Thanks Phil, using it that way, to diagnose the class sounds very efficient and I completely agree with you. Thanks for your really thought provoking and informative comment too.
As usual, I think we agree and I am maybe guilty of over-simplifying my example.
What I found relevant and worth sharing with my colleague's use of Kahoot was the way it provided him with some immediate sense of how many students had answered correctly or incorrectly to steer his upcoming teaching in that lesson. He and the students were not really interested in the league table and it struck me that it allowed him to, in effect, 'cold-call' the whole class at once by displaying the question then interrogating some of the answers without necessarily exposing individual students - for example one question was answered incorrectly by the majority - enabling him to correct and engage the students who had answered correctly to assist in this. Perhaps more a common misapplication rather than a misconception then.
It was formative therefore where every other time I've seen this used it has been summative.
The relevance to your thread was that whilst I didn't think I would have the discipline or need to keep Didau-style annotations, I thought it provided the teacher a more concrete analysis of what was known/not known on which to base his planning - as you say, better than cold-calling an individual would.
He wasn't considering Kahoot in terms of motivating students but as a tool - to simplify his own mental register annotating. It was 5 minutes pre register that I felt was very purposeful...and completely different to how I've seen this tool used previously. It struck me he gained a lot of useful info, quickly and efficiently without needing to do anything other than 'do it'.
I always say to our ITTs and ECTs that making use of the info we get from cold-calling is one of the trickiest things to master...and I tend to agree with you that the simpler the better...I've never been any good at cross-referencing notes etc. So I agree that just doing it well and often is enough.
But I've also just observed a colleague (MFL) using Cahoot as an opening activity to establish what students know and tackle misconceptions. He'd carefully constructed the questions of course but then used the answers to structure the cold-calling "who put that answer?...what did you do wrong there?...tell me why that's wrong...", etc.
Possibly how everyone else is already using this particular tool but I tend to see it used to review not frame learning. We've shared it in school - just thought it might be useful
This is the danger of having opinions which aren't tested against evidence of impact. As always, I have an opinion which could be completely wrong - only measurement will tell us for sure.
So, yes, you could be 100% right - and there is clearly a brilliant rationale for this.
Kahoot is motivating, because you get a score and a league table. Set against that, it is slow compared to cold calling - questions take time and answers are not quickly revealed. It may be that students take care when answering questions, rather than just guessing, as their scores are displayed. Or it may be that only the top 20% of the class do this, as they are the only ones who know they will do well.
I would love to run an experiment - 6 weeks of fast paced cold call questions 10 minutes each lesson vs the same time with Kahoot.
Do students make mistakes in MFL due to a misconception? I'm not so sure. It is either vocabulary they don't know, or a rule they have forgotten to apply - a misconception would be a rule applied incorrectly, or dismissed as not relevant to the context.
I suspect this aspect of the lesson is where most learning might be lost - a simple correction would be best, with explanation as to why the correction is needed. There is probably no added benefit in identifying who needed the knowledge - those who got it wrong already know, and the teacher is only going to ask one of them, so this is not an efficient use of time.
'Tell my why that is wrong' might be a winner, as some of the correct responses will be lucky guesses, and anything that makes students think hard is likely to lead to better learning. This would still therefore be a random selection of students to ask.
Let me know if anyone sets up such an experiment - I would learn a lot from the answer.
Thanks Phil, using it that way, to diagnose the class sounds very efficient and I completely agree with you. Thanks for your really thought provoking and informative comment too.
As usual, I think we agree and I am maybe guilty of over-simplifying my example.
What I found relevant and worth sharing with my colleague's use of Kahoot was the way it provided him with some immediate sense of how many students had answered correctly or incorrectly to steer his upcoming teaching in that lesson. He and the students were not really interested in the league table and it struck me that it allowed him to, in effect, 'cold-call' the whole class at once by displaying the question then interrogating some of the answers without necessarily exposing individual students - for example one question was answered incorrectly by the majority - enabling him to correct and engage the students who had answered correctly to assist in this. Perhaps more a common misapplication rather than a misconception then.
It was formative therefore where every other time I've seen this used it has been summative.
The relevance to your thread was that whilst I didn't think I would have the discipline or need to keep Didau-style annotations, I thought it provided the teacher a more concrete analysis of what was known/not known on which to base his planning - as you say, better than cold-calling an individual would.
He wasn't considering Kahoot in terms of motivating students but as a tool - to simplify his own mental register annotating. It was 5 minutes pre register that I felt was very purposeful...and completely different to how I've seen this tool used previously. It struck me he gained a lot of useful info, quickly and efficiently without needing to do anything other than 'do it'.
Hi Dom, just an FYI really.
I always say to our ITTs and ECTs that making use of the info we get from cold-calling is one of the trickiest things to master...and I tend to agree with you that the simpler the better...I've never been any good at cross-referencing notes etc. So I agree that just doing it well and often is enough.
But I've also just observed a colleague (MFL) using Cahoot as an opening activity to establish what students know and tackle misconceptions. He'd carefully constructed the questions of course but then used the answers to structure the cold-calling "who put that answer?...what did you do wrong there?...tell me why that's wrong...", etc.
Possibly how everyone else is already using this particular tool but I tend to see it used to review not frame learning. We've shared it in school - just thought it might be useful
Hi Phil,
This is the danger of having opinions which aren't tested against evidence of impact. As always, I have an opinion which could be completely wrong - only measurement will tell us for sure.
So, yes, you could be 100% right - and there is clearly a brilliant rationale for this.
Kahoot is motivating, because you get a score and a league table. Set against that, it is slow compared to cold calling - questions take time and answers are not quickly revealed. It may be that students take care when answering questions, rather than just guessing, as their scores are displayed. Or it may be that only the top 20% of the class do this, as they are the only ones who know they will do well.
I would love to run an experiment - 6 weeks of fast paced cold call questions 10 minutes each lesson vs the same time with Kahoot.
Do students make mistakes in MFL due to a misconception? I'm not so sure. It is either vocabulary they don't know, or a rule they have forgotten to apply - a misconception would be a rule applied incorrectly, or dismissed as not relevant to the context.
I suspect this aspect of the lesson is where most learning might be lost - a simple correction would be best, with explanation as to why the correction is needed. There is probably no added benefit in identifying who needed the knowledge - those who got it wrong already know, and the teacher is only going to ask one of them, so this is not an efficient use of time.
'Tell my why that is wrong' might be a winner, as some of the correct responses will be lucky guesses, and anything that makes students think hard is likely to lead to better learning. This would still therefore be a random selection of students to ask.
Let me know if anyone sets up such an experiment - I would learn a lot from the answer.