Distance learning has become one of those accepted norms that we may be looking at for quite some time. This means that rather than putting off group discussion and partnering opportunities for our students, we’re going to need to be a little more creative.
Zoom overload is a very real thing, but if we have to be spending hours in front of a screen, we should at least make them worthwhile! Zoom Breakout Rooms are a unique feature to make meetings more fun and an engaging environment for students! We can use them to do partner and even small group activities in the classroom!
What are Zoom Breakout Rooms?
Put simply, Zoom Breakout Rooms are a feature that you will find already in your Zoom meetings. However, it is something that you have to enable in your Zoom account to allow the meeting host to put people into small groups.
The purpose of these groups is to allow discussion or activities in small groups than in the initial meeting. While the participants can still see the same Zoom interface, they won’t be part of the larger classroom during these groups. You can have up to 50 people in a Zoom Breakout Room, but you likely won’t need that many unless you have a huge classroom.
You can also determine how much time you need for the task, and the time needed for the full group to report out of the group. You can have participants be placed into the rooms at random, or you can assign them yourself.
Why Use Zoom Breakout Rooms?
This unique feature allows the host (the teacher) to visit each room and check in on the activity. While this can be disruptive, it’s also a great way to make sure your students are on task, without relying on them to set a time and place to meet up online outside of the regular Zoom call. You can broadcast messages to send to each room. So, for example, you could send a prompt to your students.
If they are working through a set of discussion questions or through activities, you can even make a Google document with your prompts and allow your students to take notes. This is valuable information because, as the host, you can allow enough time based on how the notes fill up in the document.
How can I Use Zoom Breakout Rooms?
If you are new to Zoom Breakout Rooms, here are just a few ways you can use this unique feature:
- Check-ins
- Icebreakers
- Round Robin
- Show and Tell
- Peer Review
- Group Projects
The possibilities are endless with the Zoom Breakout Room feature. While you won’t necessarily have them all meet in person, this allows you to break up your classroom into smaller groups so they can still work in a small group setting. While we are stuck doing distance learning, hopefully, this is a great way to help you change your lesson plans and make learning a little more fun for your students.
