Recently a number of trainers and coaches gathered to share the ways that they’ve been facilitating special-growth activities for growing participators during quarantines, restricted travel and lockdowns. For those who can’t meet with nurturers face-to-face, most are using Zoom, Google Meet, Skype or similar platforms for their meetings. Here are some tips and best practices that emerged.
Phase 1 – Connecting presents the biggest challenges. Some ideas are below.
Phase 2 – Story Building can be done very successfully by simply using screen sharing to share images from the word-less picture books or any other images used in this phase.
Phase 3, 4 and 5 don’t require many changes at all.
Regardless of the level, moving growing participation online requires even more from our nurturers, even the most talented and experiened. They need to be somewhat technologically proficient or they need help and coaching to be able to do sessions virtually.
It’s difficult to participate as extensively when that participation is virtual. Most are not able to do 4-5 hours per day of special growth activities with their nurturer. 2-3 hours seems to be as much as most can handle.
Mixed groups, where some participants are virtual and some are physically present with the nurturer, are very challenging and not recommended.
Audio recordings shouldn’t be made through platforms such as Zoom or Google Meet. Audio quality is often too poor. Instead, nurturers should make recordings on their phone and then share them with the growing participators via WhatsApp or Dropbox.
Face coverings make understanding much more difficult. Try to set up your participation in such a way that anyone who speaks is doing it without a face covering or mask.
Tips for Phase 1 activities
The ideal is for each growing participator and the nurturer to have a set of objects and drawings. This allows everyone to have stronger encounters with new words and to visualize locations and actions.
Larger objects (3 in/7.5 cm or larger) are easier to see and reduce confusion for everyone. We want you to focus on participation, not wondering, “Is that a horse or a goat?”
Some nurturers and coaches have set up two cameras. One is focused on the nurturers face and the other shows the table of objects.
If physical objects and drawings are not possible, create shared documents or slides for each activity using clip art. (Yes, this is a bit time intensive!) For Dirty Dozen activities, create a slide where only two images appear initially and then other images are added one by one. To demonstrate their understanding, growing participators can use the annotate feature on a shared screen in Zoom or click to select the objects on a Google Slide that the entire group is editing in real time. This can be done either by creating a show where where the first slide has just two images and each next slide adds one additional image or by creating an animation in Google Slides so that images will fade in one by one as you click the slide. Click here and then click Present for an example of how this works. Here are directions for using animations in Google Slides.
For activities which require growing participators to move objects, they can demonstrate their understanding by following the nurturer’s commands and moving images on a slide that the entire group is editing in real time – placing the cup next to the apple, or selecting or highlighting the picture of the man who’s running. Google Slides is one way to do this. Slides should be created ahead of the sessions and include all the images needed for the activity. For example, a large image of a house with images of different pieces of furniture or different people doing different actions which can be placed according to the nurturer’s commands.
For pronoun activities (e.g. “You and I are running), add individual pictures of group members’ faces to the slide. Growing participators respond to the nurturer’s statements by combining the appropriate faces with clip art people (bodies) doing the suggested activity.