Can classroom assessment be transformed from a standard formality to an engaging game? Yes! In this guest article, Lauren Pritchard and Nadia Akhtar, Business Studies teachers at Queens’ School (Bushey, UK) share their clever way of making that happen.

Disrupting traditional assessment techniques

Lauren: Assessment for learning is one of those things we all have to do as teachers. As an examination-only subject that teaches years 10 to 13, it is almost relentless. It has merit; we need to know how our students are doing, and so assessments at the end of each topic make this possible.
But tests on paper with pens, although traditional, are boring and students don’t enjoy the learning process involved. That said, if you think back to your favourite lessons at school, it was always the ones you enjoyed that you favoured the most.

Kahoot! helped us rethink assessment in the classroom. It provided us with a way that we could allow students to compete and enjoy themselves whilst still being able to check how much they had learned.

Disrupting traditional assessment techniques

Lauren: Assessment for learning is one of those things we all have to do as teachers. As an examination-only subject that teaches years 10 to 13, it is almost relentless. It has merit; we need to know how our students are doing, and so assessments at the end of each topic make this possible.

But tests on paper with pens, although traditional, are boring and students don’t enjoy the learning process involved. That said, if you think back to your favourite lessons at school, it was always the ones you enjoyed that you favoured the most.

Kahoot! helped us rethink assessment in the classroom. It provided us with a way that we could allow students to compete and enjoy themselves whilst still being able to check how much they had learned.

Competition and collaboration in Business classes

Lauren: Nadia and I both have year 10 Business classes which run at the same time. We came up with an idea of a cross-class competition between the two on Kahoot!

Nadia hadn’t used Kahoot! before, so I took the lead on creating a game and invited Nadia’s class to our room. We are fortunate to have really good ICT facilities, and my classroom has 22 computers. The students are pretty good at partnering up and making space, so there was room for all.

When we played the kahoot, competition heated up quickly! Students were excited, and the atmosphere in the room was buzzing.

Nadia: When we first brought both classes into one room to play Kahoot!, it worked really well – the atmosphere was electric!

Later, with the help from our school’s IT team, we were able to compete from our own classrooms by using Chromecast. This also worked really well, but there is an indescribable buzz from putting both classes together. This for me is the most enjoyable thing about using Kahoot!

Discovering new possibilities with Kahoot!

Lauren: When the Kahoot! team visited us, they showed us some really cool features. For example, I’m planning to use Ghost mode for end-of-year revision. It’ll help to find out how well my students remember the content.

Nadia: Kahoot! has been really useful in consolidating the learning of my year 10 class. It gave me a different method to assess learning and incorporate technology into my Business class. Students are really enthused by it – every time we finish a topic they will remind me to play Kahoot! It has become even more enjoyable by encouraging competition between classes. The competitive edge gives good motivation to revise content.

Thank you to Lauren and Nadia for sharing their experiences with the community!

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