5 Magical ways to make your quizzes POP!

Quizzes are a great way to test students’ knowledge, have fun, and get creative! They can be a great way to spark conversations with students when learning something new. 

Quizzes can also be a fun way to encourage a little healthy competition between students which has been proven to be very engaging for some students. 

They can even boost your students’ memory by helping them remember information that they have learned. 

So I think we can all agree that quizzes are a great way to have fun while learning. Well here’s five magical ways to make your quizzes POP, whether these quizzes are happening face to face or online!

1. Beat the Teacher

In Beat the Teacher, students need to be able to correctly answer questions in order to either move onto the next section of work or to get a longer break time.  This happens when the teacher asks the quiz questions and for every correct answer the students can then get additional time added onto their break.

2. Make the Right Move

In Make the Right Move, different parts of a room are allocated to be the answer destination.  For example, for a true or false question, students are told that the left side of the room is ‘true’ and to the right side is ‘false’.  

Then students are presented with the question and they need to make a decision about whether the statement is true or false.  They then need to move to that part of the room.

This is a really great way of energising a class that may have been sitting for a long period of time, and it brings some fun into having a quiz.  And Make the Right Move can be done online, where you have online students use the left and right parts of their room to move to, which they can demonstrate through their video. 

3. Chat Quiz Blitz

In Chat Quiz Blitz, students are given a question to answer via the Chat in a webinar or via some other instant messaging tool that students can access via their mobile phone.

However, instead of answering the question straight away, they write their answer in the Chat facility and then wait for the Teacher to say ‘Go’.  The teacher then allows enough time for the students to write their answers in Chat, then says ‘Go’.

Students then release their answers which all come in at once.  This allows students the time to think and prepare an answer and not be influenced by other people’s responses.

4. You be the quizzer

In You be the Quizzer, students watch a video, listen to some information or they read something, or some other passive learning, then they are required to prepare a question for their peers to answer.  

This can be done as a Chat Quiz Blitz quiz activity or students can get into small groups and ask each other their questions, or each student can ask the whole group their question.  This could even be a whiteboard brainstorming activity if in a webinar or other online collaborative tools via students’ mobiles.

5. quiz combo

The last, but not least, magical way to make your quizzes POP!, is called Quiz Combo, as this quiz activity combines a video with a quiz which students can participate as a homework or as an individual activity.  

For example, creating a video in Microsoft Stream or embedding a video into H5P, or Interactive Content in Moodle, then having different quiz questions placed throughout the videos, so the student watches the video and then the video stops and presents the student a question to answer, then the video moves on.

So if you use Microsoft Stream and then use Microsoft Forms to capture students’ responses then you actually have the students’ answers saved into Microsoft Forms.

It means students really need to concentrate on what they are watching to demonstrate that they comprehend what they have seen, and it helps students retain this learning as well.

This blog post was written and produced by Allison Miller, Director and Lead Consultant, Digital Capability

Join Allison's 'How to identify information that can be used to create assessment quiz questions' webinar on 28 February 2023 as part of Skills Education's Teacher Education program or purchase the recording.  Alternatively, enquire about Allison help you make your quizzes 'POP'!.