Snowball
Before You Start:
Before reviewing the Optimization and Redesign sections for ideas about making changes to your activity, review the Activity Meta-objectives section and make sure the meta objectives of the activity you have chosen (in this case, Snowball) are well aligned with the learning outcome of your lesson, and that the activity was, in the first place, the best choice for supporting your students in accomplishing your lesson outcome(s).
Activity Description
Snowball is an experiential learning activity that gradually builds student knowledge through reflecting and sharing concepts and ideas in group sizes that continue to increase throughout the activity. First students begin individually and reflect on a given prompt or a question, then they join into pairs to discuss their reflections, and then double the size of the group every few minutes either to discuss the same prompt/question or a new prompt/question provided by the instructor. The students continue creating progressively larger conversational groups until the entire class is discussing as a large group together.
Activity Meta-Objectives
What is the activity good at accomplishing and how does it accomplish that?
Below is a list of some of the things you can accomplish with your students using this active learning technique. Before making changes to the technique, check (and add to) all that the Snowball activity is contributing to your students’ learning experience and make sure you maintain those through the changes that you are making.
- Encourage learners to refine prior learning and construct new learning through discussions gradually as they increase their group size for discussion.
- Uses previous steps in the snowball to lay the groundwork for and scaffold the following discussion step for each of the students. Each student is able to benefit from their peers’ perspective before entering the next discussion.
- Promote verbal communication of ideas and perspectives, in groups.
- Promote critical thinking, analysis, and evaluative skills through arguments and counter arguments.
- Promote a higher level of involvement and participation by creating space for individual reflection which prepares students for teamwork (rather than abruptly putting them in pairs or groups and expecting them to engage in discussion).
- Help students learn new concepts, correct misconceptions, and draw conclusions during group and whole class discussions.
- Support logical thinking and deeper comprehension of a topic through teamwork and sharing of reflections. (i.e.: when students collaborate to find similarities and differences in their own prior experiences, knowledge or discoveries or come to a shared understanding based on prior knowledge, experience, etc.)
- Others?
Optimizing for Accessibility
Present the Topic:
- Ensure that the question you are providing is clear, properly scaffolded and aligned with your learning outcomes, and that students have any necessary prerequisite information they need to engage with the topic.
- Provide clear verbal and written instructions for the snowball activity.
- Inform the students how long they will have for each part of the activity.
- Ask the students if there are any questions or misunderstandings after providing instructions for each section.
Solo Brainstorming:
- Allow the students to review the background information provided and jot down the key facts or ideas or answers to the provided questions. Or provide a question that students can reflect on and respond to on their own.
- If possible, provide a worksheet that includes the questions the students are responding to, so students can take notes.
- Let students know how much time they have for this part of the activity and provide time cues.
- Remind students that they must do this part of the activity individually and silently.
Pair Discussion:
- Instruct students to pair up and clearly indicate (both orally and if possible also in written format) who they should pair up with (i.e: with the person sitting next to you)
- Make sure you have a plan for when you have an odd number of students and if you put students in groups of 3 clearly explain how they will do the activity in a larger group (compared to the students working in pairs)
- Get the students to share their responses to the Solo Brainstorming with each other and use those to respond to a second prompt/question.
- Ensure that this discussion draws on or makes use of the reflection in the Solo Brainstorming step. In this way, each discussion is scaffolded by the one before it.
- Indicate how much time the students will have to complete this task and provide time cues.
- Remind students that they all need to take notes of their discussion and be prepared to share.
Small Group Discussions:
- Once the pair has discussed and consolidated their thoughts, ask them to join another pair and share their thoughts again. You can also provide yet a new prompt or question for them to discuss for this part of the activity (this time they will have a discussion in groups of 4).
- Give clear written and verbal instructions about how they should form groups of 4.
- Indicate how long they will have for this group activity.
- Give clear written and oral instructions about what students need to discuss and what they need to keep notes of so they can share in the next step of the activity.
- Remind students that they should all be taking notes of the discussion as well as any questions they may have about the discussion.
- Float around to the groups to observe and facilitate discussion if necessary.
- If you have TAs moderating or monitoring discussions make sure they are clear about their role and responsibilities and that they have received the training to be able to keep the discussions on task.
- Provide a time warning for students.
Group Discussion #2: (Optional)
(Note: You can have the students continue making larger groups step by step until the class returns to the full class in a whole class discussion, or if you are running low on time or in a large class, you can skip some of the steps and have students return to the whole group after discussing in one round of group discussion.)
- Get the group of students from the previous group to join yet another group, leading to the formation of a group with twice as many students. (this time they will have a discussion in groups of 8 or more students).
- Give clear written and verbal instructions about how they should form groups of 4.
- Provide a new prompt or question for the group discussion.
- Give clear written and oral instructions about what students need to discuss and what they need to keep notes of so they can share in the next step of the activity.
- Indicate how long they will have for this group activity and provide time cues and warnings for each new group formation.
Whole Class Discussion:
- Bring all students back together.
- Provide clear verbal and written instructions for what the students will be sharing with the whole class.
- Ask follow up questions to encourage students to justify their ideas and reasoning.
- Invite other students to engage with or add to their peers’ ideas.
- While facilitating this discussion, develop ideas, correct misunderstanding, and provide necessary information.
- Validate responses by recording them in writing or paraphrasing them. (Note: You can record student responses directly on PPT for better visibility)
- For large classes, students can share back by posting responses on an online platform (during or after the class).
Redesign Process Guide
Step 1: Identify essential components
Identify the components/aspects of the Snowball activity that are essential for learners to meet the learning outcomes of the lesson.
- How does Snowball help learners meet the learning outcomes of the lesson?
Step 2: Identify obstacles
- Which parts of these essential components/aspects are an obstacle for this learner?
Step 3: redesign to remove obstacles
- How can we redesign these essential components to remove the obstacle for the learner but still equally support them to meet the LO of the lesson?
An example of applying this process
Using activity meta objectives to redesign for temporary accommodation:
Below is an example of a redesigned Snowball activity while maintaining the activity’s meta objectives. I encourage you to engage in the same process to redesign this activity for other accommodation needs.
This redesign allows students with certain mental health concerns, such as anxieties or others, the opportunity to participate by removing the requirement for each student to speak up on the fly in the groups and whole class discussion, as well as the requirement to take notes while discussing. This redesign is also helpful for students with ADHD.
Process:
Step 1: Identify essential components
- Which parts of the Think Pair Share activity are essential for learners to meet the learning outcome(s) (LOs) of the lesson?
Response: In this example all meta-objectives of Snowball, listed above, except “promoting verbal communication of ideas and perspectives, in groups”, are essential for student learning.
Step 2: Identify obstacles
- Which parts or aspects of the essential components are an obstacle for this student?
Response: All aspects of the Snowball activity that involve a lot of components where distractability is possible, requires students to speak up in large groups, and be responsible for time management are an obstacle to learning for this learner. Since verbal communication of ideas and perspectives in groups is not essential for learners to accomplish the learning outcome(s) of the lesson, we can redesign the snowball activity to eliminate the requirement for “verbal” communication in groups.
Step 3: redesign to remove obstacles
Take necessary steps to redesign these essential components to remove the obstacle for the learner but still support them in meeting the LO of the lesson:
The aim of this redesign should be to eliminate complex requirements and the need to speak in the large group when it isn’t essential to student learning and modify to provide alternative ways of meeting the learning outcome.
Here is how to do Snowball to accommodate students with mental health concerns:
Present the Topic:
- Pre-class: Provide the question or topic of the snowball activity ahead of time if possible. This allows for more processing time and gathering of one’s thoughts before sharing.
- Offer instructions clearly as before. However, inform the students that in each new group formation, they should have group roles, either assigned, or the students themselves can elect a discussion leader, note taker, and timekeeper. The leader will help the group stay on task and present their findings to the next group formation and then the whole class discussion. The note taker will record the points and thoughts of the group and these notes will be shared with other students. The note taker isn’t required to speak up during the discussion activity.
Solo Brainstorming:
- Same as before.
Pair Discussion:
- Same as before.
Small Group Discussions:
Note: Follow the instructions in the Optimizing for Accessibility section and make the revisions below for this part of the activity.
- Now instruct each group to select a leader and note taker. (You could also assign them yourself if you teach a small class and know your students well).
- Students who feel more comfortable participating as a note taker rather than verbally discussing can volunteer as note takers.
- Give students a set amount of time (i.e: 2-3 min) to self assign to roles.
- Let leaders know that they will need to share ideas verbally with the whole class
- Let note takers know that other students will see and read their notes.
- You may want to give the note taker a handout that records the prompts and other important information. This can also facilitate the final “reporting back” after the large group discussion.
- Remind note takers to write legibly so other students can read their notes or have them take notes on their computer.
- Instruct the group leader to watch time, facilitate discussion, encourage and invite contributions, and make sure the discussion stays on task. The notetaker should record the group answer. (This allows students to focus on their discussion instead of being responsible to take notes as well.)
- Instruct the group and give them a set amount of time to review the notes from their discussion and add to anything missing
Group Discussions #2 (Optional):
For this part follow the instructions in the Optimizing for Accessibility section but keep your students in the same group as before. Constantly changing groups can cause unnecessary anxiety and distraction for those experiencing mental health.
- Instead of continuously doubling the size of the group for this part of the activity, have groups exchange their notes.
- If notes are in hard copy, groups can swap their notes. If notes are being posted online, have a clear plan for how groups are swapping notes.
- Groups will read notes from the other group together and discuss similarities and differences of ideas or discuss a new prompt given by the instructor.
- Note taker will add additional notes based on the group discussion.
- Remind the groups that the leaders will be sharing with the whole class, and the note takers will be sharing their notes with the whole class.
Whole Class Discussion:
- Offer clear instructions about what the discussion leaders will be sharing and how much time they have to share with the whole class.
- You can also choose to have discussion leaders to write on the board/on an online platform instead of verbally sharing.
- You can validate and rephrase the points and record them onto PPT or shared google slides.
- Invite other students to engage with the ideas by asking questions or offering comments.
Post-Class:
- Ask the note takers to add the notes to the slides or an online discussion board. This way all students have access to the notes from the different groups and the whole class discussion.
- Also, allow students an opportunity to add more points if they wish (after having more time to think about the topic).
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Now It’s Your Turn
Choose and click on one of the Learner Scenarios below, go through the process of redesigning the Think, Pair, Share activity in order to accommodate the learner. The aim is to fully engage and support this learner to meet the LO(s) of your lesson while not removing any support from your other learners.
Post your response in the comment box.
Scenario 1
You have a learner in your workshop/class who is visually impaired.
How would you redesign your activity to accommodate them?
Scenario 2
You have a learner in your workshop/class who is deaf.
How would you redesign your activity to accommodate them?
Scenario 3
You have a learner in your workshop/class with severe social anxiety.
How would you redesign your activity to accommodate them?
Scenario 4
You have a learner in your workshop/classroom who is in a wheel chair.
How would you redesign your activity to accommodate them?
Scenario 5
You have a learner in your workshop/class with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
How would you redesign your activity to accommodate them?
Scenario 6
You have a learner in your workshop/class with auditory processing disorder.
How would you redesign your activity to accommodate them?