Priming the Brain

Research on effective learning shows that priming a mind to learn lends to more student engagement, more confidence, and deeper learner. This is why a warm-up activity is included. Warm-up activities usually allow students to share what they already know about a topic, based on personal and lived experiences. They are also framed as low-stakes activities, i.e., there are no right or wrong answers. These activities may be individual or paired.

To create breakout rooms for paired or trio activities, do the following:

At the bottom of your Zoom screen, you can select an icon labeled "Breakout Rooms," or you can select "More" and then "Breakout Rooms."
Choose one or two rooms, depending on how many students you have. If you have four students, create two rooms and assign a pair in each room. If you have three students, create one room and assign them to that room.

You can do a random assignment, or if you feel like it would be better to pair a more talkative student with a quieter student, you can manually assign students to rooms. When manually assigning, select Assign and then the names of the students who will be in the room.
You can also broadcast messages to breakout rooms either through text or through your voice. This is helpful when you want to change something, remind students, or prepare to shut down the breakout rooms.

Watch Rose Ann lead the warm-up activity for this group.