How Kahoot! Can Engage Students In The Classroom (Written by a Kahoot! Certified Educator with Examples)

In this post, I write about how teachers, specifically high school English and Humanities teachers, can use the Kahoot! platform to enhance their lessons and engage students.

I use Kahoot! in the high school classroom as a formative assessment. It's a fun way to start a lesson, end a lesson, review for a test, or drum up a bit of healthy competition. Find my Kahoot! profile here! 

What is Kahoot!?

Engaging students in the classroom can be challenging in a world where educational content is increasingly delivered online. Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform that makes it easy to create, play, and share learning games.

Kahoot! is a gamified quiz platform — it can be used for any purpose where there is a question and an answer, making it perfect for teachers and trivia masters at your local pub or family trivia nights.

Who Started Kahoot!

Kahoot! was created by Johan Brand, Jamie Brooker, and Morten Versvik in Oslo, Norway. The quiz is based on research by Professor Alf Inge Wang and his colleagues at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). 

What makes Kahoot! so enticing is that it's fun to use — and people can join Kahoot! with any device connected to the Internet. The platform takes the power of the question and couples it with competition, points, sound effects — and more.

How Van Kahoot! Be Used in the Classroom?

Sample of a Kahoot game in action.

Kahoot! is a great way to engage students in the classroom, especially in the humanities. Games can be played on any topic, and there is a vast library of existing games to choose from. You can also create your own games.

Kahoot! is not just for high school students – it can be used in any classroom or course. It is also a great way to study for exams or to review for a test.

If you are a teacher, you can use Kahoot! to create engaging educational content for your students. If you are a student, you can use Kahoot! to study for your courses or review exams. Either way, Kahoot! is a great way to learn.

The Benefits of Using Kahoot! in the Classroom

I am teaching my Eighth grade English Language Arts students a unit on Plato's Allegory of the Cave. It's a popular lesson I sell on Teachers Pay Teachers and on Amazon Ignite! I even have a free version. In the lesson, we wonder about Plato's view of reality; the essential question is, what is real? 

What teachers have said about my digital educational resources:

Love this product! Very thought-provoking. I used this distance learning with students in zoom class.

— Aron H. 

Creating a Kahoot! Course for Plato's Allegory of the Cave

Kahoot! Courses are a fantastic way to organize
gamified activities around a singular topic
— here is one I made on Plato's Cave. Check it out. 

I aligned sixteen different Kahoots to our learning objectives. The lesson plan came first — the intellectual work was the most challenging- putting it together. So with Kahoot! I was able to make a course based on all of my hard work. And voilà. It has made the unit so much more engaging for my students! 

How to get started with Kahoot! in the classroom

Kahoot! is free to start — and if you like it and want to create and access more sophisticated content, Kahoot! has several different-priced tiered plans.

Full disclosure — I am a verified creator on the Kahoot! Marketplace.

PDF Copy for Printing

Teach Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with a Digital Educational Download from Stones of Erasmus

If you want to teach philosophy to young people, start with some of Plato's myths, as recounted in his book The Republic. The most potent myth from Plato is the Allegory of the Cave. It's such a vivid metaphor for illustrating a specific type of search for truth — that your students will get it right away and not only enjoy reading the source material with you, but they'll surprise you with their takes on the narratives and connections to the real world.

Download the digital resource on TpT, Amazon, or Made By Teachers!

If you want to teach philosophy to young people, use this lesson plan that introduces students to Plato’s theory of reality. I was inspired to create this resource when I retold the story of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (from The Republic) in plain language. In this story, Plato imagines a world where one man wakes up and questions what is real and not real. Have your students read this story with you, and use my handy dandy comprehension questions and discussion activities to lead your students to examine Plato’s metaphysical thinking. 

*This resource is optimized for distance learning. The product includes an editable Google Docs link. Modify this resource for use on Google Classroom and other classroom management sites*

This resource includes the following features:

Essential Question: How do I know what is really real?

• The text of the story is included in this resource.

• The story is retold from the source material in easy-to-understand English. Great for a class read-and-share. Or, have students pair-read the text and then have a whole-class discussion.

• 15 reading comprehension questions

• Useful for homework. To flip the classroom — assign the reading before you plan to discuss and have students complete the reading comprehension questions beforehand.

• 6 Discussion Questions

• Perfect for group work or a carousel activity — get your kids moving while discussing Plato!

• 1 Chart to Explain Plato’s Two-World Theory 

• Useful graphic organizer to understand Plato’s worldview

• An answer key for both comprehension and discussion questions

• Suggested Lesson Plan 

• With more ideas and instructions on how to use this resource

• Bibliography

• I use the bibliography as a further reading resource for my students. Assign your curious scholars a research assignment or have students do projects based on books, links, and other material related to Plato they may find interesting or exciting.

Suggested Uses:

1. Humanities Course on Ancient Greece

2. World History Course on the History of Ideas 

3. Literature Course

4. Ethics Course — See how I used this resource in an Ethics class with 8th graders!

5. Introduction to Philosophy Course

6. Student Advisory Course on Drug and Alcohol Abuse 

7. A Lesson on Truth

8. A lesson on Appearance and Reality

Discover More of My Philosophy in the Classroom Series 

• Free: Five Resources to Get Young People Thinking About Ethics and Moral Decision-Making
• Want Google Forms with your Plato? — get it here.
• See companion lesson "The Ring of Gyges" - on the uses and misuses of justice from Plato's Republic. 
• 5-product Philosophy in the Classroom bundle — Includes this resource plus Ring of Gyges, Nietzsche, Empiricism and Rationalism, and an activity to Discuss any Moral Problem.

PDF Copy for Printing