students. It worked pretty well but I still initially had low engagement. My first round poll ended in a 14-2 vote in a class of 33 students. Admittedly, that is higher than my normally abysmal work turn-in rate but still, obviously, isn't satisfactory.
What was missing? I had the interaction but I didn't have the show. I decided to start speaking in an over-the-top sports commentator voice. I started using terms like "favorites" and "upset." I dramatically announced each change in the vote. I played up each round as a battle between two teams struggling for dominance. The helped and I saw a few more votes start to trickle in.
Something was still missing - energy from the crowd. My energy was up with the role play but I wanted them to feel more like an audience at an event. The easiest way to add energy to any experience is music. Since I was playing this up as a battle I decided to jump on YouTube and play some Street Fighter video game music when I opened each poll. I started each with an even more over-the-top fighting game announcer voice saying, "FIGHT!" That completed the show. Our final vote ended up 15-11, a huge increase in participation from the first.
Ultimately, all I did was make a few very small changes to my activity to make it more of a show. Those small changes helped the activity feel big and important. A little music, a little interaction and a little acting made for a fun lab that increased my sadly low student engagement of late and helped them appreciate Chinese history just a bit more. Don't be afraid to make those small tweaks!