Fantastic, quick review game that engages all students!
Community Review for Blooket
My Take
Overall, I highly recommend Blooket for reviewing vocabulary and short math problems (i.e. fact fluency and one-step equations).
The free version is excellent, and the premium version only costs about $40 for an entire year. The premium version allows you to copy other sets in order to make changes, but you can favorite premade sets AND you can create your own sets in the free version! The premium version also allows you to access more in-depth information about exactly which questions students struggled with and which ones they aced, which is very helpful. The premium version also lets you play new game modes about 15 days before unpaid users can access it, which is nice but still allows teachers with the free versions to access those new game modes at a later date.
I have told every teacher I know about Blooket, to the point where I feel like a spokeswoman for the site (I'm not! I'm just a huge fan!). I use it in my own classroom nearly every single day. The variety and gamification piece of Blooket make my students excited to play it every day (there is enough variety that they don't get bored -- a huge issue for this generation of students!).
I have contacted the support team regarding tech issues, and they are always quick to get back to me and help me figure out any technical issues. I will say that I have not had a lot of tech issues, just one in January where some of my students couldn't log in with their Google account. Overall, the site runs very smoothly with very few problems.
If there was one thing I could change, I wish I could see student account names when looking at question data (as of 3/16/22, data shown after the game ends only shows nicknames -- unless students put their own name, it is impossible to know which student you are looking at). However, this tiny detail does not prevent me from seeing which questions the whole class struggled with and which were easier for them.
Overall, I highly encourage other teachers to use Blooket in their classrooms! Games can take as little as 5 minutes and are super engaging.
How I Use It
I use Blooket in my classroom as a way for students to practice math fact fluency, solve one-step equations, and reinforce vocabulary. Although the games are fast-paced, the games have enough of a random element so that even students who are not as quick to solve things can be competitive. Some reviews say Blooket promotes "stealing" or "sabotaging" to get ahead, but you can choose: a) to only play the games that do not have "stealing"; b) turn off the option for "glitches" (sabotage elements); or c) use those elements as a teaching tool (coping with failure, being a good winner and/or loser, fair play).
The Blooket team has added lots of game modes in the past year, some of which can only be played individually (assigned as homework via a link) which are great if you don't want students to "compete" against each other. In my experience, however, students love the competitive element and are very engaged by it!
There are a couple of game modes where you can show one question to the whole class (like Kahoot), only unlike Kahoot both the question and the answer choices show up on both the teacher's screen AND the students' screens. However, most game modes have each student working on problems on their own time and pace, randomizing the questions so students are all working on different ones. I really appreciate this aspect of Blooket, since students can work at their own pace and still be competitive even if they aren't the fastest worker.
Some reviews also mention the fact that the "top" student, or the winner, is not always the one who might deserve it due to "sabotages". For this reason, I don't reward based on what place students come in; I reward based on their individual percentage correct in the game (this percentage shows up at the end of every game for every student). For material they have just learned, I set the bar at 67% so students have an achievable percentage (about 2 correct out of every 3 questions). For things like math fact fluency, I set the bar at 80%. This works very well to motivate students to slow down and answer questions correctly so their own percentage is high. Don't get me wrong, they still want the top three spots at the end of the game, but this method works really well to reward students who work hard but don't "win" the game.
I purchased the premium version (about $40 for a whole year) so I could copy other sets and access in-depth proficiency data, which is very affordable for me, a classroom teacher, who uses it literally every day!
I will say that this platform only supports multiple-choice questions, much like Kahoot. However, I like this platform SO MUCH MORE than Kahoot, for various reasons (simplicity, much more engaging for students) that I have completely replaced any Kahoots with Blookets -- and even use Blooket much more than I ever used Kahoot!
Bottom line? I use this for vocabulary and SHORT math problems. I have tried to have students practice word problems in Blooket, but they get so competitive that they don't slow down and read more than one sentence of a word problem. I also appreciate how you can add a picture to any question, making it possible to have a picture of a math symbol and have students choose the math vocabulary word that goes with that symbol. Both my students and I LOVE Blooket!