Quizlet Live! ODM!

At ACTFL, I saw the brilliant, kind, generous, GENIUS Kristy Placido present many of her favorite “techy” approaches to delivering highly compelling, comprehensible input to her students. I have heard of people using Quizlet Live! and I’ve even SEEN it in classes… Never have I ever understood it though and for that reason I’ve never tried it with my own kiddos…. Kristy is a wise woman (duh! I mean, she’s an AUTHOR!) and she must’ve known there were people like ME in the room so she made us actually PLAY it… GAHHH!!!!

It STILL took me two months to actually try it in my classroom. Since my kids were familiar with Quizlet already, I wanted to explain to them that this was a TEAM game and competitive. I also think it is VERY important to point out that ONLY ONE PERSON  on the team will see the correct answer on their screen. Otherwise students are just clicking for the sake of clicking. Here is how I explained it to one class:

What you need to know: You create a regular quizlet set… (before you ask, no my kids don’t have emails, you don’t need an email to “play” a quizlet study set). When you’re in the Quizlet study set, you click “Live” which is all the way to the right of the main screen which looks like this:Screen Shot 2019-01-25 at 1.59.11 PM.png

Then, if you’re like me and don’t pay for a subscription, your screen will look like this and you click “Create Game” here:

Screen Shot 2019-01-25 at 2.00.14 PM.png

A screen similar to this then shows up. Kids are instructed to go to www.quizlet.live where they’ll be prompted to enter a code then their name. I make it VERY clear to my students they must use their name (unless they have a nickname in Spanish class already). Then BOOM, once everyone is in, you can start the game and students are grouped into teams for you! (I only gave them 10 seconds MAX to notice what team they were on before hitting “start game” so they were thrown into reading!)

Screen Shot 2019-01-25 at 2.01.21 PM.png

If you’re doing something with translation, a sentence will pop up on EVERYONE’s screen and only one player on each team will see the correct translation for that sentence. They should click that quickly so they next sentence pops up. This is the point I felt was very important to make clear for my kids so they didn’t assume that they all had the correct translation somewhere.

The times I’ve seen Quizlet played before, teams were allowed to sit together. This has obvious advantages. I really wanted them to sit separate so that there was more accountability for EVERYONE reading. The best part about this was that once we started playing, I saw this BRILLIANT opportunity to introduce the phrase “lo tengo” “no lo tengo” (I have it, I don’t have it). I quickly wrote it up on the board as just an “FYI” this is how you say it in Spanish, and the next round AT LEAST 70% of the class was using it! Yes, of course the next week we did Señor Wooly’s “No lo tengo” and YES, it was an epic hit… talk about making language “sticky”!!! YAYYYY!!!

So yes, I love that these kids are super into it and getting compelling comprehensible input. The other thing that I love is the classroom community and culture it is continuing to grow. The teams are randomly selected. We can change them as frequently or infrequently as I want but once again, that culture and expectation that EVERYONE will participate and “play” or interact with EVERYONE else in our class every day is reinforced. I love love love it.

***Updated on 2/9/19 here is a video of my class with kids sitting “together” in their teams…. it helped with the noise level on a day when they were doing a test next door.

So, if you HAVEN’T tried Quizlet Live! yet, DO IT…. like in your next class! just DO it! 🙂

This week has been a rough one y’all. I have been at home ALL the week on strict orders from my doctor and midwives. I’ve had the flu and an upper respiratory infection. My dear dear friend Mary Overton came to my rescue on Monday and helped me pull together some lesson plans because planning for a sub when you’re sick is #theWORST! She is my hero… If you don’t follow her blog… you should… she is such a treasure and so so so giving… Being pregnant and sick is NO joke, but today, after 4 weeks of feeling ehh, bleh, AWFUL, or meeerrrp, I feel pretty good! I feel like I am finally over the hump! I can’t wait to get back to my kids next week! Four more weeks with them (hopefully) and I want to make every minute count!

Until next time,

HAPPY TEACHING!

Love,

La Maestra Loca

pineapple

14 Comments

  1. I love this! I usually have my students sit together, but I’m definitely trying this variation next time!

  2. So sorry to hear you are sick with flu!! I had it last year and it literally knocked me out and I passed out. I can’t imagine having it while being prego. You are in my thoughts and prayers and how amazing are you that you can blog while having the flu. All I did was sleep. You are AMAZING!!! 🙂

  3. Hola maestra! This blog helped me get started with Quizlet! I have always wanted to use it in my classroom but just never jumped in. Thanks for the inspiration! Cheers! @middleschoolmaestra

  4. Gracias, Maestra! I appreciated reading this blog so much this weekend. I have wanted to use this site but never figured it out. Your short videos and directions helped me out a lot! Currently using quizlet in class! 🙂 Have a great week! @middleschoolmaestra

  5. Love Quizlet Live and have been playing for the past couple of years! Another fun variation is to have all of their ipads/computers for each team together. Have them line up on the opposite side of the room and face the back. Then, when you say go, one player will run over to the ipads and find the correct answer on the devices in their group. Once they choose it they run back and tag the next person who turns around and runs over to the devices for the next one. They are definitely responsible for their own learning and it ups the competition a little more PLUS gets them moving. So much fun!

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