Inside: Blooket a fresh, new online game to add to your tool belt. If your students enjoy GimKit, they will love Blooket in person, hybrid or virtual.
Blooket! Every language teacher has been posting about this new online game this week.
This morning I tried out Blooket & both classes I used it with loved it!
Do you NEED another game tech tool for your toolbelt? No.
Do our students Crave something new and fresh right now doing so much on their computers? Yep!
Especially right now with all virtual students, or some virtual students, or all in person but socially distancing students we need easy, engaging activities that can work with all of those combinations.
How to set up Blooket
The best part it is SUPER EASY to set one up!
I do not know about you but I rarely create any online games. I just search, scan, and play. If you want to create one from scratch, go for it. But over here in #deptof1 land finding one someone else made is good enough for me.
Just like with GimKit, you can just copy and paste a Quizlet set (that you searched for or maybe created) and boom, created. (There are easy to follow screenshots, but basically, you click the 3 dots on Quizlet and copy and paste).
For example today before school I last minute decided to try this out. In less than 10 minutes I had an account and copied and pasted 3 small Quizlet sets from my High Frequency Verb Distance Learning Unit to make a little vocab review activity. (In quarter 2 I got a whole new group of students so we are starting the unit from scratch and are on verb 3).
**Edit I have now created more for my present tense high-frequency verb unit. Go download the unit again for links to the new games!
How to play Blooket
There are options to play as a group (with a minimum of 3 students) or solo. There are other options to check out as well that I have not yet tried such as homework and quest.
To play as a class you just click play and students go to the site and put in a code in like many other sites. This would be a great interactive tool to engage students both at home and in person, or completely virtual.
Students enjoyed getting to pick their avatars as well.
There are multiple game options to try out and spice it up. We tried the candy version.
Why Students Enjoyed It
It is a competitive real-time activity. At the same time, there was an element of chance. With each question you got right, there were three random options to choose from. Sometimes you got extra points or something positive, sometimes you lost points, got to steal from someone else, or got to switch points with someone else. This aspect leveled the playing field and even the superstar students got points taken away and did not necessarily win.
Ways to mix Blooket up
Just like with any activity, it is what you make it. It does not have to be vocab memorization or English to Spanish (but if you need that, it would work). Ideas to mix it up for more input:
– Question & answer
– Sentence starter & ending
– Character & description
– Vocab in the target language & description in the target language
– Sentence & translation
*Update- Tips from other teachers & more variations
Now that I have tried more variations with a variety of students, here are more reflections. Below are the versions available on 11.12.20, but they are always adding new ones.
– *New on 11.12.20 Gold Quest – If you liked the Halloween Candy version, this is just like it! Instead of choosing between 3 pumpkins after each correct question, you choose between treasure chests. There are still positive and negative options for each choice, which does add more opportunity for lower students to do well with more chances involved.
– Café version works well for younger students and is easier than other. It is not as entertaining for High Schoolers.
– Factory – This version is a favorite of one of my classes. It is the most similar to GimKit with gamer betting strategy to earn more per question and multiply your points.
– Battle Royale might take a while and you can not just set a certain time limit like most other games. But, other teachers say this version is the favorite and students get very excited and loud using it.
– Racing – Students complete a set number of questions (you can not set a time). I like to set the number of questions, so each student answers one of each question. It is pretty fast paced, but FYI once a winner reaches the end of the race, the game ends for everyone.
– Tower of Doom – This can only be assigned as homework and is individual and self-paced as students work through levels like a video game. A way to have all students play in class together is to post the link to the “homework” on your LMS or in your Zoom chat. Then students can work through their paths at the same time. They do not interact or negatively affect each other, so you do get to see a report of how each student is doing with the content.
– Classic – The only one I have not personally tried with students. (They never pick it). It seems the most like a standard Kahoot just answering multiple choice questions.
– One teacher mentioned a perk over GimKit is it makes students see the right answer for 3 seconds after they get it wrong before moving on.
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Have you tried it yet? Which versions? Please give us all the info!
If you are looking for fun in person games, check out Fun Spanish Classroom Games to Increase Engagement
Blooket is a fresh, new online game to add to your tool belt. What are your favorite versions of Blooket to use in Spanish class?
