Taking Big Paper Online

The Big Paper Teaching Strategy uses text analysis and silence to help students explore a topic in depth. This strategy can be used to facilitate discussions that slow down students' thinking and provide them with an opportunity to engage with the views of others.

Big Paper is a popular strategy in classrooms. When taking Big Paper online, you facilitate discussions asynchronously within a defined time period. For example, one to two days. It is also possible to complete some discussion steps in real-time synchronously with students.

Planning and facilitating student discussion when not physically present together can be challenging. So it's important to consider these questions before doing Big Paper online with your students. What collaborative digital tools do I want to use to facilitate Big Paper online? What is the defined time period I want to set for completing the activity? How am I going to deliver instructions to students for completing the activity? And how often am I going to monitor the discussion?

After identifying a collaborative digital tool, begin by creating a digital Big Paper for each group of students. Padlet, Google Docs, Flipgrid, and VoiceThread are examples of collaborative digital tools you can use for this activity. Big Paper discussions are best done when students work in small groups of 4 to 6.

Each group can either be given the same stimulus or a different stimulus related to the same theme. Images, audio clips, and videos make great stimuli in an online environment. After introducing the activity to your students, students begin responding to their group stimulus. Students can respond to the stimulus using either a written or audio-visual format.

Taking Big Paper online provides an opportunity for students to use audio, video, and text tools to exchange ideas, extend their thinking, and engage with each other. Students then continue their silent conversation by looking at and responding to other groups stimuli and responses before returning to their own to look at any new comments left by others.

After reviewing all comments, conclude the silent discussion and ask students to identify a question or comment that stands out to them. To bring closure to the activity, engage students in a whole class debrief. Use student ideas on the digital big papers to draw out students thoughts and delve deeper into the content.

Taking Big Paper online creates an opportunity to engage students who may not be as likely to participate in verbal discussion. It also creates a visual record of students' thoughts and questions that you and your students can easily refer back to at any point in time.

Let us know how you were using the Big Paper teaching strategy with your students. Share your ideas and ask questions in Facing History's Digital Lounge.

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