KAHOOT! for the WIN!

Best...lesson...ever! I was practically giddy during the whole thing! I already loved Kahoot! before this, but had really only used it in adult professional learning. I may be just a teensy weensy bit competitive so this little doozie fits my personality like a glove! An "I'm gonna take you down smack talking" kinda glove mind you! If you want my undivided attention in a faculty meeting, just tell me we'll be playing Kahoot! at the end of it...and I'm yours for the next hour!!! Seriously it's just so engaging.
So what took me so long to finally use it with my kiddos???? Well there's the whole device issue! We only have 3 in our room and I just thought it'd be too hard to keep everyone engaged and could I really tell if kids were understanding the concepts we would cover. So I just tucked this little gem into my teacher pocket and waited for the perfect storm. Enter stage left...the NEW and glorious Chromebook carts! I PUFFY HEART them in so many ways!!!!  Our class has already checked them out twice in the first week and a half since they arrived! We jumped right in with some non-fiction bat research and then kiddos worked with a partner to share bat facts on a Google doc. It was great! I loved it! And, well... They mostly loved it! It was seriously awesome, but I have to be honest and say there were a couple of kiddos that were a teeny bit stressed with all the things they needed to do. It was a little overwhelming for a few of the kiddos. So I knew if I wanted to keep them on the "OMG...these Chromebooks ROCK" bandwagon, then I better pull out something they were gonna go CRAZY over! In comes KAHOOT!  If I love it, wouldn't they surely love it too? You're dang skippy they do! I kid you not when I say they were COMPLETELY and TOTALLY 100% engaged for 40 minutes straight! My principal even walked in to ask something and her jaw dropped to the floor. She was so pumped with the whole thing!

So here's the 411! We had read Too Many Pumpkins earlier that morning for our CAFE lesson. We talked about story elements and the kids completed a story map puzzle in their Interactive Reading Notebooks. So later that afternoon we brought in the Chromebook cart. Each kiddo had their own device. Once they logged in, they just entered www.kahoot.it and they were ready to enter the "game pin".  Now for my part, I just searched the site and found a quiz that some other lovely person had already created. It had 15 comprehension questions for the story. There was a 6 digit game pin and once they entered the #, they were linked to this particular quiz. The kiddos had 20 seconds to enter their answer for each question. Their screen does not show them whether they got it right or wrong until time's up and everyone has entered their answer.  I read the questions and answer choices and we were good to go.  After each question it ranks the top 5 kids' scores. With each question and answer revealed, it again ranks the kids. They LOVED that part and were trying so hard! If they missed questions, we would discuss it or look back in the story and use text evidence to support the correct answer. We hit a TON of standards! The kids were crazy excited and they could absolutely NOT get enough of it! They begged me to play it again before we even closed the  Chromebooks!

Do you see those fist pumps??? Ex--cit--ed!!! I already have so many ideas swimming around in my head for different quizzes I can create! And I'm thinking I can quickly use the results as a formal assessment to help me build strategy groups. I will just need to do a quick hop around the room and make note of who misses what on a little checklist. So easy and they think they are just having FUN! That people...is a WIN-WIN situation!
So if you haven't given this a try...do it! I promise you will NOT regret it!