This week’s guest blog post was written by Mary Fran Lynch. Mary Fran is a Teacher on Special Assignment in the Union School District in San Jose, California.  She taught third grade for ten years encouraging her students to use technology. Mary Fran now spends her time teaching students and coaching teachers, spreading her enthusiasm throughout the entire district.

Formative assessment can take many forms. One of the tools I use is Kahoot! a free game-based response system that can be accessed from the web. Whether you have a full set of Chromebooks, or students have brought their own devices, as long as you can access the internet, students can “play” Kahoot! I have also seen Kahoot used with just a few devices and shared in groups, with students taking turns responding.

Kahoot! awards points based on the correct answer and the speed with which the answer was entered. The leading scorers are shown at the end of each question, and the player gets personalized feedback informing them of their standing.

In some classes, students may not want their scores to be public. That is why I allow students to make up a username when they sign into Kahoot!. This way, individual students are able to remain anonymous while playing but still get their personal feedback.

Here’s one I made just for fun. You should be able to take it for a test drive in single player mode. You will, however, need to sign on, open up two screens, one that will show you teacher /presenter mode, and the other for student/participant mode.

Kahoot! is free. It is simple to create a quiz, and you can add pictures and video to the questions. Students quickly sign in using a “game pin,” no sign ups or accounts needed. The data you receive can help you tailor your lessons to target those areas your students need more instruction in.

And you don’t even need to create every Kahoot! yourself. There are nearly 600,000 Kahoots! that teachers and users have shared. Just find one, play it, and then add it to your list of favorites so you can find it easily next time.

Be warned, this is not a quiet class activity. The excitement Kahoot! generates will convince you the students are engaged and having fun, while reinforcing content.

Watch this video tutorial to learn about how to set up Kahoot! to use in your class.

Now getKahooting!

Author: Brooke Ahrens

Brooke Carey Ahrens is a Google Certified Teacher and Instructional Technology Coordinator at a bay area high school. Brooke is currently serving as a rep Northern California Region rep for the California School Library Association.

Categories: Blog Topics, Technology