My fourth period has somewhat facetious started referring to themselves as team robot and team human. Groups (and games!) are hard these days - when you're hybrid, you're bouncing between breakout rooms and live people, and when you're fully digital, you can't keep an eye on all your groups at once. This activity, born from a conversation with Shahrukh Jiwani, is a way we've found that helps with this.
I taught Shahrukh eleven years ago, and he's now in training to be a teacher himself. We talk frequently about teaching technique, and the seed of this activity was his. My ninth graders agreed to guinea pig, and here's what we came up with. Warning: it really only works if you're hybrid, though I'm sure it could be adapted.
Things You'll Need
a list of phrases the digital kids can see
pictures you can project to (or share with) the in person kids
the kids will need devices and, ideally, headphones
Zoom
Recipe
Have your in person kids get on Zoom along with the digital kids.
Put the kids in breakout rooms such that you have one live person and X number of digital people (it'll depend on your ratios, numbers, etc) in a room. I did this while we were in class, and it took about a minute and a half - it would have taken far longer to prep them in advance.
Make sure the digital kids have the document with the phrases open.
Project the pictures in your classroom. (alternately you could share the doc with the in person kids to have them screenshare in the breakout room) The in person kids use their devices to show the digital kids on their team the picture. The digital kids look at their list of phrases and try to find the one that best matches the picture. The in person kid cannot help with this; all they can do is relay information between their team and me.
The digital kids tell the in person kid what phrase it is. The in person kid then says a word (tax! bombax! habeo! bombus! ecce me! whatever). Everyone stops when that happens. The kid tells you the phrase (you may have rules about correct pronunciation or you may not), if they're right they get a point/smiley face/applause/street cred/whatever, and you move to the next picture.
I could see this being useful for all kinds of information gap activities, including O Captain My Captain, pictionary, story pictionary, 'mentiris,' et alia. I like this for a lot of reasons:
I'm less concerned about leaving kids in the breakout rooms for extended periods of time, because they're attached by device to the in person kids. That means you can see and hear them, and they can see and hear you. You can check for understanding, or have your in person kids check for understanding with them.
If you have a weaker in person kid, pair them with stronger digital kids. The in person kid then is empowered because they are the relay, they're getting a lot of repetition and input from looking at the pictures and hearing sentences that describe them, but the onus isn't on them to be the Finder of Information.
It encourages group work and play without the kids being close together. It's a safe way to bring some energy to the class and to encourage the kids to work together. No one had access to all the information, so they had to communicate effectively.
It was a solid vocab review, since we could repeat pictures and phrases as much as we wanted.
Things we discovered help it run more smoothly
The in person kids should ideally be wearing headphones.
The in person kids really do need to try to keep their voices low. If everyone is shouting, no one can hear anything.
You could share the powerpoint/pictures/whatever with the in person kids so they can screen share. Fifth period said that would have made it easier for the digital kids to see the images. If you know you're going to want to repeat the pictures, though, you'll have to build that into the document so that the kids don't end up on different pictures than each other.
It helps if the in person kid has a phrase or word they can say (teneo, habeo, intellego, whatever) to communicate to the digital kids that they've got it and are ready to share the information with me.