Activities to do during online meetings

Engaging in online meetings with your class

I’ve written a post recently about how online teaching makes me feel. Find it here: How online teaching makes me feel. Teaching from home is not at all easy, but it is something we are slowly but surely going to have to get used to.

Having engaged with my students this week on Google Hangouts it made me so happy to hear their little voices and see their smiley faces. It also made me eager to create a bank of activities to do with them during our online meetings.

Yes- there are pros and cons to engaging with live video sessions with your class. It won’t work for some schools/students. However in my class, we found that:

Meeting face-to-face (virtually) gave the children a boost and allowed them to connect with their teacher and friends.
With a structure in place, the meetings run smoothly and children get a sense of school community.
Seeing their teachers and friends gave them an “out” in all of this uncertainty due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Not all teachers agree with online meetings with their class and that’s fine. But for those of you who want to engage in online meetings, here are some activities and tips for you to sink your teeth into.

First of all, I found it very helpful to send this template to them all prior to the meeting. This way the children knew what to do, but also that they would have an activity to do as a class on our online meeting.

Activities to do during your online meetings:

‘Guess the…’ game. This activity went down a TREAT with my students last week. The rules are pictured below.

Here is an example of what I called out. Find an editable template of this here.

Bingo. Depending on the children’s age, you could ask them to draw a rough bingo template on a piece of paper and insert numbers 1-20 or 1-50, depending on how long you wish to play the game for. This could also be done with sight or rhyming words too. Use code REBECCA to get 10% off your subscription. #AF

Pictionary challenge. This is a fantastic challenge to do with your class during online meetings. The image below could be shared during the meeting and children could guess as many book titles as they can.

Message me here if you’f like a copy of this Pictionary Challenge.

Directed drawing. This can be a nice activity to do as a whole class. Examples of this can be found on Art Hub on YouTube. The children could send pictures of their drawings to you after the meeting and a digital art folder could be created for them to look through each other’s drawings.

Music lesson. Using Dabbledoo Music as a guide, engage in a sing-along as a whole class. Children could even bring along an instrument of their choice (spoon, drum etc) to play along. Find more ways to use this site here.

Visual Literacy Challenge. Children must find an object in their house to spell out their name. Like the example below. They can then show their activity over the online meeting.

Digital Literacy Challenge. Clara from Little Miss Teacher Blog creates these digital literacy challenges and my children absolutely adore them. See some examples below. This activity would be lovely as a whole class during an online meeting. Then children could take it in turns to describe what they have created. Find more of these challenges here.

Share a story. Using VOOKS or another online book website, you could engage with a story during your online meetings. Afterwards the class could engage in a discussion about the book and together create a whole class book review.

I-Spy. This is such a fun activity for children to do during online meetings as they have to image what would be in the other children’s house. Lots of fun. This could also be extended to an online scavenger hunt. For example: go and find a spoon, something yellow, a teddy bear etc. Find this game here and use code REBECCA for 10% off.

I’ll continue to add to this list of activities as time goes on. If you have any activities that you do during online meetings please share them in the comments below.

Stay safe!