Monday, November 23, 2015

Kahoot and Whole Brain Teaching

I LOVE online learning games that kids get excited to play. Any kind of educational game that kids BEG to play in class has my seal of approval. Kahoot is at the top of my list.
Image result for kahoot
Image result for kahoot

The kids LOVE it! it's fast paced, easily editable to math whatever content you are teaching, and keeps their attention the entire time. Definitely a win. There are also thousands of kahoots (quizzes) already created and easily searchable, so you don't have to take time to make your own. You can just find one that fits your needs - edit it to make small changes if you want - and you're ready to go!

Go to getkahoot.com to get started.

BUT... if you're only playing the Kahoot, yo9u're not harnessing the true power of it. Without doing something after each question, the full capability of learning is being missed. Enter Whole Brain Teaching!

The Teach OK is one of the greatest strategies to use. It's our version of the "Pair Share", but students are asked to "TEACH" each other. I always say something like, "teach your neighbor as if they just woke up form their lunchtime food coma" or something silly like that. Just simply telling their neighbor isn't good enough. They need to teach them.

So, after each Kahoot questions, the class scores are shown on the board in a graph form. it shows how many students picked each answer, and shows what the correct answer is. After each question, choose one of the following...
"Teach your neighbor WHY the red answer is the wrong answer."
"Teach your neighbor WHY the green answer is BETTER than the red answer."
"Teach your neighbor WHY the red answer is NOT as good as the green answer."

Or some variation of the above. Now they are thinking critically about their answers, the answers of their classmates, and digging in deeper to the content. Now it's not just a fun online game, it's a chance for deep review and analysis.

Here's a short Periscope video I did to explain all of this. You can watch it on Periscope for the next 24 hours, or watch it on #Katch in the video below.

Please send me a tweet @MeadorScience, or comment below, if you have any questions!

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