Inservice #1

Today was my first county-wide math professional development of the year.  I worked with the other specialists and our supervisor to put together an agenda that models the kinds of instructional practices we expect from our teachers. I'll share information about one session today. 

We started our day with a brief session on Kahoot!  (Head over there and check out their "how it works" section if you're new to Kahoot!)  Another specialist had teachers play a round first.  You can play a round with some of the advanced features I'll explain below by following this link.  Then we offered two options: teachers who wanted to learn how to sign up and make some basic questions stayed with the original presenter.  Those who are more techie, had used Kahoot! before, or teach higher-level math came with me.  I shared a series of tips to make Kahoot! work in some tricky situations.  Since I'm sharing this on the internet, I should probably say, "4 Kahoot Hacks!" or "Kahoot: You're Using it Wrong!"  Nevertheless, here are 4 tips and a document you can download with step-by-step instructions. 

Tip 1: Use the template I designed to write your questions in MS Word and screen shot them.  Upload the screen shot as the image. This is perfect for using images as answer choices or complicated equations that require math type.  Here's an example of the completed template screenshot:

Tip 2: If you can't fit your whole question in the allocated characters, type it in MS Word and take a screen shot.  Upload the image.  Type something very short like "solve" in the question box since you can't leave it blank. 

Tip 3:  If the time limit of two minutes is too short for your students, use a video to extend the time. 

Tip 4: (This one came out in the session.)  Think about recording a video of you reading/asking the question over an image of the question.  Upload to You Tube, then add it as a question.  This would be a good modification for students who need to be read to and/or could also address the need for extra time. 

The template is linked above and also shared here so you can preview it. If you don't have Flash or your computer isn't playing nicely, use the link instead. 







 

I'll share my afternoon session in an upcoming post. 

Have you ever used Kahoot! or a similar tool to increase student engagement and gather formative assessment data?

Mathematically yours,
Miss B