Kahoot

My school district has started an initiative for 1:1 chromebooks. The initiative has just begun but in the end all 5th-8th graders will have a chromebook. This year everyone 5th grader in our school has one. So we teachers are faced with the challenge of finding ways to teach to the same standards using technology. I have always been a bit of a technology 'nerd' so I wanted to start sharing out many of the various things I am doing in my classroom.

To begin with I am going to talk about Kahoot. Kahoot is a game that can be set up by teachers for the entire class to play at once. You can create any kind of multiple choice questions you want. To begin go to getkahoot.com  signing up is free. From there you can create a quiz. The quizzes need one place to project a main screen and individual devises for students. When you run a quiz from the teacher devise it shoots out a four to five digit pin number that students use to get into the quiz. Students enter the code at kahoot.it and put in there name. (No error there, make sure students don't enter .com)

The projected (teacher screen) shows the screen above with a question and the multiple choices. You also have the option to add images or videos. 

Meanwhile students all have a screen that looks like this. This one i ran form my phone but we can do it from a computer, phone, ipad, etc.

Students have to look at the screen and then use their device to answer. I was worried about this part at first in 5th grade. Some students have a hard time following multiple step directions still and I was worried that having to look at the answer in one place and selecting the answer in another would be challenging. I have been using this for two years and have not had a problem with students using it. 

The part that makes it fun is you get points for getting the answer right and more points for answering quickly. Then after each question it tells them what place they are in within the classroom. While other teachers use this as formative assessment, I find it is just a fun review game. Students can get rapped up in the speed part and make mistakes that shouldn't count against them. When the quiz is over Kahoot collect information about who answered what questions correctly, but keep in mind errors due to speed. 

So here are some ways that I have used it so far. 

1. Classroom Community- The quizzes are easy enough students can create them so I set up one quiz in the back of the room and had students one by one add a single questions about themselves. Then we played as a class to see who we knew well and also learn something new about others. 
2. Social Studies/Science- The day before a test or quiz I have used this to help students practice the content they know well. Many times I have used questions right from my test or quiz. When I do this I have students jot down on a post-it any questions they missed. 
3. Vocabulary- Pretty self explanatory. See how well students know the words. I have also used it for vocabulary within subjects. 
4. Math- Mental Math and terms. Since Kahoot is all about speed I have used it to practice mental math so students have to use mental math strategies. The quiz from above I did this week to practice math properties. If you are in a lower grade this can be used for basic math facts. 

Feel free to post ideas you have for using kahoot below or ways you have used it in your classroom.