Recent times have forced the landscape of our classrooms to evolve. The question I often ask myself is, "Will we ever go back?" I don't know the answer to that question. What I do know is that it is imperative that we adjust highly effective instructional strategies to engage students in hybrid environments to prepare for whatever the future holds for education.

When I started to think about instructional strategies that could be most easily modified for this type of environment, Socratic Seminar was the first one that came to mind. Socratic Seminar provides a structure for students to discuss a question posed by a classmate or teacher (usually dependent on a text). Often during Socratic Seminar there are two groups: an inner circle and an outer circle. Both inner and outer circles have roles during the Socratic Seminar (also know as a fishbowl). 

In a hybrid environment, the inner circle could be the face-to-face students while the outer circle could be the remote students. Traditionally, the job of the outer circle is to be the observers and summarizers of the discussion of the inner circle. However, engagement in this role might be challenging for remote students. In addition to being an observer and summarizer, a suggestion would be that the outer circle continues to pose deeper questions throughout the discussion and shares their own thoughts through a backchannel chat, using a tool such as YoTeach or the Q and A feature of Google Slides.

Don’t be afraid to switch these roles! If your remote learners are lacking engagement, allow them to be the inner circle and project the video-call for the face-to-face students to observe in class. Face-to-face students can also pose questions for deeper conversations through the tools listed above.

A few things to take into consideration would be: 

• Have the face-to-face inner circle seated in a horseshoe, as opposed to a circle, so that students viewing from home are able to see and hear the face-to-face students.
• Questions being posed in class should be re-voiced loudly and clearly, while also being recorded in the chat feature of a video call, on Google Slides, or a table in a Google Doc (see examples). Both circles should have equal access to the classroom discussion. 
• Also, to keep remote students engaged, assigning a face-to-face student (or even the teacher) with the task of interacting with the outer circle and sharing to the inner circle will help all students feel heard. 
• Projecting the outer circle backchannel discussion to a classroom screen will support the interaction of the two circles, as well.
• ​Take the experience to the next level with an OWL or a SWIVL. These devices can help facilitate a better viewing experience.

What instructional strategies have you modified to suit hybrid environments? We'd love to hear about it in the comments!

~Mindy

Additional Resources:
Socratic Seminars: Let's Build a Culture of Student-Led Discussion
Fishbowl Instructional Strategy
5 Steps to a Successful Socratic Seminar

1. Concept maps are NOT graphic organizers. Instead, it is the process of organizing thoughts and key ideas.
2. Concept mapping is a scaffolded process facilitated by the teacher. Teachers help students identify the relationship between key terms by asking probing questions and providing language stems.
3. ​It is crucial to honor student voice and choice when concept mapping to support personal visualization of the connected concepts.

​~Gina Rogers
~Mindy Cairney

​Reciprocal teaching includes four steps:

1. Predict 
2. Clarify 
3. Question
4. Summarize

​Reciprocal teaching is a process that best works in a collaborative environment so most commonly small groups will be used in this strategy. Additionally, the process helps students organize their thinking about text.  Creating a Doc or Slide Deck template for groups to use (see examples in Step 1) can be used to record ideas and provide links to additional tools used in the process.

If you have ever attended PD at Grant Wood AEA chances are you have been exposed to the obligatory Jigsaw Method for processing learning. Although this is said with a hint of sarcasm, the Jigsaw Method ranks as a 1.2 high effect size instructional strategy.  Originally the Jigsaw Method was implemented in Austin, Texas as a way to diffuse racial tensions in a recently desegregated school. In order to get the students to work together and learn from one another’s diverse perspectives, researchers devised a method that focused on cooperative learning. The history of the Jigsaw Method is quite fascinating and can be read about here.  

This post is geared primarily toward literacy teachers, but in case you didn’t know, that is everyone. Yep, even you Mr. PE Teacher are a literacy teacher.  All of us are responsible for incorporating literacy activities in our classroom.  Now I’m not saying let’s read Ivanhoe in Algebra I (that’s just silly), but why not have your students  take a look at this non-fiction article and debate the merits of Algebra. And in fact, the Common Core advises that students should, by 12th grade, spend 30% of their time reading literary texts and 70% of their time reading informational/non-fiction text, furthermore suggesting that a great deal of non-fiction reading in grade 6-12 can happen in classrooms outside of ELA.

All right, descend from soapbox and let’s take a look at a tool that will help us in the teaching of literacy.  This tool is called Actively Learn.  It is one of my new favorite tools for ELA, well it’s not new, just newish to me.  If you are not familiar with Actively Learn, watch this short video to get a quick overview:

 So why do I love Actively Learn?  Here is my top three list:

1. Content - the content available in Actively Read is phenomenal.  I taught the gamut of HS ELA classes (everything from English 9 to AP English Lit and College Composition) and in the available content in Actively Learn is representative of most of the texts that I taught.  Additionally, texts are Lexiled and sorted by grade level and subject.  Additionally, teachers can add their own content by going to the “Create Assignments” tab and selecting “Add Content”.  They can add  from a URL, Google Doc or PDF.  So go ahead, add those lyrics from Thunder Road or Don’t Drink the Water, they will work.
   
   
2. Support -  The Actively Learn interface has a ton of support built right into the tool.  When teachers log in, the first stop is their “Checklist” which shows them what they need to accomplish to fully leverage all of the features built into Actively Learn.  The checklist links to a help video on the topic as well as text instructions with screenshots.  Additionally, you will always find a helping hand hanging out in the lower right hand corner of the app.  Click on the photo of the support person and you can launch into a live chat.
   
   
3. Collaboration - My mantra has always been “comprehension is collaborative”. Ok, I don’t think that I came up with that one on my own, but it is true.  Comprehension hinges on the student’s ability to build/activate their schema and make connections and the best way to support this in an ELA classroom is to create a collaborative reading experience (my other thoughts on schema building).  Kids should be talking about text, they should been sharing what they see in the text, and they should be having debates about the text.  Actively Learn allows this to happen at anytime.  No longer is a student “alone in the text”.  They can post notes for their fellow students to comment on, they can send a private “I don’t understand” flag to their teacher, and they can accommodate for themselves as needed (i.e. have the text read aloud, look up definitions of words, etc.).  In short, they have a community of learners to aid in their comprehension.  Additionally, teachers can co-author assignments together and they can co-teach classes.
   
   

Actively Learn truly puts the student experience at the forefront.  Students have great opportunities to collaborate and connect with their classmates and teacher via the text and this helps aid comprehension and the development of schema. So, if you are a literacy teacher (and I know you are) give Actively Learn a look and don’t leave your students “alone in the text”.


- Gina Rogers, Technology Consultant, Grant Wood AEA (@grogers1010)

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