Today I got to try two new things in class that I’ve been waiting to give a whirl for a long time: Google Classroom and a “Blind” Kahoot.
I’ve been using Kahoots from getkahoot.com for 2 or 3 years now to reinforce and review concepts that my classes have covered. Now there aren’t many things that make high school students audibly cheer, but this actually happens – out loud!- when I ask them to pull out or pick up a device and load kahoot.it. 
About a year ago, Kahoot introduced a new idea called a “blind” Kahoot, where you essentially build the LEARNING into the Kahoot. Students go in “blind”, not knowing anything about the topic, and by the end, have mastered a new concept. Check out this video description.
So for the past year I’ve been scratching at ideas for building a blind kahoot for one of my classes. Building regular kahoots is super simple, but a blind kahoot takes a plan and creativity and conceptualization. This semester, as I am re-imagining a grade 10 Social Studies course for at-risk learners, I finally found a place to try my hand at my first blind kahoot. The objective at the end was to have students be able to differentiate between the following social studies basic concepts: economic, political, environmental, and social. Click here to check out my first blind kahoot.
So today we actually played the game. My initial plan was to have students summarize their learning in their interactive notebooks after the Kahoot, but about 3 questions in, I realized that a blind kahoot would easily let us fill in this summary idea chart about each term during the game! Even the most reluctant note takers quickly filled out their charts so that they would be ready to go before I launched the next question! By the end of the activity the class had a decent understanding of some new terms, key words and examples for each term, and had had fun playing a “game”. This type of activity and engagement is super important for these at risk learners, many who claim to “hate Social Studies”.
Blind kahooting….tough creation process for a teacher’s brain, but worth it in the learning dividends for students! Have YOU tried Kahoot? Blind kahoot?
What I learned today... 