Reinforcing learning and making math more exciting

I teach math to 7th graders and have been using Kahoot! for review and test prep for a few years now. I like hitting different topics or points within that subject one more time before taking a test. Kids like it, and that’s a huge bonus – let’s face it, math isn’t everyone’s favorite subject. Kahoot! rewards kids for doing a good job with their skills and makes math more exciting.

We’ve also been using it a lot during the “extension period” at our school. It’s kind of a more structured study hall focused on enrichment activities. Students play kahoots on their Chromebooks. These extracurricular activities aren’t graded but they work great as a way to reinforce learning.

Content review as top priority while school is closed

Our school shut down on March 13. For now, we are tasked to come up with enrichment activities for kids at home. We aren’t presenting any new material and are fully focused on reviewing topics already covered in class. We give about 30 minutes of work per subject per day for students to work on. Encouraging participation and effort is our main goal at this point.

Once a week, I meet with the kids on Google Classroom chat for a Q&A session. I also host a weekly video meeting on Zoom where we go through some math problems.

A few weeks before our school closed, I discovered student-paced challenges, and I’ve been assigning them to students to complete at home. I like that I can adapt existing kahoots, just edit a few questions, and set them up as challenges – perfect for content review, which, as I mentioned, is our main priority now.

Sharing student-paced challenges with several classes

We do two challenges throughout the week. I share links via Google Classroom, as well as on my social media profiles. I check to make sure everyone participates and ask students to use their first and last name when joining.

Now all 7th graders are playing the challenges – there are about 220 kids from different classes, not only mine. I’m so thankful that you opened up Premium subscriptions so I can have hundreds of students participating.

I like that the kids can do it at their own time and at their own pace. I’m encouraging kids that it’s fine if something happens during the challenge or they make a mistake – only I will see their progress and if they haven’t finished. I allow them to start over, if needed, – then they just add “1” next to their name. I share the leaderboard by email or via social media once the challenge is completed.

My students love Kahoot!, so switching to this way of playing has been easy. They’ve been doing a great job reviewing content at home.