Fun and Collaboration with Kahoot!

So, my students have been begging to do Kahoot again so I made one for a test review today.  You can see it/play it here for Math Analysis (derivatives) and here for Algebra 1 (factoring).

I decided to structure it a little bit differently than last time, with a purpose.

The first week I had made the Kahoots to practice soon after learning the material and more as a formative assessment tool.  Thus, the students competed in the Kahoot individually so I could see where they were individually and who needed help where.

Their test for this unit is tomorrow, so today was the final review day.  So, I decided to structure it in teams of 2-3 students so they could collaborate and work together to get the answers.  At this point, any final questions or confusions they have I wanted them to be able to ask about immediately and they could do so with their group members or with me.

It worked really well and the kids had a great time, all while learning and reviewing for their last test of the year.

A few other things I did differently than my first time (see post here)

1. Students changed the settings on their phones so the screens don't shut off after 30 seconds or a minute.  This helped with students being logged out of the game for that question.

2. Because the questions in Math Analysis usually take more than 120 seconds (the max time limit) to solve, I gave my students the list of questions WITHOUT multiple choice answers at the beginning of the period.  They had 10 minutes before the game began to start working on them collaboratively and then we began the timed answer submission part of the game.  So, for the first few questions, the students had the answers right away, but then it started to even out a little bit.  There were a few moments of frustration when a student thought they were all ready to go and then the actual multiple choice answers pop up and theirs didn't match.  It was good though because they had to go back and find their mistake.

3. I went over the questions in a few different ways.  If it was 90% correct, I asked the students to hold up their phones and noticed the groups that held up the "orange/red" incorrect screen (this was much easier to do with 12-15 groups rather than 35-40 students) and then checked in with them right after we started the next question.  If it was about 50/50, I had the students who had a "green" screen go find someone who had a "orange/red" screen and help them.  If more than half missed it, or there was a clear disparity between two potential answer choices, we talked about it as a class.  I thought that was very valuable and "Just in time" instruction.


One thing I've really like about Kahoot so far (in my 2 weeks of experience) is that it motivates and engages the students to be involved in the class.  It's amazing the difference in focus and productivity (even though in general my students are very productive in class because I stay on them).  I could give them 10 problems to practice in their packet, or I could put those same 10 problems on a Kahoot! and it would be a much more dynamic, interactive, engaging, and fun learning environment for students.

All in all, today was a Kahoot-ing fun day!