I teach at a small school in Malaysia and I’ve been looking for new ways to connect with other classrooms to help my students develop their collaboration skills and connect with more peers. I found the perfect opportunity to do that by playing Kahoot! as a student-paced challenge in a weekly competition.

For the first time this year, we organized a tournament with a few rural schools in Larut Matang and Selama District here in Malaysia. One of the schools is so small, there are only 24 students who are enrolled!

Each week, I send out a new challenge PIN for everybody to play. We play a similar kahoot but with different questions live on Thursdays. Students are able to practice the material with the challenges before they play the live game. At the end of the tournament, I will calculate all of the scores and create a list of winners.

This weekly event is really popular with my students and it keeps them engaged while connecting with other classrooms. It’s super easy to integrate a self-paced Kahoot! challenge into learning – and students like it. Here’s how we do it:

Prepare your students

Each week, teachers from the other schools and I brainstorm questions based on the weekly curriculum. We each take turns creating kahoots for the competition. We start a challenge early in the week so students can prepare for the live game on Thursday. Students can replay the challenge as many times as they want! This ensures they are familiar with the material and feel confident going into the live game.

Host a live game

Every Thursday, schools participating in the challenge join together for the live game via Skype. The energy of the students goes through the roof during this time. With Skype, the entire group is able to share in the excitement of the game together.

Calculate final results

We download the report data and share the podium via Microsoft Teams. Students get so excited to see who won the challenge! We hand out prizes to the students who made the podium such as digital badges and certificates.

Repeat

Each week, we play a different kahoot on a different topic. Students find it incredibly meaningful to learn this way and are really motivated to be at the top of the podium. I am tallying up the scores from the live game each week, and at the end of the tournament there will be a final winner.

I plan on growing these competitions to include even more schools! Soon, I’m hosting another live tournament and have invited more schools in our district to join. Playing Kahoot! has boosted the collaboration and creativity between my fellow teachers and has helped our students get totally engaged with learning.

Have you tried this new way of playing Kahoot!? Learn how self-paced challenges work and try them with your students!