When strategy and schoolwork combine, students exude an enthusiasm for learning that is truly unmatched! Kahoot!’s new game experience, Tallest Tower, amplifies awesome learning through collaboration – for students of all dynamics and demographics. Armed with lesson goals and curriculum standards, Kahoot! Ambassadors presented Tallest Tower to their students, across both primary classrooms and university levels. Read on for insight and inspiration from Kahoot! Ambassadors and learn how to bring the newest game mode to your own classroom!
Each of the game mode variations on Kahoot! provide for an engaging and interactive player experience! Tallest Tower, specifically, prompts a team-focused, collaborative learning experience. Here’s how:
- Players join from independent devices and are randomly assigned and arranged into up to three different teams.
- Students are prompted with questions from a kahoot, pre-selected by a teacher, facilitator, or host.
- Individuals complete questions at their own pace and cadence, and are presented with prompts in a randomized and repeated pattern.
- After a series of correctly answered questions, players arrange building blocks to construct new levels of a growing skyscraper. Watch out! A tyrant monster makes their way to the game screen, crushing building levels.
- The team to construct the most levels and build the tallest tower wins! Individual players are also recognized for the most correctly answered questions and highest towers built.
Intuitive instructional goals
Instructional time is precious – utilizing classroom conversations to impact both curricular and collaborative goals is both efficient and effective! The gameplay on Tallest Tower is intuitive and accessible for students, and minimal time is needed to convey strategy components and gameplay processes. Liubov Melnyk, a middle school educator in Ukraine, shared: “The children understood the strategy of the game easily. The difficulty was in the questions themselves for some children.” Tallest Tower gameplay provides a mechanism to convey and present classroom content. In doing so, students engage in a collaborative and gamified learning experience, without detracting from lesson goals and curricular content. The translation from gameplay and instruction is seamless and obvious, ensuring instructional time remains aligned to standards and goals!
#KahootTip Game mode adaptations support both rote and complex curricular goals. May Versoza, of the Philippines, presented mathematics principles in two variations: arithmetic sequences and complex, multi-step word problems. The self-paced format of game modes allowed students to engage with the content at a speed and cadence appropriate to their skillset!
Build beyond booksmarts
The concept of ‘build’ stems across gameplay and curriculum! As students build high-reaching levels of their towers, players are also building curriculum and collaboration goals! Adam Radetić, a high school teacher, shared that the essence of ‘build’ extends to the sequence of lesson planning, too, as students build their experience and acclimation to content goals: “It’s a fast, team building game, with a hint of cooperation and communication. [Tallest Tower is] good for the beginning of the class, like warming up, and develops critical thinking and fast information processing.”
Formative fun and collaboration
Андрій Зінченко explains Tallest Tower as an integral element of interactive teaching! With his high school students, Tallest Tower is “an engaging and effective way to promote learning, teamwork, and friendly competition. The use of a physical tower-building element adds a unique and interactive aspect to the game, which can make it more exciting and memorable for participants. Additionally, the use of questions to earn building blocks can incentivize learning and help reinforce key concepts or information.” Throughout gameplay, players are presented with questions in a repeated, cyclical format. The re-presentation of classroom content cements new skills and further perpetuates content readiness and acquisition from live learning and beyond.
Tallest Tower couples content and curriculum with awesome engagement and gameplay. In the latest game mode from Kahoot!, players are tasked with both instructional and strategy decision-making, prompting skills for 21st century learners! Try Tallest Tower, and other interactive game modes, with Kahoot!+ Premier.
