New game site Quizizz!

We have been using a new website in class the last couple of weeks called Quizizz. It is a fun quiz site and the kids have really enjoyed it. Like many of the sites I have been trying it is free to use and you can create your own multiple choice questions or search by topic for quizzes that others have made and shared publicly. For most of the sites we have been using I have settled on about 12 questions per quiz. The kids stay entirely engrossed for this long and I can focus on one or two topics. The kids really like the avatars that are assigned to them when they sign in to do a quiz. They enjoy them so much that is has caused problems since sometimes if they don't get an avatar they want, they sign in again and we have too many in our quiz. The students see the questions on their device so if you have questions that need pictures, they can see the picture better and they can pinch to zoom to see the picture enlarged. I have done a couple quizzes with my year 7 and 8 on nets , plans and elevations,and surface area. This format works better for questions that need pictures. When using Kahoot it is too hard to see the detail in pictures when the kids can only see the picture projected on the board up at the front. You can assign a time limit to each question, but once the quiz starts, they move through at their own pace. Once they answer a question they get to see where they stand on the leader board and then get the next question right away. Once a student finishes the quiz they can go back and review all the questions so they can see the ones they got wrong. Once all students are finished the teacher can download a spreadsheet with all the results broken down by student and question.

I usually start class with a quiz or two on the tablets. One issue we face is how long to wait before we start. I have students arrive at different times as our school is a bit spread out and they come from different classes. We can't always wait for everyone to arrive and then there are usually issues with one or two devices getting connected to wifi or logged in. They get quit upset if we start without them which shows how much the enjoy doing the quizzes. In Kahoot the game code can be projected on the board during the entire quiz so students can join late. This was not the case with Quizizz. Once the quiz started the game code disappeared which meant students couldn't join in if they came in late. I emailed the site and they added this function with a day or two of putting in my request. After seeing the quick response to feedback I will have to ask about getting more support for maths symbols. That is the kind of awesome support that teachers love to see with educational tools.

This term I have been using three sites on a regular basis, Kahoot, Socrative Space Race, and now Quizizz too. They all have strong positives and the students enjoy all three. They each have different strengths and lend themselves to different topics. It is nice to have some different games to keep the kids from getting blase about the games. The focus of my project with the tablets this year is using them for formative assessment. I like that I can get a spreadsheet from all three games to see how the class did as a whole on any topic or how individual students are doing.  I am finding it very useful when we start a topic to gauge prior knowledge and also to see how the students are understanding topics as we move through units.  One issue I am having to deal with is when using the tablets the students forget about using their pen and paper to work out many of the problems. While many of the problems are mental maths type questions, I am also including questions that definitely require pen and paper. I remind them to use them all the time but they get so caught up in getting the question answered quickly, that they sometimes sacrifice the accuracy they could get by working it out on paper.  

The best indicator of how successful the trial has been is how excited the students are to answer questions using the tablets in a game setting. They run into class and want to know if we are using the tablets and don't want to stop after one  game. During the game, they are discussing where they went wrong with their neighbours and are more critical of their mistakes than when we review written assessments at the end of units which are part of their grade.