Quizlet will make your students come to "Live!"

It's officially Spring break and we are almost into State testing preparation mode! A new tool I explored this past week is Quizlet and we plan to use it a lot with test preparation! I originally thought quizlet was just a form of online flashcards but there are so many different games you can play with the same set of terms and definitions; it goes way beyond flashcards!

What I love about quizlet is that it's engaging and competitive which the kids love! What I don't like is that, the kids end up memorizing terms and/or definitions and I worry about how much they actually retain. As long as the classroom management piece is in tact and teachers explain their expectations, this is a great tool for quick fun review! The images I'm going to show below are from a set about simplifying expressions.

With the same set of cards, you can study them and just use them as flashcards but you can also test yourself, play a matching game, play a game where you "keep asteroids away from planets" and then there is quizlet live! Where you work in teams to get the correct answers. 

This is a matching game where you have to match the question or the term to the answer. The answers disappear as you get them right.

Students use the code to log-in and quizlet randomly assigns groups of four. The groups have to work together and if they get one wrong, they have to start the whole game over. The goal is to finish all the questions before the other teams. 

With four students playing, the game separates the kids into pairs and they have to move to sit together. The code is always posted in case students get kicked out.

On the board, I post this screen so teams can see who is in the lead. 

The two partners have all possible answers split between them so you have to work together to get the right answer. 

The questions are the same (among the same team) but only one member of the group has the answer shown. If a group member chooses a wrong answer, the whole group has to start back at zero.

This is the home screen. You can organize your quizlet account into units and classes. You can search pre-made sets or create your own. 

Is it even better than Kahoot?

Hello and welcome back to my blog! I haven't checked up on the site in a while but there's a new tool I'd like to post about - It's called Quizizz. In my classroom I always want to try and engage my students and make learning fun. I'm sure most teachers have this same goal but there's always the battle between is it fun enough but also engaging enough? Is learning really taking place or are the kids just messing around?

I've explored and used Kahoot in the past and while I do love it (and so do the kids) I don't like how focused the game is on racing. So often my students rush through the questions and just hope they guess correctly. Quizizz allows students to work at their own pace and they do NOT get extra points for answering quickly (although you can add that setting if you'd like to). A running total is kept up on the board and funny memes pop up for the kids in between every question! See images below.

I would DEFINITELY recommend this tool as a quick review and I usually use it in my intervention class which is a small group of 6-12 students. I did try using it as a full class and it was definitely effective but extreme classroom management was needed - might try doing it in teams next time.

You can search pre-made quizizz by topic or create one on your own.




You can then organize your quizizz into groups or "collections" and keep your classes organized. This is especially helpful when teaching different subject areas and grade levels.





Keep the leaderboard up so students can see who is in the top five and how the class is doing as a whole in terms of accuracy. The students are finished when they reach the end of the bar BUT speed doesn't help. If they get all the questions wrong and their bar is all red, they WON'T win.




At the end, look at the statistics for each question per kid. This definitely helped guide my focus when it comes to review questions. I only focused on the questions that most if not all students missed.