This blog post was inspired by six hours of professional development that did nothing to help me actually teach. Betsy, from Spark Creativity, shares my frustration (along with many of you, I’m sure) and so we decided to team up to create this post. Our goal is for you to walk away with something you can confidently use TOMORROW in your virtual classroom. We broke everything down step-by-step, put in links to any resources you may need, and we predicted some possible barriers and how to get around them.

Lore Podcast Discussion

Lore, by Aaron Mahnke is one of my go-tos for podcasts in the classroom. Finding engaging material for my informational text standards can be challenging. This podcast has really helped! It even won Best Historical Podcast of 2016 from the Academy of Podcasters. Students enjoy the creepy overall tone and we always come away with great discussion topics. This particular episode, #86 – “Under Siege,” is all about Typhoid Mary. In the early 1900s there was a house cook named Mary who was an asymptomatic carrier of Typhoid. She continued to work as a cook even after she realized she was spreading this deadly disease. Eventually the government quarantined and tested her for two years in an effort to prevent her from spreading the disease. They also offered to remove her gallbladder which may have stopped the spread of the disease. She declined the operation. This is the perfect subject for discussion on the rights and safety of a few versus the rights and safety of many. 

Detailed Steps 

1. Distribute the graphic organizer for the episode. All materials for this lesson can be accessed (for free) through my TpT store. It’s best if students can have the organizer open on one side of their screen and the Zoom meeting open on the other side. If that’s not possible, students can minimize the Zoom screen during the podcast playing and have their organizers up. 
2. Play the podcast through Zoom. You can share your screen with the website up so the students see it while it plays. Each section of the organizer is broken up with sections and time stamps. Play each section in order and use the discussion questions to bring everyone back together after each section. This helps break up the monotony of just listening and taking notes. Also, many students will want to discuss – it’s an interesting story with lots of moral and ethical ambiguities. 
3. Have a final discussion for the following question: “was Mary Mallon a symbol of the threat to individual liberty or a necessary sacrifice to public health?” [1]. This is a loaded question so you may need to simplify it or break it down based on your students’ needs. 
4. Grade students based on a completed graphic organizer/discussion participation or ask them to write an argumentative essay in response to the above prompt using evidence from the podcast. I also have a link to an article from the National Center of Biotechnology Information website to use as an additional resource.

Why it’s Awesome

It’s a free informational text that is accessible to all students. If someone is going to struggle with this you can send them the link in advance and they can listen on their own first and rewind as needed.The topic is timely but not a perfect connection to what is happening now. Sometimes it’s hard for students to connect with a text when they’ve never experienced anything remotely similar to what’s happening in the text. Unfortunately, we’re all experiencing something slightly similar to what is discussed on the podcast – we all have background knowledge and something on which to base our opinions. It’s versatile: you can walk students through it or assign it as an independent activity. 

Potential Barriers/Pitfalls

It’s not exactly what is going on right now, but it is similar and some discussion on the topic can be triggering. Use discretion when deciding if this is appropriate for your group of students. You may also need to keep a close watch on discussions to make sure students’ comments do not become offensive towards others. That said, learning to have civil conversations about current events is an important skill to have and this may be a good lesson to help with that skill. 

 Pandemic Blackout Poetry Activity

Blackout poetry is a lovely way to help students warm up to writing poetry, a somewhat intimidating task! Blackout poems are striking, easy to write, and fun to add imagery too. You can easily give it a try in one class period, by taking time to show a few examples, walking students through the process of creation, and then having them snap a photo to share to a virtual gallery in Google Slides.

Detailed Steps

1. In advance of class, ask students to gather a pencil, a pen or a Sharpie, and a piece of paper with typed writing on it. This could come from a newspaper, magazine, mailing, or old book. 
2. This class will take place in a video meeting so you can give occasional instructions along the way. The students should mute, unless questions come up along the way. Start by introducing the concept of Blackout Poems. This Pinterest gallery makes it easy to show how blackout poems work, and the beautiful ways blackout poets often weave imagery into their work to help highlight its meaning. 
3. Now it’s time for the students to take out their materials. 
4. Now you guys are ready to workshop. If you wish, you can use this free guide for yourself as you talk them through it, or send it out to your students if you’d like them to be totally independent for the next chunk of class.
5. If you’re going to walk students through the workshop step by step, give the first directions: “Skim your text. Search for words relating to how you’re feeling right now, or to what is happening in the world. Circle them lightly.” (If you don’t want to focus this activity on the pandemic, then just have students circle words that stand out to them). Give your students a few minutes to complete this step.   
6. When it seems like quite a few kids have done it, jump in with the next direction: “Go back through and think about how your words fit together. Consider circling a few connecting words to create fluid lines. Pick the words/lines you like best.” Again, give them some time to complete this step.  
7. Again, when it feels like the right time (5-8 minutes), let them know how to proceed: “Box the words you are going to use with a dark ink (Sharpie works well, but the sky’s the limit). Doodle in related imagery across the parts of the page without your chosen words if you wish. Begin to draw over all the text that is not your text. You can stick to all black or change it up.” This part will take a while.
8. When kids begin to look up from their work, give them the final step: “Once your poem and image are complete, write your poem in lines along the side, top, or bottom. Add your initials or name somewhere as the author of the poem. Add any images to the margins that you wish to add.” 
9. At this point, students will be in a few different stages. As they finish their poems, send out a link to a collaborative Google Slides presentation so that they can all edit it. You might want to use these free digital bulletin boards and create enough slides so every student can drop their poem into one. 
10. Once a few kids finish, ask everyone to snap a photo of their work as they complete it and drop the photo into one of the slides. 
11.  Now students can “walk” through the gallery, viewing others’ work. It’s up to you if you want to have kids read their poems aloud into the video group at the end – it will depend on time, how comfortable your students are with sharing their work, and how big your group meeting is. 
12. At the end, take a minute to congratulate everyone, and ask students who aren’t done to finish and add their work to the gallery for homework. 

Why It’s Awesome

Blackout poetry is fun and easy. Students will surprise themselves with the quality of their poems and the neat effects they can create with their doodles. The gallery walk at the end is an easy way to share creative work at a time when that can be difficult. 

Potential Barriers/Pitfalls

1. Everyone will work at their own pace, and you may have students at pretty different points along the way as you give directions. For this reason, sharing out the guide may be helpful so kids who fall behind can just check the next step for themselves. 
2. Kids may not be sure where to find a page of text. Be sure to ask kids to find a piece of text in advance so you’ll save time and trouble during the workshop. If they have a printer, they can always print an article from online. If not, and they don’t have any old books, keeping an eye on the mail for a day or two will probably yield something useable.  

Video-Based Vocabulary Writing

This is a creative activity to use with any vocabulary list. It’s fun and flexible, and easily translates to the digital classroom. Students watch a unique, engaging Youtube video and then respond to a video-based prompt while using their vocabulary words. Here, I’ll share three possible videos paired with prompts, but you can easily extend this into a longer series by choosing Youtube videos your own students would like once you’ve used some of my examples. 

Detailed Steps

Before class, choose the Youtube video you want to share. Here are some examples:

World War II Sand Painting

Marching Band Pops up in a Field

Food Court Flash Mob

1. Start with your whole class together on video (kids can mute). Share your new vocabulary list via Google Docs (or however you’re sharing info).  Give students a few minutes to look over the words and ask any questions they have.
2. Let kids know you’re going to be watching a video and then writing based on it. Play your selected YouTube video on your shared screen.  
3. Next, share the writing prompt that matches:

• World War II Sand Painting: Correctly using the vocabulary words from our current lesson, respond to the creative writing prompt based on the video you just watched. Prompt: Imagine you are a journalist in the audience during the sand painting performance illustrating the experiences of people in the Ukraine during World War II. Review the performance, including specific details about the way the artist represented the events and emotions of this historical period.
• Marching Band in a Field: Correctly using the vocabulary words from our current lesson, respond to the creative writing prompt below based on the video you just watched. Prompt: Imagine you are one of the members of the the band who created the video you just saw. This band is known for its creative videos. For the band’s fan website, write a short description of your favorite part of this video, along with a little about how the band came up with the idea. Use your imagination to fill in the backstory, and include details from what you watched.
• Food Court Flash Mob: Correctly using the vocabulary words from our current lesson, respond to the creative writing prompt below based on the video you just watched. Prompt: Imagine you are one of the people eating lunch in the food court during this musical performance, and you are talking on the phone (quietly) with your best friend the whole time. Write the dialogue of the conversation, including descriptive details from your perspective, questions from your friend, and your own opinions about the event.

4. Now give them 20 minutes or so to write their response, using their vocabulary words and highlighting them somehow so it’s clear where they are.  
5. When kids are starting to finish, assign partners and have them email their writing to each other. Have them use this peer analysis guide as a springboard, and email their partner back their opinions about which words are used accurately and which they might need to re-read the definitions for. If you wish, have them copy you on their response email, so you know that everyone completes this part of the class. 
6. Finally, pull everyone back together to wrap up. You may wish to invite a couple of students to read aloud if you have time. Then ask everyone to turn in their vocabulary writing assignment to you so you can check for completion and give credit. 
7. That’s it! If anyone wasn’t able to finish, ask them to finish for homework.

Why It’s Awesome

I’ve always enjoyed doing video-based writing with my students because it allows me to share those surprising Youtube videos I discover that they love to see. I like to choose creative videos that make students think differently about art and imagination, plus it adds a cool layer to vocabulary work that can feel a bit rote. Plus, the videos provide a more interesting backdrop to the writing than simply saying “write a story using the words…” 

Potential Barriers/Pitfalls

If you can’t meet synchronously, you can restructure this activity pretty easily. Just choose a Youtube link for students to watch and give them the prompt. You can publish a list of partners for the peer analysis if you think that will work for your students, or you can ask them to use the peer analysis tool to edit their own work. 

Mini-Maker Project + Writing Activity

Have you heard of the writing makerspace? Angela Stockman’s pioneering work with helping makers channel their creativity into the writing process is really worth exploring. (Check out this podcast interview  for a great introduction). Basically, you give your students a chance to create some element of what they’re going to write about before they begin writing. This can be really simple and short, like taking playdoh and constructing a character in a few minutes that you can write a story about. Or it can be more complex, like creating a digital collage of images that will inspire the theme in a short play. For this activity, we’re keeping it simple so you can complete it in one class period. But once you start, I think you’ll be hooked and excited to dive further into the potential of the writing makerspace. 

Detailed Steps

1. In advance of class, invite students to look around their house for any art or maker materials they might use for this class. Markers, paper, cardboard, legos, paint, colored pencils, anything. 
2. Meet as a class online. You’ll be presenting for a short bit, so have students mute their mics.  Share a little about the culture of makerspaces. This gallery from Makerspace for Education will give students a little idea of what makerspaces are like if they’re unfamiliar with the concept. Share how people often use makerspaces to prototype ideas – test them out, experiment with them, add depth, improve them. Let them know that today they’re going to try a writing makerspace project. 
3. Now invite students to create a setting using their maker materials. The setting can be anywhere, in any time period, including anything. They can use their maker materials if they found them, or pull screenshots from around the web and drop them into an empty Google slide to create a setting. Give them ten or fifteen minutes to create detailed settings.
4. If you have a small group of students, now would be a nice time to have them share their settings briefly on camera to the class. Ask each of them a question or two about the setting to help draw out their imagination of what their setting is like. You might ask: Does anyone live there? What’s the weather like? Who likes being there? Who hates being there? Is anything in this setting really valuable? If you have a large class and have created virtual breakout groups, this could be a good time for small groups to briefly present their settings to each other and ask a few questions. 
5. Next you can either come back to class on video with kids muted, or give kids some time to work on their own before coming back as a group. For the next part, students should set a piece of writing in their setting. Depending on what you want them to work on, this could be a short dialogue between characters in the setting, an introduction of a character who lives there, a first person narrative by a character who has just walked into the setting, even a poem. Let students write until the last five minutes of class.
6. For homework, have students finish their writing and post it, along with a picture of their setting, in a Google Slides collaborative presentation. Send them the link and ask each student to screenshot or photograph their writing to put next to an image of their setting. 
7. If you’d like to extend the activity, spend a few minutes at the start of the next class viewing the gallery, and ask each student to respond to the work of the student whose slide is just above theirs either by email or by adding a comment right on the slide. This can be a simple response, sharing two things they liked about the writing and one thing they’d like to know more about. 

Why It’s Awesome

The writing makerspace can really help students who struggle with writer’s block. Also, Angela Stockman has repeatedly found that kids who don’t feel as comfortable with writing tend to be makers. The writing makerspace can apply to any type of writing assignment. Kids can “make” writing by getting a big poster board out and putting tons of sticky notes with ideas on it to move around before writing an essay. They can create puppets and then write a play that is a dialogue between the puppets. They can build prototypes of arguments using loose parts. It’s amazing the potential of this strategy once you get going. 

Potential Barriers/Pitfalls

1. Managing all the moving parts online in the time allotted might be tricky in a big class. You could also easily create an agenda of the Must-Dos and have kids build their setting and write their piece during a long independent chunk in the middle, then come back together briefly toward the end of class to check in and share the link to the collaborative Google Slides gallery. 
2. Kids might not have any maker materials of any kind at home. That’s fine. They can easily design things virtually on their computer in a Powerpoint slide, Google Slide, or in an image design program. 

Tone Vocabulary Activity

This a great tone vocabulary lesson that can be used just about any time. I split my students into groups of 2 to 3 students per group and assign each group a set of tone words:

• Extremely Happy to Extremely Sad
• Extremely Angry to Unemotional
• Extremely Guilty to Extremely Innocent
• Extremely Mean to Extremely Nice
• Extremely Knowledgeable to Extremely Unknowledgeable

Yes, it looks like I’ve overused the words extremely but that’s the point. We have better vocabulary to describe these tones and the students are going to explore said vocabulary with this lesson. So, each group gets a bunch of words for their tone set and they need to arrange them on a severity chart and add a visual to show the tone word. This is all done in Google Slides. We combine all of the slides when everyone is finished and we have a sort of Google Slides tone words word wall to reference for the rest of the year. As an assessment I give them some text samples and ask them to identify the different tones in the passages using their new words. 

Detailed Steps

1. Separate students into groups of 2-3 students. If you have more than 15 students you can up the number of students in each group or you can repeat tone word sets you assign.
2. Give each group of students ONE copy of the assignment. This is on a shared Google Slides document so each group just needs one. I suggest you click each link below to make your own copy and then share with the students who are in the groups. This way you have access as well without relying on them to share it with you or their group members. 
   1. Angry to Unemotional: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tsBtmTCEtX0ctTQwcd362HEgx6zYd5qF73ExYM3XDmw/copy 
   2. Knowing to Not Knowing: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mcPgB1vNsqx6vcgSEOXfk8EJH9BsyIOWDILKxfJVvKk/copy 
   3. Guilty to Innocent: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NlXzeDpFeGARVhR_xNTXcy3qf5f_M9kKTUlGQGpDA_4/copy 
   4. Happy to Sad: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UeANPvVo_k-1x5g6bDeUtsdO7MAQCAufq6RADg7Nc10/copy 
   5. Mean to Nice: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JG93vLdZkgekG59bjncTAXX6vJBYU6g_2cg89Fo2iBc/copy 
3. Directions are included in the above links. Since many students do not read directions, you may want to explain the project in a group meeting through Zoom or Google Meets. I suggest giving students a few days to complete the project in order to allow them to get creative with it. 
4. If you have multiple groups doing the same word sets, have the students get together through a group meeting to share what they came up with and discuss any discrepancies. 
5. Combine all of the projects into one document you share with all the students. You can combine as a Google Sheets document or you can save each as a PDF and combine into one large PDF you post or share with your students.
6. Practice identifying different tones using short passages or the text you are currently reading. Here are some passages that I’ve successfully used with my students. The Google Slide is all set up and ready to be shared with your students. I tell my students to use vocabulary they are already familiar with and some of the vocabulary from their tone severity charts. 
7. Identifying Tone Assessment/Practice: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Ineo9c6Ak0rdeMLSMAahSJpU1Ubeex9ANswOX2TjCo8/copy 

Why it’s Awesome

There is a lot you can do with this project to make it fit into any timeframe you’d like. It’s also great for purposeful differentiation. What the heck does that mean? Happy to sad has a few more words than other categories, but the words also fit perfectly into those categories. I give this section to my emerging learners. Guilty to innocent gets trickier with a lot more wiggle room and debate about what goes where. I give this set to my ambitious learners who love and are ready for challenges. You can also challenge them to either add more words to the set or to relabel the set if they feel words don’t fit. You can ask students to add song titles or even embed songs to match tone words. They can change the background of the slide to fit the changing tones or they can add additional images and color code words based on severity. It’s fun and engaging vocabulary work that your students will enjoy. 

Potential Barriers/Pitfalls

1. Group work always comes with the potential for one person to do all of the work. I always ask my students for a quick comment on how the group work went. I have also done this project individually with students; even if one student is doing the work it shouldn’t be too overwhelming.
2. Inappropriate images. The directions include a quick comment about appropriate images, but you may want to reiterate with your kiddos before setting them loose with this assignment.
3. Deleting slides, words, images, etc. Remind students that if something is deleted they should not panic. They can hit the undo button and everything is forgiven. If not, reshare the link and they can start fresh.
4. Using Google Image search to find images. Some of my students do this and often they are incorrect. Remind your students at the beginning that half of the people posting images online are not doing so with accuracy in mind. Just because an image comes up in a search doesn’t make it correct. If you are truly concerned you have students only post images of themselves making faces or in situations that show the tone word. But only do this if the student is comfortable with it. 

More Resources

A giant “Thank you!” to Betsy from Spark Creativity for collaborating with me on this post. Want more from Spark Creativity? Check out Betsy’s podcast! As of this post, her latest is episode 92, “Distance Learning, a Creative End to the Year.” My favorite episode by Spark Creativity is episode 31, “3 Engaging Lessons (Murder Mysteries, Ted Talks, SNL Clips).” Yes, my favorite episode is the one I was a guest on. Betsy and I chatted a few years ago about these lesson ideas, but most still work in the virtual classroom.

If you’re more of a visual person Betsy has a fabulous Instagram account you should check out:

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