Quizizz: Assessments That Give Students Instant Feedback

Similar to Kahoot, Quizizz allows students to proceed to the next question at their own pace and review their answers at the end of the game.

Although you have access to hundreds of quiz games created by other users, I found that I needed to create my own to customize the quizzes for my students. What I love is that when I find an existing quiz that is useful, I can copy and edit it for my own use.

Here's an example of a quiz I created for ESL students who were still making mistakes with simple present tense: Click here to see the quiz.

Flexibility:

Start the quiz immediately or set a time frame.

Quizizz allows me to start the game immediately for all the students to join at the same time or to assign it as "homework" so they can answer the questions within the time frame I choose. Students answer the questions at their own pace, and they can see whether they chose the correct answer after each question. A meme pops up in response to the answer they choose, telling them if their choice is right or wrong. Once everyone completes the quiz, they can see which questions they missed, the correct answers, and their ranking among their classmates. I scramble the order of the questions so students are not able to view their peers' answers by looking at other computer screens. These and other features are optional, based on the settings I choose.

Reports:

I download the results to Excel at the end of each quiz session to assess my students. If I do not have time to download the reports I can log in to review them later.

The report includes data on each student's response and the accuracy the whole class scored on each question. My only complaint is that the report gives individual scores that are determined by accuracy and speed, a number that I do not find useful, and percentages, instead of the number of correct answers. For example, the first-place student has a score of 18, 970 and the second-place student has 18, 820, even though they both scored 100% on a 20-point quiz. Also it would also be easier to view the data with the students' names in a column rather than in a row. Still, it has been a great tool for my classroom, one that I will continue to use.

More Free iPad Apps: Pocket Law Firm, History Maps, Think Fast, and Undecided

Pocket Law Firm is excellent for practicing reading comprehension and learning the basics of constitutional law. Player may refer to the constitutional amendment cheat sheet as many times as necessary to play the game, but this repetition will eventually help students memorize the amendments as they apply them to cases. The object of the game is to match potential clients with lawyers who specialize in certain amendments. When a person enters the law office, the player must tap on the character and read the person's story, then determine whether this merits legal action. If the client has a constitutional right to take the case to court, the player finds the appropriate lawyer to take the case. As the lawyers win cases, Prestige points add up, allowing the player to buy additional lawyers and office furniture that makes the clients more likely to wait patiently to speak to someone. Clients will not wait forever, so part of the challenge is to attend everyone in a timely manner.
Update: I used this in my classes with great success. Before the students used the app, I asked them to list any constitutional amendments or constitutional rights they remember learning in their history class. The responses were less than what I had expected. After playing the game for about 30 minutes, I asked the students to add to their written list, and they recalled at least five additional amendments they did not know (or remember) at the beginning of class. They have been asking to use this app every day since.

The History Maps app incorporates history and geography. I plan to use this app as a starting point for online research; students can find maps of the tallest buildings from the end of the 19th century, for example, and research one of these structures. I prepared several questions that will challenge students to interpret visual information from the maps.

Think Fast is another app for both ELA and Social Studies. Players choose a character that moves along a route in Boston as they correctly answer questions about American history.

I needed a versatile, free app for choosing students for our debate. Finding electronic spinners was more difficult than I had anticipated, but here's the perfect app: Undecided. Roll dice, flip a coin, spin the wheel, draw straws, or generate a random number (and if those aren't enough, buy the digital rock, paper, scissors function).

Subtext iPad App: Share, Annotate, and Discuss Texts with Students Instantly

Before writing a review of an app, I usually withhold my verdict until my students have used it. This time, I cannot wait to write a pre-emptive review of Subtext, another free app that will enhance students' interaction with texts through annotations and class discussions. Learning how this app work takes some time, at least it took me a while to navigate through the features, but once I discovered how to choose a text, create groups, and share the texts and assignments with students, I was inspired to think about its application in my class.

The first step to creating an assignment in Subtext is to choose the text. Using "Tap to add books & articles," I found an article through our school's links to reliable sources and then added the page to the app library. Then I created a group (I could have done this first) for one of my classes. I shared the article with this group and then shared with them an assignment that instructs them to highlight and discuss details that support the main idea.
At first glance, this app seems to be a great enhancement to text annotations and group discussions. I will post my reviews after using this with my students.

Note: The features for annotation are similar to Nook and Kindle apps.
Have you used this app with your students? Leave a comment with examples or suggestions!

Make Beliefs Comix

UPDATE: Make Beliefs Comix is now available as an iPad app.
Teachers who like using innovative and free tools to help students with writing should check out this free site: Make Beliefs Comix. Within a few minutes of making a comic strip of my own, I thought of a dozen possibilities for the classroom. My students began by illustrating an important scene from their novels. Once they understood how to apply the features of this online tool, I asked them to create a comic with dialogue that included our four vocabulary words. When they finish a comic, I help them edit and revise the writing, and then they email the final draft to me. When I open these from my inbox, I print them out and give them to the students to save in their writing folders. Even though the size of the comic strip limits the amount of writing, this is a perfect opportunity to help students focus on their mechanical and usage errors. By reading the dialogue in my students' comics, I could immediately see which students did not understand the meaning of our vocabulary words. I also pinpointed many common errors that my students should not be making in eighth and ninth grade: not capitalizing the beginning of sentences or the personal pronoun I and forgetting to end each sentence with punctuation. They have to make all these corrections before they email the final draft. I continue to think of new uses for MakeBeliefComix. The examples below are student work that illustrate a conversation in which one character does not make an important inference.

Two (Free!) Apps ELA Teachers Will Love: Word Mover and Poems by Heart

Word Mover (readwritethink) and Poems by Heart (Penguin Classics) are two exciting apps for writing and fluency. One of my litmus tests for educational software is that it must improve upon its hands-on equivalent. If it functions no better than the literal version, many times the app will not help the students learn more productively. Word Mover's options, including several word banks and the ability to add your own words, inspired my students to construct impressive sentences and even several lines of poetry. A variety of backgrounds, fonts, and text colors are attractive strengths for this app. While testing the app I found myself inspired by the word bank's imagery and abstract words that suggested poetry: gold, gray, silent, sun, snow; love, new, hope, lost, believe, imagine. I was impressed with the positive results I saw when my students used the app. The most resistant writers in my class surprised themselves when they easily pieced together poetic sentences. Several students discovered how to make use of the app on their own, but I instructed most students to start by selecting the most provocative words from multiple word banks until they thought of a uniting theme. Then they placed the words in a logical order and added the articles and verbs that were necessary for complete thoughts. Once they followed this strategy, they were freed from starting their poem with lines like "Roses are red, violets are blue."

Poems by Heart leads students through the process of memorizing poems of increasing difficulty by reading, writing (filling in the blanks), listening, and speaking. In the first stage, students listen to an audio recording of the poem.  As they progress through each stage, students assess their memorization of the lines, and by the last stage, they record their recititation of the entire poem. Teachers need to help their students paraphrase the poems so this does not become an exercise in mindless parroting, and as a follow-up activity students should analyze the poem for deeper meaning.
Both apps are examples of software that enhances learning rather than merely digitizing paper and pencil activities.



More free iPad eduational apps

Five educational apps recently caught my attention. Three are by McGraw-Hill: Grammar Wonderland 1, Grammar Wonderland 2, and Word Wonderland. Two are from exploratoriaum.edu: Sound Uncovered and Color Uncovered. All five apps require students to read and interact with the app, and they should hold students' attention.
McGraw-Hill Wonderlands

Word Wonderland challenges players to match phonetic sounds with words (such as matching "shop" with short "o."). The title "Wonderland" refers to the maps students move along in different worlds. If you are teaching students phonetic spelling strategies by using a program like Reading Horizons, for example, this would be a fun review activity.

Word Wonderland

The Grammar Wonderlands are similar--players choose a character and world, and as they win each level, by flying a plane into plural nouns or feeding a polar bear the common noun, etc., they progress across a map. These games are obviously aimed at young readers, but with older students who struggle with reading and writing, this would be a fun review of basic grammar.

Exploratorium
The Exploratorium is "an interactive museum of science, art, and perception located in San Francisco." Their brilliant apps are educational for any age. One of my favorite Sound Uncovered interactive articles is "How Old are Your Ears," which allows students to measure their hearing on a sliding scale and then encourages them to read more about how loud music and age contribute to hearing loss. Color Uncovered also has several dazzling optical illusions and surprising facts.

Favorite Free iPad Educational Apps

It's been much longer than I had realized--about a year--since I posted my first review of free educational apps. Since then, I've sorted through dozens of others, mostly word games, that are entertaining enough to keep even my attention. I'm not even close to being what my students call a "gamer"; the only video game I could ever master was Nintendo 64 Mario Kart, which I still play on occasion. I think this is why I'm picky about which educational games I download. Some are inane or require such little brain activity it can't keep my attention for more than a minute. Also, I don't know if I'm not very savvy at searching online for educational apps, but I have yet to find a blog by a teacher with entertaining educational apps that are really free--I know about Evernote, Lino, etc. by now, thank you very much--can you tell me something new?
Each of these apps requires spelling, reading, or listening, and each has proven to hold my students' attention for at least half an hour. Here they are, from least to most popular with my students (according to their preferences, not mine).

#7: My personal favorite is Word Jewels! and all its variations (Word Jewels 2, Word Jewels Spin, Word Jewels Rally). Time is unlimited, so while it exercises your spelling power, it doesn't leave you stressed. Players may spell words of three or more letters by connecting adjacent letters. I classify this game as fairly addictive.

#6: Word Gems is similar, but as a timed game, it's not as enjoyable, in my opinion. Rows of letters scroll toward you while the timer counts down from three minutes.

#5: Jumbled Sentences, available in six versions, has the appearance and sound (tinkly music and a child-like narration) of a kindergartener's game, but it's actually more challenging than you might expect. For students whose sight word recognition is a little slower than average, this game will definitely keep them occupied. Words rotate in a circle while the timer pushes the player to choose the correct words and place them in a sensible order below. A narrator reads each word as the player places it in the boxes, and when the sentence is complete, she reads the entire sentence. Try this game out, and you'll be surprised at the level of concentration it requires. One note of caution: This is British English, so you'll find the games use vocabulary that necessitates some explanation, such as the British word for "eraser" in Jumbled Sentences 6.

#4: Bussuu language apps are so engaging and effective, I still can't understand why they're free. ELL students could use the English bussuu app, but when I allowed my Spanish-speaking students to try the Italian app, they loved it! They understood the connections between these two Latin-based languages, a lesson that lends itself to developing English vocabulary with Latin roots. Illustrations and audio prompt quick learning, while quizzes and exercises strengthen long-term memory.

#3: The Cambridge Phrasal Verb Machine is the strangest, most British app I've seen to date. Its short, highly stylized animations illustrate the meanings of phrases that are difficult for learners of English. These artistic animations and the sophisticated soundtrack make it entertaining for anyone, though. It's unlike any other app.

#2: I wish more apps were as interactive as Futaba. My students quickly tire of any app, no matter how engaging it is at first, because many apps don't capitalize on that quality essential for any educational activity targeting teens: competition. Futaba pits two (or three or four, with upgrade) players against each other in a race against the clock to be the first to identify the spinning image and select the corresponding word. It's challenging not only for readers with slow sight word recognition, but even for the fastest readers.

#1: My students' favorite word apps are those with four images or an image-reveal. Find at least half a dozen of these apps by typing "word picture" in the iStore. These include 4 Pic 1 Word, What the Word? and What's the Pic?

 Leave your comments about your favorite free educational apps!