Quizizz

Formative Assessment has been a major buzz word in our division this year.  We were researching and implementing new formative assessment strategies daily in order to improve and guide our instruction as well as student learning.  Let's get real.  Daily formative assessment is hard.  It takes TIME (that little thing that we lack as teachers...) before, during, and especially after a lesson.  But if you use formative assessment, analyze the data, and use it to help guide your instruction, you will see instant payoffs with student learning and success in your classroom.

Today I'm going to share with you one of my favorite "techy" formative assessment resources that will make your life easier.  Quizizz is an easy way to make your regular assessments engaging and exciting for your students.  The interface is very similar to that of Kahoot, but it has a little more flexibility and versatile usage options.  A few weeks back, Lindsey Paulson shared a fabulous post about Kahoot.  Click the link in case you missed it.  The key difference between Kahoot and Quizizz is that Kahoot must be teacher lead, and students view questions and answers on the board and use their devices to select a tile for an answer.  Quizizz, on the other hand, can be self paced, and the students will see the questions and answers on their own devices.

First, create your teacher account at http://quizizz.com/signup.  One of the best parts about Quizizz (and Kahoot) is that you can search premade quizzes and questions to use, or create your own from scratch.  Why re-invent the wheel when someone has done the work for you!?  When you log in, you're defaulted to the Public section which allows you to search.  Simply type a topic in the Search box.

Below, you will see hundreds of quizzes pertaining to your topic.  You can hover your mouse over the quiz titles and see a preview of the questions on the right side of the screen without having to open every single quiz.  Once you have found one you like, click on the title of the quiz.  You can choose Play Live or Homework from this screen if you and your students are ready use it (we will talk about both game modes more below) or save the link by bookmarking it in your browser or sharing it to one of your social media platforms.  

If you generally like an entire quiz, but there are a few questions you'd like to edit, click the Duplicate button.  You have to Duplicate a quiz in order to create your own copy in your My Quizizz folder if you want to make any changes.

Ready for one reason I now prefer the ease of Quizizz over Kahoot?  If you see some questions that you like from multiple quizzes, but don't necessarily like one of the quizzes in its entirety, you can use single questions already created and mesh them all together without having to go through the steps of making a copy of a few different quizzes and copying and pasting questions into one quiz (like you would have to do in Kahoot).  To do this, click Create from the toolbar at the top, or click the Create your own Quiz button.

You will then be prompted to name your quiz, choose a cover image, and make it Private or Public.  If you choose Private, only you will be able to access it.  The Public option allows others to use your quiz or questions.  Once you select Done, you can begin typing your own question and answers OR search for questions at the very top!  When you search for a topic, it gives you the same quizzes you saw with this same search in Public.  Only this time, after you click on a quiz title, you will see each question and can then hover your mouse over a question you like to see a + to add it directly to your quiz.  Quizizz makes it super easy for you to add as many questions as you would like from one or more quiz already created within seconds.  BOOM! Quiz is created. 

 Click the green Finish button, choose a subject and specific topics for your quiz, then click Finish and Create quiz.

There are two different buttons to choose from when you are ready to play quizizz with your students.  Most commonly, the Play Live option is chosen.  This is if your students are sitting in front of you, ready for action.  Quizizz also has an option to assign a quiz for homework.  See below for some ideas of when to use each option.

Once you have made a selection, you see some fabulous Question Settings and Game Settings below.  Here's another one of those benefits of Quizizz:  you can customize these options to fit your students' needs.  If you want the session to be an intense competition between your students, leave the question timer and leader board option on.  If you would rather students have plenty of time to think through their answers and not feel rushed, turn the question timer off!  Be sure when you are choosing these options to be up front with your students so they know the game rules for each session.  

Anyone else love memes as much as me?  If you leave this option on in your session settings, students will see a meme appear on their screens after each question is answered.  I think they are great, and the kiddos I've worked with usually get a kick out of them also!

When students are ready to play, they will go to join.quizizz.com and enter the 6 digit game code to join your session.  If you chose the Play Live! option, students will proceed to the site and enter the code as soon as you have clicked -----.  If you chose to assign a quiz as Homework, you will need to give your students the Game Code to write down for when they are ready to access.  Use Google Classroom?  If so you can share it to your class page with a click of the button!

During the quiz, students will see the questions and answers appear on their screens.  On your teacher account, you will see a leader board and each student's progress.  You can choose to display this on a screen/smart board while the students are playing or only view yourself.

There are so many settings and I do not have the time (or space) to go through every one of them- but I hope you understand that these decisions you will make before the session are vital to how the game works, and can be customized quickly.  You will need to test them out to see what works best in your classroom.

And now for the most important part-- the data!  Click My Reports on the toolbar at the top.  Then you will need to select Running or Completed depending when you are trying to access your results.

You will find the best data by clicking on the Download button shown above.  This will open an Excel spreadsheet that will show each student, overall score, and answer for every question.  You will be able to analyze this data for general trends as well as individual student data.

If you have never tried Quizizz in your classroom, I hope you are now encouraged to try it!  Leave us a comment if you have other ideas for classroom use!