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5 Ways to Poll Your Students
posted by: Melissa | March 20, 2018, 05:07 PM   

Interactivity is one of the keys to a good presentation and keeping students engaged with a lesson, which is probably one reason why you want to toss a poll into a presentation. Polls also provide an excellent way to get some formative assessment back from your students or to tailor your instruction to their needs.


So, if you want to include a quick poll into your lesson, how can you do it? Below, we list five methods for polling your students appropriate for different purposes, occasions, and questions.


Poll Everywhere: Poll Everywhere is created for audience participation in large groups. It’s web based and can be embedded into your Power Point or Google slides. Responses can be given via the internet or by texting. Responses can be designed to appear as charts or as word clouds. It also provides reports after the fact for further analysis. Built for large corporations, it allows for small polls of up to 40 responses for K-12 users for free.


Swift Polling: Like Poll Everywhere, Swift provides real-time audience polling that was designed for large participatory audiences and allows polls to be conducted via the web or text messaging. Unlike Poll Everywhere, Swift Polling does not have a K-12 specific pricing plan, but does allow for general free polls for up to 50 responses.


Kahoot: Kahoot has become increasingly popular in schools in recent years for its web-based learning games, but Kahoot is more than just fun and games. Kahoot can also be used to create a poll or survey using their discussion and survey Kahoot types. If your students are already familiar with Kahoot, or if you’ve been wanting to start implementing it into your classroom, this method is worth considering.


Socrative: Socrative is another program already in wide use in classes. Less gamey than Kahoot, it’s still designed to get feedback from students. Widely used for quizzes, it can also be used for quick polling questions and allows for questions to be set up on the fly. This is a good option if your students are already familiar with Socrative.


Plickers: What about the classroom that isn’t full of personal devices? Students are provided with a deck of cards that look like QR Codes and can represent various choices in the poll. When given a question, students hold up the appropriate card for their choice. The teacher can then scan the room using an app downloaded on their phone and be provided with immediate feedback. The cards are free to print out, but you can also buy a laminated set on Amazon.


How do you get feedback from your students?

Share below!


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