8 Fun Activities for Virtual Learning Meetings

Virtual Youth Group Games for COVID-19. By Dan Colwin March 27, 2020. Looking for game ideas to use for your virtual youth group gatherings? We’ve got you covered. Churches and youth ministries are facing numerous challenges related to COVID-19. Youth groups are unable to meet in person. Students are wrestling with isolation. CURRICULUM PURPOSE: CalWORKs Life Skills Support Groups combine the objectives of removing mental health barriers to employment with exercises that promote practical outcomes. Participants will learn coping strategies to deal with their emotional concerns, and gain knowledge about the culture of the work environment.

1. Would You Rather Debates – Virtual learning with students can be activity-based. The would you rather activity asks students to evaluate choices and explain their thinking These questions are a great way to get a conversation started in a fun and interesting way. Don’t forget to ask students “Why?” after because this can be the best part of the conversation. Here is a great site would your rather ideas.

• 2. Twenty Questions – For this virtual learning activity Have kids guess things like characters, time periods or scientific facts.Rules: Players take turns asking only “yes” or “no” questions in an attempt to figure out the answer. Ask as many as 20 questions.

• 3. Movie and Netflix Reviews – Help kids learn to communicate and write by doing the virtual learning mock movie reviews during a team meeting. Assign a few kids each session to go as a fun way to start a meeting or get a conversation started.

• 4. Virtual Talk Shows – This virtual talk shows takes learning and makes it fun. Students take the place of characters, concepts, or even a time period in a virtual talk show. Each student takes the “hot-seat” to answer questions showing their comprehension of an idea from the viewpoint of a person or idea being studied in class.

• 5. Hot or Not – In this virtual learning favorite, students use two pieces of paper and write Hot or Not and then as the teacher talks about ideas in content the kids decide whether this is Hot (good) or Not (not so good) and then defend their choices. One fun example would be on the topic of The Fall of the Roman Empire The idea could be higher taxes to help support the large Roman Military. Kids could decide if that is a HOT or NOT idea, and then explain why.

• 6. Two Truths and Lie – Students come to the meeting with Two Truths and a Lie about a literary character, historical figure or event, or math or science concept. Then see if the other students can figure which statement is the lie and why. You can even prepare a collaborative doc that students can see ahead of time. Boom! A favorite face-to-face learning activity goes virtual!

• 7. Doodling Together – Students love to doodle and remote learning makes a great way to have them do this collaboratively. They can interpret stories, ideas or people and compare their doodles with their classmates.

• Microsoft: Use OneNote and a collaborative notebook.
• Google: Use a collaborative Jamboard

Need more information on this virtual learning sketchnoting activity? Get students Sketchnoting with these introductory videos and learn more about the why by watching Sylvia Duckworth explain the importance and research behind this strategy. All this is curated into this Wakelet. Also, check out this Day of Sketchnoting post!

• 8. PowerPoint, Slides or Buncee Brain Dump – Once your class is ready to start, find a volunteer who is ready to fun present and start the first random slide deck. The volunteer must then present on those slides to the group. You can give people an entire slide deck each or have them tap out to other members after a few slides. Keep the slides to a minimum by using only visuals. The key is getting people to improvise and have fun while practicing their communication skills under pressure!

Also consider checking out this blog post: 10 Ways to Reconnect with Students During Remote Learning

Lesson planning is, in many cases, the key to a successful learning session. Writing down basic points of action, describing the best way to teach the material, or mapping out the structure of how you will present your lesson in an effective matter are all excellent steps towards making sure that you are providing your best work for your students.

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Benefits of Planning a Virtual Classroom Lesson

Teachers rarely agree on useful practices, but lesson planning is one of the exceptions. There are many benefits to organizing your teaching session in advance, such as:

• By organizing the lesson’s elements you can ensure that they are not repeating, but complementing each other.
• It allows you time in advance to think about the best way to present the most important material.
• You can fit in time for games, songs, and other activities that add to the learning process.
• It ensures the best structure to ease your students into the topic
• It gives you time to think about the lesson’s format and come up with new ideas.

As teachers we often don’t give ourselves the opportunity to create a well thought-out lesson plan. This is a missed opportunity that could help improve our teaching and the results of our work.

A common mistake, as far as lesson plans are concerned, is to use the same learning trajectory over separate sessions on the same topic. Your plan should reflect the differences in each student. When we help and encourage our students to do their best, it is most helpful to provide them with a lesson that is tailor-made to their needs. In addition, when you teach a student a lesson that is interesting to them, there is a greater chance of boosting their creativity, as well as their ability to comprehend and remember.

How to Plan a Virtual Classroom Lesson

Preparing for a virtual classroom session might be challenging for a tutor. In addition to the need to plan the lesson’s structure, the teacher also needs to adapt their ideas to the virtual environment.

Boost your creativity

Before starting to plan, take a second and try to define in two to three words what the goal of your lesson will be, i.e., what it is that your students should be able to do after the session is over (for example, identifying past perfect tense). Use this goal as the basis of your lesson plan and then start creating.

Before creating the actual outline of the class, try to think of some of the best or craziest ideas and put them down on paper. Some good techniques to boost creativity are brainstorming, mind mapping, or, if you don’t have lots of time, color coding.

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After writing down some of your most unusual ideas, put them in order, and try:

• not to place two similar activities one after the other
• not to focus on boring exercises, but rather on practices with substance
• to have strong and memorable openings and closings
• to leave time for questions and undirected discussion

Although this seems like simple advice, you may be surprised by the results.

Take out the best

After planning the activities and implementing some of the crazy ideas in your lesson, it is time to use the virtual classroom’s toolbox. Starting with the most obvious features and moving down to those that are rarely used, the virtual classroom offers a large variety of activities that are inaccessible (or more difficult to use) in the traditional classroom, and which will help take your lesson plan to the next level.

Some ideas:

• Play some short videos on the topic. The virtual classroom provides the ability to simultaneously play different videos to smaller groups of students. After the video you could have a discussion about them.
• Provide images. Images are extremely easy to include in the virtual classroom and can be used in a variety of ways: as a matching game, to be grouped based on certain criteria, or to visualize an idea. Students are also allowed to post on the online whiteboard so they can be the ones who are searching for appropriate images.
• Show sources of information. The virtual classroom allows you to share your screen with your students, so why not, instead of providing a list with websites on the topic, just show them in real time. The same goes for presentations on other platforms that can be used directly online without downloading.
• Use colors. Code your plan with colors. Color coding is a tool that is always at the teacher’s disposal, which is both very simple and very useful as it gives additional information to the brain. The virtual classroom takes color coding to the next level by providing a huge choice of tones.
• Implement your plan in the whiteboard. A major advantage of the virtual classroom is the ability to create templates in advance. This way you can prepare your lesson not only as a plan, but also as a presentation.

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Mix and match old and new

Using the virtual classroom does not mean leaving behind all of your proven methods from the traditional classroom. Think of ways to adjust your favorite exercises and games so that you can use them in the virtual environment. For example, a game using small pieces of paper can be transformed using the colors and shapes provided by the virtual classroom’s software.

Boost your students’ creativity

Use your lesson plan to figure out ways to boost your students’ creativity. More likely than not, if your students have fun during the teaching session, they will learn and remember much more. Think of ways to involve them in the learning process by planning activities that require them to participate.