Teacher Tam's Educational Adventures: 2017

WHAT ARE BOOM CARDS™?

Boom Cards™ are one of the coolest things I've seen in a while! They can be thought of as mini apps or digital task cards. AND they are created by teachers! You can even purchase an Ultimate membership ($25 per year) and make them yourself! Each deck has a certain number of cards, tasks, or questions (usually 20) for the student to complete. Decks have already been created for a wide variety of subjects, including math, reading, phonics, science, social studies, and more! They work on interactive white boards, desktops, iPads, tablets, and even your phone! So, they can be practiced in a large group format, then individually.

The decks come in different formats. Some are multiple choice, some are drag and drop, while others include fill-in-the-blanks or have multiple correct answers. I love how this provides teachers with many options for helping students practice different subjects, while offering the students unique ways to interact with the material. You can even add sounds so that students can have the directions or sight words read to them.

MY FAVORITE BOOM CARDS™ FEATURES

I have been using Boom Cards with my kindergarten class for a couple of months now. Here are the features I love:

1) Students can practice content that exactly matches our curriculum! Right now, they are working on making numbers 11-20, identifying sight words, counting objects, and beginning addition.

2) I can add my own sounds! I use this feature to add an icon for students to click when they need to hear the directions. I also use it to ask students to find specific sight words. The possibilities are endless!

3) Since the content is digital, I can use as much color as I want . . . and give absolutely no thought to how much ink it will use! So I add photos for the backgrounds to make them interesting and artwork from the best clipart artists around. I can add so many things to make the cards more engaging and fun!

4) Students can practice at home! No more summer slide!!! You can send the link, username, and password home for each student. This makes it easy and fun for students to work on academic skills over school breaks!

5) You can assign decks to the whole class or individual students! This is huge! This way, I know that each student is working right at his/her instructional level.

6) BoomLearning.com is always improving! They are very busy getting feedback from teachers and creators. They are always adding new features and improving old ones. I love having new features to add to my decks!

FREE OFFER FROM BOOM LEARNING™!

Boom Cards™ are self-grading, DIGITAL resources. They live in the cloud. They can't be printed. They play on most modern browsers, Android, iPads, iPhones, and Kindle Fires. You open a Boom Learning account to play them (to protect the children). Create Fast Play pins to assign your Boom Cards™ to students.

If you are a new Boom Learning customer, when you redeem your Boom Cards™ purchase you get 90-day free trial of a premium account. When your trial ends, you can renew or move to a free account. You may upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time. Free accounts use purchased Boom Cards with Fast Play pins. Boom Learning also has premium accounts. Premium accounts offer advanced assignment tools, individual and whole class performance tracking, and more.

To read more about these offers on the Boom Learning site, CLICK HERE.

AND . . . CLICK HERE for more info on adding Boom Cards to Google Classroom(TM).

TRY BOOM CARDS FOR FREE!

There's no better way to see what Boom Cards™ are all about than to try them for yourself! Every deck on the site has a four-card preview. That way, you know exactly what you are getting. Or, download one of my FREE decks! Just click on the photos below to take a look! Download the freebie and click on the link in the resource.