Plickers App Review + Tips for Use in Kindergarten

Plickers is a fantastic app that is fun and fast formative assessment tool for your classroom! The description on iTunes says that it 'lets you poll your class for free without the need for individual student devices.' Basically, you print their Plickers cards and give each one to a student. You then ask them a question and the student turns his/her card so that the correct answer choice (A, B, C, or D) is facing up. You then scan the class as they are holding up the cards and the app 'reads' each card quickly and immediately calculates the data into either a graph or individual student form. We had a lot of fun with it today....but had a few learning curves along the way! I will share with you some tips we discovered but first here is how it to get started:

-Using your computer go to plickers.com  and sign up (I prefer to do this part online although you can do it through the mobile app)

-Create a class and input your student's names, assigning each student to a number

Plickers cards have funny shaped black
boxes with each side labeled with A,B,C,D

-Print the Plickers cards. They have funny looking black boxes on them and letters on each side. The funny looking black box is how the app reads each students response. Each card has a number on them, so make sure to match the students to their correct numbers when handing out the cards. We laminated ours for durability. We also added larger A,B,C,Ds to the cards and used a color for each one (all the As were red, Bs were blue) to help my early readers.

-Create questions within your Plickers account ahead of time. You can do either multiple choice (1-4 answers) or true/false. For my purposes today I wanted to see if they could categorize what would be used either then or now, so I just created one question 'When was this from' and answer A=Then B=Now. I wasn't looking to collect individual student data on each question so I only made one and just reset the results from the question each time I asked it again (as I displayed a new then/now image for each question)

-Then just jump in! Hand out the cards and ask away! It is pretty neat to be able to see the results happening right away. The students had fun watching the graph go up and also enjoyed checking their name to see if they got it right!

TIPS

It worked best to hold the cards in front of our faces

I LOVE trying out new technology with students! Not only is it exciting to see what they can do with it and how that alters from what I plan for/envision, but it is great for them to be apart of the learning process. Think about it, how often to children get to genuinely watch adults learn? To witness us hitting roadblocks and processing through them is a HUGE teachable moment and helps them view us teachers as more humane like and provide them with modeling of real life skills. Please, don't ever hesitate to try out new technology tools in front of students solely because you are embarrassed or concerned you will mess up. Let them see you take a risk and possibly mess up, it creates such a great climate in your classroom I promise!

So here are some quick pointers that I picked up today using Plickers in Kindergarten:
-Talk about how to hold the cards. I was fortunate enough to have my magnificent media specialist, Jenny, come in to co-teach the lesson and I forgot this part as I was giving directions. This was my first time ever using Plickers and I didn't think about how it was important to specify using 2 hands and to not block the black box.

Try to scan with a newer iOS device
if you are having trouble.

-Use a newer iOS device. We started the Plickers assessment scanning the cards with my iPad. It is an iPad 2 and I think that for whatever reason that didn't work as well, only reading about 1/2 of the cards. We tried a newer device and that seemed to help.

-Use clipboards. My kinderkiddos wiggle. A lot. So it was difficult to read the Plickers cards as they were moving around quite a bit. Using clipboards helped keep the cards flat and made it easier to scan.

-Specify where to hold them. We tried in front of our chest, we tried over our heads and finally we settled on in front of our faces to be the best place to hold the cards so that we could scan them.

Don't be afraid to readjust seating to
help with scanning the Plickers cards!

-Seating makes a difference. We started with everyone facing the SmartBoard and us, sitting in rows. We realized that we were having to get closer to the cards to help scan them to work and sitting in rows didn't work well for that. So we decided to move to a circular sitting arrangement. This helped as I was easily able to walk around and scan quicker and more safely. Plus it helped reduce some of our wiggle bodies!

-Be prepared for some to not scan. We were still having issues with a few of the cards as we went. We also had a lag behind what we saw on the iOS device's screen and the online live view that we were displaying. We tried waiting it out but for some reason some of the times it didn't work. Frustrating but I'm thinking there is something there that I'm missing. We'll see.

-Simplify your questions. I was displaying pictures that we also used in a paper cut and paste sort and the students had to say if it was from then or from now. When I would ask the question it got very wordy and confusing for some of my students, especially my EL students. In hindsight I would just ask, 'Do we use this now?' and have it be a true/false answer since we have worked on that format throughout the year and the students understand what that means. I wasn't able to solely test the content of the questions as some were confused by the format. But with more practice and fine tuning I think we will quickly catch on!

Displaying both the question &
 the Plickers results in graph form

-Use the split screen to display both the student's responses and the quiz you are doing. They LOVE watching it and is good assessment practice!

-I wish Plickers allowed you to add images to the questions and answers in their quizzes. You can easily create a quiz in Google forms and have them answer A,B,C, or D that way, but sometimes it is nice just to go to one place for everything.

-I didn't use the data collection piece so I can't speak to that. But I have it in my lesson plans to try Plickers again next week! I will let you know how that goes!

Overall, I am a fan on Plickers! Some fine tuning that needs to be done, but it is well worth it to just jump in and try it out! Please let me know if you have used it in Kindergarten or elsewhere! Would love any tips or tricks that you may have for it!

Try Plickers today to add some fun
 to your formative assessments!