Jigsaw Kahoot for Collaboration

As an ESL teacher I've always been a HUGE fan of making students talk to each other. It could be about their day, what we've read, or working on questions together. In my opinion we cannot teach English to be just writing and formal presentations, they need to speak and collaborate with one another.

Now, I teach a lot more literature, though many of my students are still ESL students, and I still find that they should be talking to one another!

A long loved activity of teachers to encourage collaboration has been the jigsaw (no puzzle required). This blog will discuss the traditional jigsaw and throw in a more modern endings by adding Kahoot. As always there are other low tech or no tech ways to achieve this that will be discussed.

The next lesson I teach is Oedipus Rex, so that's where well start.

Prep Work

Readings. I am very fortunate to have small class sizes (under twenty students). You'll essentially be creating two different sets of groups. I do this with colors and shapes. For the sake of simplicity, pretend you have a class of nine students. I would group them into: Star, Circle, Triangle, Star, Circle, Triangle, Circle, Star, Triangle.

That means each student is in two different groups: color and shape. These groups don't need to be exactly the same, but it is helpful (so in a class of 15, you could have 3 shapes and 5 colors). Keep in mind that how ever many colors you have, that's how big the groups will be at the end. I don't like having them much bigger than 5, and some teachers may want it smaller than that.

For this class, I did it by column and note cards.

Each row has shared readings (and the same color note card) and the columns can easily get together when the groups need to be composed of different colors.

Readings
Each text is labeled with a different color. You can differentiate a bit here.  In this class seating arrangements are actually purposefully arranged so I can do activities like this and have similar students across. If I want students working with someone similar to them, then they face left or right. If I want a more mixed group they look forward or back.

Some things to consider are to give a slightly more difficult text to the students at higher reading levels, and a slightly easier text to students who struggle more with reading. Sometimes I have one group watch a video, one group listen to a song, and one group read a short news article.

To start, each student listens / reads / watches their assignment and answers the questions given. This is usually done on their own.

This can also be done in more of a literary circles fashion. All students are reading the same text, but different colors are focusing on different sections (vocabulary, plot, character development, etc.)

In this case I gave students ten minutes to read their article and take the best notes they could take on their note card.

Small Group Check
Once done, students move into a small group with everyone who has the same color as them. As they all had the same assignment they have the chance to share out here. Did they not understand something? Do they need more guidance? Did someone see something no one else did?


Mixed Groups Share
This is where it gets fun. Students move to another group that has the same shape, but DIFFERENT colors. They leave their worksheets behind, but get to bring their note cards with them. That means all of these students are joining the group with new information. They are the resident experts, and where the jigsaw activity gets its name. Each student has a piece of the puzzle and everyone needs to pitch in to make the puzzle complete.

In many cases they simply share with one another to complete a worksheet or let other students add to their notes. I've seen some teachers pass out a "Group test" and the group is graded based on the answers they come up with together. However, to add some fun to it this is a GREAT time to play Team Kahoot.

Many of you know I love Kahoot. I've blogged about making Kahoots as a teacher, and having your students make them. Team Kahoot, was a new function brought up this Spring. It's great for classrooms with limited tech as more than one student can sign on as part of the same team.

In this case it's great because the questions are made based on ALL of the colors, so one student can't dominate and take over for everyone else. Instead all of the students need to work together. You can see the Kahoot here in all its glory.

I did this today with my class of 15. It took us a solid 45 minutes which included reading, note-taking, making groups, Kahooting, and me explaining while we Kahooted. Students LOVED it and it was a great way to prepare them for Oedipus Rex next class.

Any questions or comments let me know below or tweet me at mELTingTeacher. I'd love to know if you plan on using something like this as is or adapting it to your class.

No-Prep Alphabet Review Game

For me it is finals week!

I really do think that teacher made reviews are the best. After all, we know what will be on the test :) However, there is something to be said for student made reviews.

First, it gives me, aka the teacher, a chance to see what students feel are the most important parts.

Second, I can find misunderstandings and quickly clarify on the spot.

Third, any time students are creating something, I feel that they learn more.

Finally, if at all possible, I like to steal questions or ideas from them to put on the tests. This way the activity feels more "real" and the students can see I do listen to them. This isn't always necessary as quite often students will hit the nail on the head and ask questions that are very similar to what the test had originally.

Here's one of my favorites because it is so easy and adaptable.

ABC

This year I didn't have a chance to make my alphabet books (next year I will). However, I did use this super easy review game with an alphabet theme.

I divided the class into three different groups based on what we had studied. This was a literature class so: "The Rubaiyat", Magical Realism, and Things Fall Apart. In their groups they received different worksheets with letters of the alphabet and made review questions based off of those letters.

This could be done without the worksheets making it completely no-prep. Want more details? Read on:

1. Depending on how much information you covered make those different groups. These can be very basic, or more complex. In many cases it will be the different units you covered.
2. I like to start individually, and then have students pair up, but if you want collaboration right away then assign pairs different chunks. 
• Assign each student a different chunk of the alphabet and a topic. You can have this on the board, or just verbally. Since I have them pair up later each chunk should be assigned more than once. 
• One student may be given A-H - Things Fall Apart, and other student A-H- Magical Realism, while another I-P Things Fall Apart etc. 
• I give the last group (Q-Z) more letters because they are harder, and will be able to skip more in later steps.
3. Give students just over a minute per question. Students must create a question where the question OR answer uses the letter. 
• A- What's the word that means really dry? Arid OR Angels in "The Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" are thought to look like what?
4. If students haven't finished that's fine as long as they have started. If you feel most students don't have many questions yet, then give them more time before pairing up. Now they get to brainstorm! Have them meet with another student who has the same assignment. With my students they usually end up in pairs, but if you have a bigger class it may be groups of three. Have them compare their questions and answers. Together they'll keep the ones they like best. This also gives them a chance to help each other if they were missing a letter. At this point, I tell them I expect them to have 7 questions. This lets A-H skip one letter, and Q-Z skip three.   

• For example, All of the A-H Things Fall Apart students will get together, re-word questions, eliminate duplicates, and decide on the seven that they like the best.
5. Now for the big groups. Have the whole alphabet get together! That means everyone creating the Things Fall Apart review (A-H, I-P, Q-Z) will be in the same big group. As a group they need to come up with 20 questions! There should be no duplicates. This gives them a chance to weed out the duplicates, primp the questions they have and (if they are giving the presentation verbally) decide who says what.
6. Finally, students present these to the class, and the class tries to answer them. This can be done however you like!
• If you have time and technology available, you can have the groups make Kahoots and then play them as a class.
7. (optional) If you have time have the students fill out a quick exit slip. What questions were hard for them? Why? What questions were easy? Why? What information will they review because of this? 

This requires no prep and is really a great chance to have students review the material. I saw pretty much every student take out the text and their notes to try and find how they could make their letter work for the review.

Making a Kahoot

Hopefully you've already read the blog about why I like Kahoot in my class and how I do it. This post will show you how to find and create Kahoots to use with your class.

There are two options to using Kahoot in your class. You can make your own quiz, or you can find one in the public collection. First off you can go to the main Kahoot site. You can use public Kahoots without registering if given the direct link, but I am still going to say that your first step should be to register so you can search and create your own. It is fast and easy. They ask for your school, a username, e-mail and password. In less than 30 seconds you'll have your very own account.


Next, if you are short on time, or you want inspiration, you can go to the public Kahoots. These have been created by other teachers or businesses. You can search these by grammar or other topic. They have Kahoots on different historical movements, different novels, and of course, different grammar points.


To the right is an example of a "Passive and Active Voice" quiz. You can see how many questions are in the quiz, how many players have played the quiz and preview the questions (as well as answers).

If you like the quiz as is you are welcome to simply use it. If you like some of the questions, but not others, or otherwise feel that you would like to change the quiz you can make a duplicate and then edit it to best fit your class.

The other option is to create a Kahoot from scratch. This is pretty fast as well, but can take a bit longer. First you give the quiz a name.

Then you add questions. Kahoot encourages you to have pictures that go with the questions, but this isn't needed. This is just a really fast quiz as an example, so I made it with two questions. You can select as many correct answers as you like. For example:

Question: Select all the adjectives in the sentence: The girls beautiful blue dress never wrinkles. 
Answers: Beautiful   Blue   Never   Wrinkles

You can give different time limitations for the questions. A simple multiple choice may be 15 seconds whereas something where students need to read larger sentences may be a minute.

After putting in all of your questions you will be taken to a page to reorder the questions and confirm that you didn't make any silly typos in the questions. If you find any typos, you can always go back and edit your questions.


 You're almost done! Now you give a description of your quiz. Give a level, description, whom it is for, difficulty level, and any tags to help categorize your quiz. If you opt to make your quiz public it means other teachers can use it too! All of these are optional, but the more you fill out the easier it is for other teachers to find it later.

Last, but not least, you are allowed to add a cover image that will be shown while people are waiting for your Kahoot to start!
So there we go! You have a couple different ways to use Kahoot in your class.

If you make a great Kahoot you'd like to share you can copy and paste the link below for other people to see.

Here's a link to the super fast two question sample quiz.

For more on how to use Kahoot be sure to check out my other post.