If you are like me, you are always looking for something that will engage your math students.  What will keep them thinking, but also learning?  Is it possible to have them beg to continue playing??

This happened to me the other day in my high school math class.  It was driving me nuts that my students STILL didn't know their convenient trig values (sin 30˚, cos π, etc, etc).  We were headed into the AP test and reviewing some integral problems.  It came down to the end of the problem and the kids needed to know what the cos π was to finish the problem.  Sadly, I still had kids asking if the cos π was √2/2.  Ugh!!

That night I was listening to a podcast and I heard about a new game called Gimkit.  Matt Miller from Ditch That Textbook called it similar to Kahoot, but with PowerUps.  COOL!

Gimkit is similar to Kahoot, but there are some differences as well.

One difference {that the kids love} is that you can buy powerups to help you up your score and to try to get higher on the Leader Board.  There's nothing better than being in first place!  Here is a screenshot of the "shop" on Gimkit.  Students can buy a PowerUp to increase the amount of money that will be gained or lost per question, increase the amount of money that you get in a streak, multiply the amount of money that you get, or buy insurance in case you get an answer wrong.


Another difference is that the questions appear on the students' screens and not on a big screen.  On the big screen, you can see how much money everyone has in the game at any given time.


Students can also be given the game as an assignment instead of a game that must be played in the classroom with all of the other students.


And, by the way, GimKit was made by a high school student!  Do you want to know more about it?  Check out their website.  Gimkit


Subscribe to get more ideas!

One of the biggest problems I have encountered lately in my math classroom is that students simply aren't reading the problem.  Stude...