Hybrid: Stuff that Worked for Me

My school was in hybrid for about 3 weeks before we move to fully distance on Monday. By no means did I figure everything out to be an amazing hybrid teacher, but I did learn some things to make my life easier. I thought I’d share in case it helps someone else.

A little about my hybrid schedule. Classes were 90 minutes every other day. Monday and Tuesday students with last names A-M were at school, and N-Z was at home. Thursday and Friday, those groups switched. Wednesday was a distance learning day for everyone. Students worked on assignments that were given Monday/Tuesday, and teachers were available for office hours. With the exception of Wednesdays, classes were taught synchronously, and I saw students in person once per week. We also use Google Meet as our way of having online students join the class.

• Extended Screen: I don’t know why it took me this long to figure out how to use extended screen with my projector, but it was a game changer. I had always thought it was too confusing, but I tried it that first day with my first class, and it was so easy. Students in my room and at home could see my SMART Board slides, and I was able to see the Google Meet, take attendance, check email in case students at home were struggling to log in, etc.

• Start of Class: On Monday and Tuesday my warm-up was a Desmos Check-In and on Thursday and Friday the warm-up was SET (their online website is currently unavailable. Search setgame.com. I’ll try to remember to come back and link it when it’s working again). These were tasks that all students could participate in regardless of how confident they felt with the math we were doing right now. It was consistent. Students knew what to expect and do, so I had time to take attendance. (I can’t be the only who is looking forward to how easy taking attendance will be when all of this is over, right?!)

• Desmos Check-Ins: I doing LOVE these each week and look forward to seeing students’ responses. It gave me great insight as to where my students were at each week. I learned things about them, especially my students online that I would not have known otherwise. How they were feeling about hybrid, how their family’s heath was, things they were excited about, etc.

• Breakout Rooms: This was a game changer for me. Students loved working in breakout rooms with each other. Because many students were at home by themselves learning, and the students at school had to maintain 6 feet from everyone, they got excited to be put in groups and work with other students. I LOVED hearing all the conversations about math students had while working on this. It almost felt like I had all my students in the classroom. I never got very efficient at setting these up, but here’s what I did.
  • I made sure that each breakout room had 1 student who was physically in my classroom in the group. This person acted as the link between me and the students online. If there was a question the group, or someone in the group had, I could go by this person’s Chromebook and help them out vs. joining that breakout room on my laptop. When it was time to join the main room again, I’d tell the students in my class, who would tell their partners online.
  • To set this up, when students were working on the warm-up, I counted the number of students in my classroom and set up that many breakout rooms ahead of time. Then when it was time to work in groups, I had the students in the classroom join the Google Meet and added them into the breakout rooms that I’d already made. This took a little bit of time, so during that time I encouraged students to write down the problems they’d be working on since once they joined the breakout room they would no longer see the screen that I had shared.
  • Depending on the class and the students, sometimes I had groups of 2, other times it was groups of 3-5. I saw success in all sizes of groups, but overall, I got more talking in groups of 3-5. That way if one student wasn’t participating, in most cases there were at least 2 who were. In other cases, groups of 2 were great because one of them would call the other one out, “Turn on your mic so we can talk about this problem.”
  • Sometimes I also gave a quick Desmos survey after group work to find out how things went. Who participated? Who didn’t? Anything I should know?

One of the positives I’ve seen this year is that students are getting SO much better at talking through problems! In previous years, when students would be working together and one would have a question, one person would just hand their partner their paper and show them what they did without explaining it. Because they can’t do that this year, they are talking through the problem. It’s AMAZING to listen to!

• I had students work in Jamboard, Desmos, and just on practice problems in breakout rooms.
  • Jamboard: This took a little bit of time to set up and teach students the routine. After the second time of doing it with students, I saw huge improvements in the time it took them to get started and working on this. (I’ll blog about some of the activities I had students do in Jamboard in another post).
  • Desmos: I almost always have students work 2 students to 1 Chromebook when we do Desmos activities. In order to replicate that when in hybrid, I had students work in breakout rooms and had one student open the activity in Desmos and share their screen with their group. I encouraged groups to have a person in their group who had good internet connection/the person in the classroom to be the one to share their screen. I did a lot of self check card sorts in the activities because students could better monitor on their own how they were doing, but it didn’t tell them exactly which cards/groups they had wrong so there was still discussion that happened in the groups.
  • Problems: Students worked through problems together in groups. Because students wouldn’t see my shared screen when they were in breakout rooms, I kept my screen shared and had them return to the main call when they needed to get a new problem and then return to their breakout room.

• Misc: Other things I discovered, and a couple great ideas from coworkers too.
  • A coworker shared this with me, and I tried to remember it as I was teaching. Focus on the students online when asking questions. It was easy to forget about all the students online and only ask for responses from students in my classroom. By focusing on the students online, they had to participate and the students in my room saw what would be expected of them when they were at home.
  • Google Meet Polls: I tried using this one day to give students the option of working on their own or in a breakout room. I discovered that I could see how many students picked each one, I couldn’t tell which students picked once. We redid the poll in Desmos.
  • Seating Charts: A coworker had a great idea of how to set up seating charts for hybrid that saved me so much time when taking attendance.
    • When I made the seating charts I set them up in 3 groups. On the left side (green box) of the page I made a seating chart for students who were physically in school Monday/Tuesday. This was lucky, but I put them in alphabetical order by FIRST NAME because when they sign in to Google Meet, they show up in order that way. Then when I was taking attendance Thursday/Friday it was quicker for me to go through the list.
    • In the middle (blue box), put the students who were distance learning full time. I knew to look for those students online both days.
    • On the right (red box), I made the seating chart for students who were in school Thursday/Friday. Again, I put them in order by 1st name, and it made taking attendance when they were online so much easier.