I am going to be starting virtual sessions for the first time next week and I read a great tip on Erika Romero’s Ever Educating blog.  She suggests having an activity for the students to do if you have technical difficulties.  So while you are troubleshooting or trying to find solutions, the students can be working on something.

So I took a free activity in my TeachersPayTeachers store and modified it in Google Slides.  The activity is Mute the Mic and here is the original blog post about it.  It simply asks the student to list occasions when the teacher has forgotten to mute the DM/FM mic and the student needs to give a reminder.  Examples are when the teacher receives a phone call or when she or he is speaking to another adult.  Here is the link to make a copy of the slide:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1376rUYc-bZh2gCF9bVoDyFwQZe1TxhWQetkd5ewr2Ck/copy#slide=id.p

If you are meeting in person, you can add this activity to the student’s interactive notebook.  If you would like suggested answers, download the activity in TeachersPayTeachers.

Of course, I wish that all sessions go smoothly for everyone!