Breakout

Breakout Rooms & Group Work

Explore a variety of instructional strategies that lend themselves to effective breakout sessions

Instructional Strategies

Engagement

Discover new ways to analyze and improve learner engagment during breakout sessions.

Management

Identify methods to manage breakout rooms and limit distractions for learners.

View the foundational principals of UDL.

UDL Considerations

Set up a time that we can collaborate on ways to integrate breakout rooms into an upcoming lesson. Together we can plan, implement, and reflect on the strategy...

Collaborative Planning

Universal Design for Learning

Optimizing teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learnPlanning focuses on

• WHY learners should learn the content.
• WHAT content needs to be learned and assessed.
• HOW content and learning is presented.

Three Key Elements to

Engage Learners

Content

Peers

Teacher

Management

Provide Support

• Identify and address barriers to learning in planning
• Move between groups
• Ensure enough time to visit all groups
• Provide feedback on progress and redirect as needed
• Let learners know they can ask you for help
• Address learners as a group & individually
• Create a "Help Room" that learners can go to for one on one support.
• Create a "Break Room" for learners who are away from computer

Establish Expectations

• Create and reference breakout room guidelines
• Clarify purpose & tasks
• Use deliverables wisely
• Set a timeframe and stick to it.
• Consider learner Groupings

Put Learners in Control

• Most of the teachers work is done BEFORE the lesson starts
• Use technology tools to structure lesson and guide learners
• Provide ways for learners to give feedback
• **NEW** Use polls to push to BO rooms!

Instructional Strategies

Tiered Instruction

Topic Selection

Web Quest & Gallery Walk

Peer Tutors

Discussions

Jig Saw

Teaching Presence

The design, facilitation and direction of cogitive and social processes for realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes.

Questions to Ask When Planning1. How will I interact with learners? 2. How will learners interact with me?

Consider

• Pre-record your own instructional material
• Start your own traditions
• Make camera's an expectation
• Create ways to increase and individualize feedback
• Utilize tools for multiple ways to respond

Peer Tutor

Facilitate leadership development in advanced learners & support those who need additional practice

Setup

• Create collaborative space for learning (what tools will support this format?)
• Identify tutors for the topic
• Meet with tutors before class to review content and highlight important tutor skills
• Determine how learners will be grouped; (random, poll, assigned)

Benefits

Learners see each other's perspectives to help them progress. Teaching others helps learning reach a greater depth Social interaction may help motivate learners to engage in the learning process.

Social Presence

The ability of participants to project themselves socially and emotionally as 'real' people through a medium of communication.

Facilitate Collaboration

• Create collaborative workspaces to enable individuals to participate within their comfort level.
• Creating a list of roles creates structure and sets expectations.
• Consider method for group organization

Cognitive Presence

The extent to which learners are able to construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse.

Suggestions

• Relate to prior experiences learners likely have (phenomena based learning is a powerful tool)
• Support learners to draw connections to prior content through interactive technology
• Design challenge activity allowing learners to apply new concepts

• Incorporate learners interests

• Provide opportunities for learners to explore their understanding of content BEFORE being taught
• Ask tighter DOK questions.

Discussions

Before Breakouts

• Discuss how virtual discussions feel different than in-person discussions
• Clearly establish expectations and mechanics.
• Discuss respecting opposing ideas

• Create guiding prompts, but allow space for fluid conversation

Examples

After Breakouts

• Learners explore their own views on a subject
• Learners are asked to identify evidence to support an assigned view
• Learners collaborate to establish a view

• Allow group leaders and individuals time to share key conversation pieces
• Offer Mic Alternatives
• Create space for all to share
• Model respectful disagreement

Tiered Instruction

- Same information- Varied levels of support

Examples

learners grouped by on supports provided

• Challenge, light support, full support

Learners grouped by ability to answer independent practice question

• Ready harder questions, Needs additional practice, Requires reteaching

Learners grouped by method of desired instruction

• Independent guided Instruction, learner led small groups, Teacher Lead group

Web Quest & Gallery Walks

Groups of learners explore a variety of information

• Provide learners with a set of tasks that need to be completed at each stage.
• Create Check in points
• Set a timeframe
• Assign learners leaders and/or roles
• organize content in one easy to navigate resource.

Example

• Energy Exploration Webqust

• Language Arts sensory words Gallery Walk

Examples

Topic Selection

Learners choose between different topics

• Life cycles;

Learners choose between different articles on the same topic

• Cultural Music:

Allows learners to learn the same concepts through different topics or media

Thailand's Country Music,

Music in South Africa,

Music of the Cherokee,

Benga Music,

Drums in traditional Nigerian Music

Learners choose the media they prefer

Read a Walkthrough,

Watch a video,

Complete a simulation,

Work in a small group with your teacher

Jig Saw

Subgroups become "experts" in one component of a whole

Example

Key Events of the Cold War

• Containment of Russia
• Arms Race between US and Russia
• Development of Hydrogen Bomb
• Space Exploration
• Fall of the Berlin Wall

Each group analyzes sub topic and brings infor back to the whole group.

**Think about collaborative technology and group roles!

Walk-through