Something New I Tried in 2022

 

Y'all, I'm halfway through the Yule Blog Challenge!  My goal was to blog 12 times over Winter Break (a play off of the 12 days of Christmas) and this is Post #6!!  I know I say this a lot, but I really do miss blogging more regularly.  I can't tell you the number of times I think "gosh, I need to blog about this", but then life happens and when I sit down at my computer I can't remember what it was I wanted to blog about!  I know I'm a better teacher when I reflect on my practice, so it's definitely an ongoing goal for me to blog on a regular basis, but it just doesn't always happen...

Anyway, today I want to share about something new I tried this semester - Blooket!

I had heard about Blooket before (Blooket.com) but had never used it until October-ish of this year.  I already was familiar with Kahoot and Quizziz and I really didn't want something else to mess with, but after receiving multiple recommendations, I decided to try it.

Before I get much further, let me say that the first time I played it, I was AMAZED at the engagement from my students!  They were asking to play again and again!  Like I said, I've used Kahoot and Quizziz before, but the student reaction is what sold me on using Blooket.

A Blooket teacher account is free which allows you to have unlimited games, assign HW, create your own question sets, use the question bank, etc.  I did end up purchasing the yearly subscription (~$35) in order to allow me to organize with folder, copy / duplicate / edit existing sets, have enhanced reports, and to give me a few more game options, but the subscription is completely not necessary to have a great Blooket experience!

When you log-in, you can create or discover sets, favorite them, etc.  Once you are ready to go, you click the Host button to choose your game mode.

Some of the games can be assigned as HW where you can put a link on Google Classroom (or other LMS) for students to play individually.  There are also special game modes for holidays, like Santa's Workshop, which is a seasonal themed version of Gold Quest.  I have not played all of the types, but my students really like Gold Quest because they can steal other people's money, so the fastest team isn't necessarily the team that wins.  They also like Fishing Frenzy and Battle Royale.  Many of the games also have various ways to slow down (or sabotage) your opponent.  For example, on Santa's Workshop, there's a sabotage that trees your screen so you have to click every tree to clear the screen before moving on to your question.

My classroom is set up in tables of 4, so I tend to play with teams and one Chromebook per group.  Once you choose a game mode, you can set the game to end at a specific time or when a specific goal is reached.  I have found a 10-12 minute game to be very engaging and a great way to practice quite a few problems in random order but not take up my entire class period!

While I don't use the results as much as I could (or should), the reports feature is pretty nice too.  You can see an overall report for the whole class with the number of questions correct vs incorrect.  I set the timer for this game at 12 minutes and every group worked 30 - 50 problems in that time frame!  I can see the group by group breakdown with how many they solved correctly / incorrectly.   Notice that there was a group that didn't miss any problems, but they still weren't the overall winners.  

You can also click on a specific group to see which questions they missed.  Since they only had 12 minutes and there were 65 questions, not every group saw every problem and that's okay.  I had also set this as a HW link so they could go through it on their own if they wanted.  Further down the reports page is the question by question breakdown where I can see how which problems were the most commonly missed.

Overall, I've really enjoyed having Blooket in my bag of tricks and it's been a great addition to my classroom!  If you've played, what are your favorite games?  If you haven't played, I encourage you to try it out!