Blooket is the best way to engage students. There, I said it and I mean it too. I’m a gifted educator for elementary students and this is year 15 in my educational career. I see a different grade level each day, from first to fifth grade, and hands down I have never seen this level of engagement across grade levels before.
No matter the grade level, they all maintain a high level of engagement whenever we play Blooket. Even more, they beg to play it over and over again, no matter what subject we’re studying or how difficult it is. Their desire to play Blooket, all the time, is a big part of why Blooket is the best way to engage students.
Now, before I get too far ahead of myself, I guess I should stop talking about why Blooket is the best way to engage students and make sure you know what Blooket is.
What is Blooket?
In my humble opinion, Blooket is the best way to engage students, but as it relates to explaining Blooket to someone who is unfamiliar with it, Blooket is a gaming platform that can be used to help students practice and reinforce skills. It is similar to other review style platforms like Kahoot, Gimkit and Quizlet Live, to name a few. However, Booklet has been upstaging the old favorites and is now the best way to engage students.
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How Blooket Works?
You may now be wondering how Blooket works and what exactly makes it so engaging to students. Well, as I mentioned, it presents content in the format of a game, a multiple choice game to be exact. The games, aka Blookets, cover a wide variety of grade level content, subjects and topics. Each Blooket can be hosted by teachers in different ways, such as individually, in teams, as a class (Blooket live) or assigned for homework. Due to the variety of hosting options, Blookets are excellent at creating and maintaining engagement for students.
How to Use Blooket?
By now, I’m sure you want to know how to use Blooket to engage your own students and that’s where I have great news. Blooket is fairly simple to use. If you have ever hosted a Kahoot or Gimkit, then you will have no trouble adjusting to hosting a Blooket. If you aren’t familiar with any of these review style games, I think you will still find Blooket easy to use to engage your students.
To use Blooket to engage your students, you will first need to visit https://www.blooket.com. From there, you will need to sign up for an account. If you are a Google user, you can sign up that way, with your school credentials. Once you have signed up, you are ready to start using Blooket to engage your students.
How to Host Blooket?
Your next step to using Blooket to engage your students is to prepare to host a game. Hosting a game means that you have started a Blooket for your students to join. To do that, you will need to search Blooket sets that currently exist. Once you find one that you like or one that covers the material you are covering, you will click on the button to host a Blooket. This will generate a code, which you can then share with your students via Google Classroom or any other forum. Students will then go to https://www.blooket.com/play and enter the code you have provided, so they can begin to engage, practice and learn from the Blooket you are hosting.
Is Blooket Free?
I’m sure the next question that you have with all this talk of using Blooket to engage students is is it free ? Thankfully, the answer is yes. Like many other educational tools, there is a free version, which is fun and engaging for students, but Blooket also offers paid options, which include additional perks, not offered in the free version. I have used both the free and paid version and think you can certainly get by with the free version, but if you will be using it often, may want to invest in the paid option.
Blooket for Teachers
As you prepare to use Blooket live or the Blooket homework options, I do want to offer a word of caution, especially with younger students. When a Blooket ends, it will come to a screen that asks students if they want to sign up for an account with Blooket. This will seem appealing to students who want to save their coins and earnings and their “profile,” like they probably do with games they have at home. Personally, I would speak to my students and even their parents about discouraging this, if this is not a step you want them to take. I have never had this issue, because my students and I had the talk before we started to use Blooket, but have heard others teachers mention it as a possible negative while using Blooket to engage students.
Another thing to consider when using Blooket to engage students is the competitiveness and the available functions in the game. For example, in one of the game modes, which I will discuss in greater detail in the remainder of this post, students can “steal” from their classmates and sabotage them. Again, I have never seen this to negatively affect my students or their level of engagement, but it may be worth a conversation with your students, especially younger students who could get upset about classmates "stealing from them" prior to using Blooket to boost their engagement levels. My students find it hilarious and love to sabotage the entire class. It is actually one of the reasons they find Blooket so engaging.
Blooket vs. Kahoot, Gimkit and Quizlet Live
I never thought I would say these words because my students love Kahoot, Gimkit and Quizlet Live, but Blooket is the best way to engage students. It is a one stop shop for all the things that students like about all these other platforms. I will give some more details below on why Blooket has risen above these other review and practice educational tools, as it relates to engaging students.
Why is Blooket the Best Way to Engage Students?
Now, that I have given you all the necessary background about what Blooket is and how to use it, let’s talk more about why Blooket is the best way to engage students.
1. Blooket allows quizzes to be imported from other platforms
This first reason why Blooket is the best way to engage students is in my opinion probably the most important to teachers. Some of us have invested hours and hours creating resources in these other platforms, so the first thing you said when you read that there was yet another one that has popped up, which was supposedly more engaging was, “Nope, I’m not starting over again.” I know you are exhausted and hanging on and I’m here to share the great news that you don’t have to. Blooket allows you to import questions from other places to be used in your Blooket Lives or homework assignments. This not only saves teachers, but helps in student engagement, since you will have a variety of Blookets available, outside of the sets they already have in their system.
2. Blooket has a variety of game modes
This second reason why Blooket is the best way to engage students is probably the one that your students will care about most, all the different game modes. Seriously, they seem to grow continuously. The creators are also great at adding game modes based on what is currently happening. For example, they will offer special Halloween or Christmas modes. These Blooket game modes are usually limited (last only for a short period of time), which drastically increases the students’ engagement.
3. Blooket can be played live or assigned as homework
This third reason why Blooket is the best way to engage students is another favorite among teachers. Blooket has the option to be played live or to be assigned as homework. When you assign a Blooket as homework, you can set a deadline for the Blooket to be completed. This feature only applies to specific game modes, so be sure to look when you are hosting a Blooket and want to assign it as homework that the mode you’ve selected can be assigned that way.
4. Blooket is simple to use and allows virtual and in person students to interact
Reason number four why Blooket is the best way to engage students is that it is simple to use and allows interaction between virtual students and students who are in the physical classroom. School appears very differently now and will potentially continue to do so for some time. Teachers are now not only charged with finding interesting ways of engaging the students sitting in front of them in school, but also the ones learning from home. This is not a task that is easy to accomplish. Blooket allows both of these groups of students to interact in a fun way, while challenging them to demonstrate their knowledge.
5. Blooket encourages independent and collaborative learning
Yet another reason why Blooket is the best way to engage students and why I believe you will love it is that it can be used for independent as well as collaborative learning. In each of the game modes, teachers can choose whether to have students work independently or collaboratively. I typically give that choice to my students unless I am using Blooket not only as a way to engage my students, but to assess as a pre or post test.
6. Blooket is appropriate for a variety of grade levels and subject areas
Reason number six why Blooket is the best way to engage students is because it is appropriate for a variety of grade levels and subject areas. I have used Blooket with first graders as a pre and post test over Martin Luther King Jr. and have used it with fifth graders to assess their knowledge of decimals. Blooket can be used for almost anything even as a review of reading comprehension over books read, grammar and writing techniques to be used in writing prompts. In each of the Blookets I have hosted, the level of student engagement was high.
7. Blooket allows students to personalize their game experience
The final reason I will provide as to why Blooket is the best way to engage students is the personalization factor. Students, once they have visited blooket.com/play and entered the code, can select an animal (or avatar) to represent them. It seems like such a trivial and small thing, but every child, I have observed, has loved it. They love to see their avatar climbing up the leader board or see it beside a sabotage they have just released against their classmates. It is yet another way that Blooket helps students to engage with the material they are learning.
A year ago when I wrote a post suggesting the best way to engage your bored child and to discover new ways to instruct virtually, I could not have imagined that a new educational tool would come along that has blended most of the best parts of the other tools educators and students love, but here Blooket is for us all to enjoy. I hope you are able to test out a Blooket soon to see just how amazing it is to engage your students and children.
Before You Go
Did you enjoy or find this article useful? Please pin or share it with others who may be struggling to find ways to engage their students or children. Also, check out some of my other instructional tools and resources like my unique black history project for kids.
I know that Booklet is probably too much for those of you who teach or have younger children at home, but do not despair, I have some other ways that you too can engage your student or child.
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