Zoom Teaching Tools

To ensure all students can participate equitably in a learning experience, teachers can strategically leverage Zoom’s hand raising feature. When students rapidly raise their virtual hands simultaneously, all students are able to opt in with the choice to do it quickly or slowly. The student-produced participation list can then be used to choose students to share, engage, and/or answer questions in the moment or throughout a lesson.

Utilize non-verbal feedback (e.g., emojis) to visually show when students are ready, need more time, have questions, etc. The teacher can also set different reaction emojis as a different response that they can communicate visually throughout the lesson. This strategy allows students to quickly communicate in a safe and fun way.

Educators can use polling to get a quick read of student comprehension in order to build strategic groups, provide focused support when needed, and also obtain a snapshot of the need of the “virtual room.” Polling can be used for content mastery as well as understanding students’ social-emotional needs. Polls can be formal or informal to really understand each student’s needs and levels of mastery.

Enable students to break out into different virtual small groups where they get personalized learning experiences around specific content, support, and needs. These can be based on student choice or pre-designated by the educator

Offer students the ability to share answers simultaneously, as a full group in a fun and engaging way. This strategy enables students to learn from each other and analyze common threads during a virtual gallery walk, while also allowing the educator to get a quick read of the room and identify misconceptions on the individual and class level.

Allow remote and in-person students to showcase their mastery in a multimodal and personalized way during hybrid learning. Adding the live transcription ensures peers who are observing are able to focus, understand the presentation, and also engage without interrupting when they miss a part or don’t clearly hear the presenting student. The transcription can also be recorded to reference later and further support content mastery and peer learning.

Create a virtual seating chart that is shared with the whole class to implement quick Think-Pair-Share activities. By having a universal virtual seating chart, teachers are able to call on students equitably and also pair off students with ease. By having students go in the order they are on the screen (e.g., “chat the person to your left to share your answer”) teachers are able to have students pair off without having to have lots of breakout groups, which saves time and also allows for multiple pairings.

This strategy allows students to do a remote presentation together and also lets other students focus on the students presenting without being distracted by other students in the class.

In small groups, students take turns working through a list of questions (differentiated by the teacher) which provides extra hands-on practice answering questions as well as practice supporting their answers. With peer support, students are able to clarify misconceptions and build skills and mastery in a less stressful, differentiated environment.