Kahoot! Great Formative Assessment Tool

I was introduced to an app this past summer that I thought my students would enjoy a great deal. It was easy to use, which is a high priority for reaching all learners. It was a lot of fun, a necessary ingredient for any middle school classroom, and it was definitely competitive. I wrote the app down in my notes, but with all the numerous new ideas I wanted to try out, this one didn't come to mind, until...

One of my math classes is learning to add and subtract with integers. This is their first foray into the crazy world of positive and negative numbers, and sometimes they look at me like I've lost my mind. Who can blame them? Imagine hearing for the first time that you can take a negative number and subtract another negative number and end up at a positive number. Seriously!?! Negative ten subtract negative fifteen and end up at positive five? -10-(-15)=5 Let's just say it's taken many days of discussion, concrete examples, repeating the rules, and I really think they will believe me soon.

In all seriousness, I wanted some data to look at that would give me a clear picture of each child, but I wanted it fast. After all, I need to make quick decisions based on this data. So I pulled out my ace in the hole, a game called Kahoot! On my computer, I created a series of 5 integer addition sentences and 5 integer subtraction sentences for the game. My students used their iPad to chime in (sort of like a clicker). The timed questions were displayed on an overhead screen using my Apple TV. Students needed a game pin number to enter the game. Other than that, they didn't need to enter an email address or create a password. Easy, right? Answer correctly, you earn points. Answer fast and correctly, you earn more points. Once everyone has responded to the question, each player will know if they answered correctly. Immediate feedback! A leaderboard shows the top five players/scores at the end of each round, leading to high engagement and fun competition.

Best of all, when the game ended, I downloaded a spreadsheet that listed for each child: number of correct answers, score, and a color-coded list for each question. Correct answers were highlighted in green and incorrect answers in red. It also listed the score received for each question and the amount of time it took to answer the question.

But wait, it gets even better! Because the game was only 10 questions and the students really loved it, we took it twice. (Their motivation: beat the winner of the first game. My motivation: See if they improved from the first game.) I was very pleasantly surprised to find only one student's score remained the same, while the other fifteen students improved their scores, some rather dramatically.

I've witnessed many positive aspects to using Kahoot! in the classroom. I will be looking for other ways to incorporate its use, maybe some peer discussion questions or for learning a small number of facts quickly. A detailed tutorial for creating a Kahoot! game will be coming soon.

Example Kahoot! question