Students in key stage 4 and 5 returned to school a few weeks ago here in Malaysia. The impact of months of learning through computer screens, typing out responses, was immediately clear.

Our students appeared to have forgotten how to communicate verbally with each other leading to long, awkward silences during lessons.

As a result of this, one of our areas of focus in the classroom has been promoting activities that encourage students to feel confident in responding to questions, participating in class discussions, and enthusiastically throwing themselves back into group work again.

Although there are still a number of Covid-19-related restrictions, such as social distancing in classrooms and no sharing of equipment, we’ve found a number of strategies that work well:

1. Group discussion and debate

Allowing students to work with those they feel comfortable with, providing clear guidance on the expected outcomes and offering sentence stems to prompt discussion have all worked well at encouraging students to talk with each other again.

Short retrieval activities, such as having the students debate which is the odd one out, along with popular cooperative learning strategies such as think-pair-share or Kagan’s Numbered Heads Together allow students to work together to solve a problem or answer a question.

Another popular option is Just a Minute where, just like the radio show, students are challenged to speak for one minute on a provided topic without hesitation, deviation or repetition. The topic could be anything, from a key concept in your subject to a character from a novel or the rules to a sporting activity.

Students have to listen carefully to their teammates in order to try and challenge each other.

The competitive energy and excitement of trying to win the point means students soon forget their insecurities, particularly as they are only sharing ideas with a small group rather than the entire class.

2. Make things tactile

One of our school’s most utilised online resources for collaboration has been Jamboard, a Google tool that allows students to contribute simultaneously to a blank slide using Post-It-style stickers.

Now we’re back in the classroom, it’s time to bring back the real-life Post-It note.

Students can use these in small groups for activities such as collecting ideas, ranking items and planning  essays, all boosting their communication.

Post-Its can also be used get students up and out of their seats by having them respond to prompts placed around the room, ensuring all must be actively involved in the lesson and not passively hidden as they may have been during remote learning.

3. Drama and role-play

Although this strategy won’t be relevant to some subjects, many lend themselves well to drama-based activities.

Maintaining safe social distancing is an important consideration here, but don’t let it put you off if you have the space available to make this work.

Drama, freeze-frame and hot-seat activities are unlikely to have taken place during remote learning and many students will have missed getting actively involved in lessons.

After weeks of studying Othello remotely, my IB students were a little surprised when, upon their return to the classroom last week, I asked them to dramatically recreate some of the key scenes of the play to explore various global issues.

But within minutes they were enthused and excited by the task, discussing ideas and interpretations in much greater depth than before as they were able to actively engage with the text and each other.

4. Presentations

Grouping students up to plan and deliver presentations has been effective in getting our students to open up again in the classroom.

It is important to set clear guidance, such as strict time limits and a maximum slide number to keep students focused on the task at hand.

Presentations have also allowed us to create a bridge between the students physically in the classroom and those who remain learning remotely from home.

For those at home, I am able to present the group’s slides while they talk through their ideas via Google Meet, projected through the classroom speakers.

This allows those still isolating at home to feel like valued members of the class and to actively participate in classroom discussion and activities.

Caitlin Gray is a secondary English teacher and Extended Essay Coordinator at an international school in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia