Gimkit: You and Your Students Will Love It

       Does your class love Kahoot?  Now is the time to learn about Gimkit!  Gimkit was definitely a new favorite last year, but I found there was a learning curve to figure out how I liked to use Gimkit.  Here are some of the reasons why I really love Gimkit.

Favorite Technology Part 2: Quizizz

     For part 2 of my favorite technology I want to focus on Quizizz.  Quizizz is a little like Kahoot, but there are some differences.  I can't really say that I like Quizizz or Kahoot better, but I find they each have uses that they are best suited for.

       Just in case you're not familiar with either Quizizz or Kahoot, the basic idea is that you create multiple choice questions.  Students answer them and get instant feedback after each question about whether their answer is correct.

      Here are some of the things that I like about Quizizz.

1.  Quizizz is self-paced.  If I want my kids to practice a few questions getting feedback along the way, Quizizz is the way to go.  Students go at their own pace, moving on to the next question as they finish.   Some of my kids that are slower workers find Kahoot to be frustrating, because they are always feeling rushed to keep up with classroom.

This is the student view during a Quizizz.  The top shows the difference between a multiple choice and a multiple mark question.  At the bottom you can see the response for a correct or incorrect answer.

2.  Students see the question on their own screen, rather than on the SmartBoard.  This one might seem minor, but when you have students looking at a graph, table or other image, this can be much easier when it is closer to them. 

3.  You have a lot of flexibility with how much time you give to students.    Quizizz allows longer times.  You can choose to give students any from 5 seconds up to 15 minutes.   This is less stressful for my slower workers.  It also allows for me to ask more in-depth questions that a fast paced Kahoot doesn't allow for.

4.  Easy to combine questions from different quizzes.  Quizizz has the option to add questions from different quizzes with the click of a button.  I LOVE this feature.  Super convenient, and really helps me get the Quizizz just how I like it.

5.  You can assign these as homework or play them live.  I love that you have options.  Honestly, this is usually what helps me decide if I want to use Quizizz or Kahoot.  If I want to play live, I usually go with Kahoot.  With Kahoot, all the kids are doing the same question at the same time.   So I really like Kahoot if I want to be teaching along the way, based on what questions kids are missing.  If I'm really wanting to give kids a chance to work independently, and then decide what direction my teaching needs to go, then I like to use Quizizz.  That way, I can look over the results when everyone finishes.  I really like assigning a Quizizz as homework, as students can do it over and over.  Great opportunity to practice!

6.  It's quiet.  I'll admit it...I love Kahoot, and the kids love Kahoot, but there are days that I just don't have the energy to deal with the noise.  Or when the room next door is taking a test or giving presentations and I need to be quiet.  And then, it's Quizizz to the rescue.  You can use the same types of questions, but it does make for a much quieter classroom.

7.  Great data that is easily accessible as kids play, and when everyone finishes.    I love both views of the Quizizz data while kids are working on it.  You can toggle between two different views:  the first view shows the overall percent of questions correct.  The other view is by question.  I really love the question view, because it really allows me to focus my teaching on the problem areas.
       Then once everyone finishes, there is even more data available.  One of the pieces of data that I really love at the end of the Quizizz is the part that shows the average time spent on a question.  This has led to some good conversations in my room about how rushing and not reading carefully can lead us to poor results.

The top picture shows the question view during the game.  It's nice to be able to see as you go which question students are struggling with.  There is also a student view during the game...you just have to be careful about displaying results with student names.   The bottom picture shows the overview given after the Quizizz is over.  I love that you can see time spent on questions, as well as percent that got it correct.

8.  You have the option to either have multiple choice or multiple mark questions.  I know on our district and state tests, we see a lot of multiple mark questions.  These are so hard for kids, so the chance to practice them is terrific!

If you haven't tried Quizizz yet, maybe it's time to give it a try!

Ideas for Celebrating Pi Day

     Pi Day is a day we all love as math teachers, right???  A chance to shine light on math in a fun way.  So here are some fun ways you could celebrate Pi Day this year. 

1.  Do a Pi Day Breakout.  Breakouts (like an escape room for the classroom) are lots of fun, and great to teach those "soft skills" we're always hearing about, like collaboration and perseverance.  A quick Google search for Pi Day Breakout turned up lots of free resources.  Here's a link to a digital Pi Day Breakout, but you can find more pretty easily!

2.  Play Rolling for Pi.   This quick game is a fun way to start things off for Pi Day, or something you could do if you just have a short time to celebrate.  I give each student a six-sided number cube.  Then I have everyone roll together, and you get to remain standing as long as you are rolling the digits of pi (in order!).  So on the first roll, only those kids that rolled a 3 would remain in the game.  Then they would roll again and try to get a 1, and so on.  The kid that rolls the most digits of pi is the winner.  This game works fine with 6-sided dice for the first several digits of pi (3.1415), and you could just declare anyone that got this far the winner.  Variations of this game include using 10-sided dice or having students create a spinner to use.

3.  Pi Day Puzzles.   I have a fun (FREE!) Pi Day Sudoku puzzle in my Teachers Pay Teachers store that would be fun.  There are two puzzles; one has Pi Day trivia, while the other other has students calculating problems with circumference and area of circles.

4.  Pi Day chain contest.  This is another great way to get kids working collaboratively.  Divide your class up into groups of 3-5 students.  Each group is supposed to make a paper chain with the digits of pi in the correct order.  The group with the longest chain of accurate digits in the time given wins.

5.  Pi Day Trivia.  Take a quick break and play some trivia.  My kids love to play trivia when we have a few extra minutes.  A quick Google search can find lots of free trivia.

6.  Pi Day STEM Challenge.  I'm going to have kids create the smallest circular "landing pool" for a daredevil to dive into.....but it has to be big enough for the daredevil to hit the pool 10 times in a row!  My "diving board" will be a ruler, and my "daredevil" will be a simple pencil eraser.  You can see the set up below.  After the kids create the pool, they have to find the surface area.  Click here if you're interested in full supporting materials for this lesson!

7.  Write a Pi Day story.  Want to get your English teacher involved in Pi Day?  Here's a fun one for them!  There are two ways to do this.  One way is to have kids write a "story"....the catch is that the word lengths in the story have to follow the digits of pi.  So you start with a 3-letter word, then a 1-letter word, etc...   Another variation, is to have the kids write a normal story, but they have to work in the digits of pi in order.  This one gets fun because words like "to" count as a two, and "won" counts as one.

8.  Make pie!!!   The science teacher on my team gets involved in the day by having the kids make a cream pie as a lab, using Bunsen burners.  We have parents donate ingredients, and have half the kids make chocolate cream pie and half make butterscotch cream pie.  Then of course, at the end of the day, we eat!

9.  Pi Day problem hunt.  Give your students a printout with one page of pi digits printed out.  Have them look for problems within the digits.  The problems can be simple (1 + 4 = 5) or more complicated ones using order or operations.

10.  Pi Day Hopping Races.   If you are able to take kids outside or to the gym, this one might be fun.  Have a race where students have to hop the digits of pi.  3 hops on one foot, 1 hop on the other foot, 4 hops on the other foot, etc....

11.  Pi Day Goose Chase.  Ok, I  have to admit that I haven't tried Goose Chase EDU yet.  It's like a digital scavenger hunt.  It looks super fun, though and I'm dying to try it some time.  Here is one I created that would work for Pi Day.  Click here to see the one I made.

12.  Pi Day Scavenger Hunt.  Speaking of scavenger hunts, a paper scavenger hunt is a more traditional option.  Last year my class had a great time with this.  I had pictures posted of all kind of circular objects with the radius or diameter labeled.  Their scavenger hunt list included things like "something edible with an area of 15" or "something hot with a circumference of 20 in".  The kids got a little creative with it, and it was fun!  Click here to get one that is ready to go from my TpT store..

4 Ways to Give Feedback to your Class

      There is so much research that supports the effectiveness of giving feedback to improving student performance.  In order to be effective, feedback needs to be both specific and timely.  That makes perfect sense, but that can also be a real challenge.   Here are a few ways that I like to give feedback to my class.

1.  Games--Games are such a great way to get students engaged, but also a great way to give feedback, especially when answers are wrong.  There are so many fun games to play.  One simple game I played last week I called, "Get 5".  I  decided to do this in the middle of class when my planned lesson was NOT going as planned.  Anyway, it was pretty simple.  I challenged my class to get 5 questions in a a row correct. I put a problem on the board and gave everyone a chance to work with their partners to answer the question.  Then I rolled a 30-sided die to randomly call on a student to give me the answer as well as how they got it.  If the class could get 5 in a row correct, I gave them a stamp for our school-wide PBIS program.  It worked great....lots of conversations, and students knew that everyone at their table needed to understand.  Kids were giving each other feedback, and I could give feedback based on conversations I heard or answers given.

2.  Partner activities--I love to do self-checking partner activities, and it allows students to give each other feedback.  Since students are checking each other's work, it frees me up to listen to student conversations and intervene as needed (or to have small group instruction).  They are fairly easy to create....the idea is that you assign each student to either be partner A or partner B.  Each student has a different set of problems.  I usually like to have about 6-8 problems, depending on what the topic is.  The key is that although the students have different problems, the answers are the same.  For example, student A might have the problem -13 + 8 and student B might have the problem -4 + -1.  Each student gets practice, and students know if they don't get the same answer that they need to check over their work.  I like to take my partner activities to the next level by creating a "second part" for each activity.  So after the partners have completed the problems and agree on the answers, then they have to use their answers together to complete another task.  For example, I might have the students from above show each of their problems on a number line, or create a story problem to represent each problem.  This is a great way to handle students working at a different pace, or just to extend the learning opportunities for the partner activity.  I have several sets of partner activities available in my store if you're interested.

•  Proportional Relationships and Unit Rate Partner Activities
• Integer and Rational Numbers Partner Activities
• Measures of Central Tendency and Variability Partner Activities

3.  Dry erase---This is certainly nothing new, but having kids work problems on dry erase boards is certainly a quick, easy way to gather information about my class thinking.  It's easy to address common misconceptions using a simple feedback tool.  To do this, I'll think about the common errors that I know may happen, and I create a comment with a symbol for each, to guide students toward their error.  For example, if I was teaching adding integers, I might put the following information on the board.

Then with each problem, I could call out different answers, and tell them which feedback was appropriate for each answer.

4.  Use technology to give feedback--Technology truly can help us understand what everyone in our class is thinking, and give productive feedback to them.  One technology tool that I love (and so do my kids!) is Kahoot.  Kahoot keeps my students engaged, and I get all kinds of information about how many in my class understand.  Additionally, if you plan the incorrect answers carefully, you can sometimes customize your feedback to students, such as "If you picked green, you might have forgotten to line up your decimals.  If you picked red, you may have forgotten to carry."

          Another tool that I love to use to give feedback to my students is the website quia. I LOVE using this to give short, formative assessments to my students.  My absolute favorite thing about quia is that you can customize the feedback that students get for correct or incorrect answers.  In addition, you can change the settings so that students get feedback after each answer, instead of having to wait until the end.  I love this feature!  I know in Google Forms, you can give students feedback, but I don't think they get the feedback until they are done.  I much prefer to have them get the feedback as they work, so they can be learning as they go.  Quia does have a subscription cost of $49 per year, but for me it's worth every penny.

How to Play These 5 Games Your Class Will Love

     I have officially survived the first two days of school.  That first day is always a killer.  I'll admit it-I came home and took a nap that day.  But day two was a little bit easier, and here on day three, my family might even get a hot meal for dinner (that is not take-out).

      As the year gets going, I've been thinking about which things I'm most looking forward to introducing to my students.  One of them is the games that we play.  So today, I'm thinking about my favorite kinds of games....ones that require little prep work and no extra supplies, plus work with whatever content I'm teaching!  I can usually just pull questions right off of worksheets, study guides, etc....Some of these are my creations and others I've learned from other great teachers, but they all make my classroom a fun place to be.  One reason I love to play games is that it is such a great way to give my kids feedback.  

1.  Math Poker--I learned this game at an NCTM conference in Kansas City several years ago, at the absolute best session of the day.  Only I don't remember the name of that great teacher....so whoever you are, here's to you!  The idea of this game is that everybody starts at $100.  You can bet as little as $1 or up to all of your money.  You get the question right, and you add your bet on to your total; miss the question, and deduct the money.
      Now, the reason my kids really love this game is what happens if someone loses all their money.  I have a deck of cards filled with silly actions such as "Waddle like a duck" and "Dance around the room like a ballerina", so if you lose all of your money, you get a $10 loan from me by taking one of these cards.  My kids love this part so much I've had to make a rule that you can't miss questions on purpose, and anyone who wants to draw a card for fun at the end of the game is allowed to.

This is how I have the kids set up their paper.

2.  Trashketball (or Mathketball)--This is probably my favorite game to play, and the kids love it too. I keep seeing pins on Pinterest about Trashketball, so I know I'm not the only one who has thought this up, but here is how we play in my room.  I divide my class into teams of 3 or 4.  I put a question up, and every team works it out.  I roll the dice to decide which team gets to answer the question.  If that team gets it correct, they get one point and a chance at a bonus.
     For the bonus, I give my kids a couple of options:  shoot baskets (hence the name of the game) or roll the dice.  I have three different options:  two three-point shots, three two-point shots, or a roll of the die.  This way, no matter what, you have the possibility of 6 bonus point.

3.  Treasure Hunt--Playing this game is easy. Ask the questions you want to ask.  Randomly choose a student to answer the question (or possibly a couple of students).  If the student gets the question correct, they get to pick a spot on a simple 10 x 10 grid.  I decide in advance on some "winning" squares, and if students pick those squares they win.

This game has lots of variations that will work.  Sometimes I use a grid that has simple prizes "hidden" in some of the squares.  (I use a SmartBoard file to do this).  When I do this I give away simple things like a pencil, candy, etc....   You could also put different point values in squares, and have the person with the highest point total at the end declared the winner.

4.  Grudgeball--I can take no credit for Grudgeball, but my kids sure are glad that I read about it.  They have a blast taking points away from another team, and I love watching 7th graders and their total lack of logical strategies.  Click to see Grudgeball directions.

5.  Mission Impossible--This simple game just requires a couple of spinners (or dice) and a grid.  I use a poster-sized grid.  In one of the squares, I put an American flag.  I tell my students that they are spies, and they are in possession of important papers that must be delivered to the American embassy.  Every time I give a question, every group that gets it right gets to move.  One die represents direction:  1 or 2 moves left/right, 3 or 4 moves up/down, 5 moves diagonal, and 6 is any direction.  The other die represents the number of spaces.  If a group lands on a space that is already occupied, that group must return to the beginning.  The first group to the embassy wins.

What's your favorite game to play with your students?  Leave a comment below telling me about it!