Using Boom Cards for Digital Learning

Whether you are teaching in person or online, Boom Cards ™ are a wonderful way to engage your students. They are digital, interactive, and fun for students. As a teacher, you will appreciate that they are easy to use, provide reports about student responses, and help students get extra practice with key concepts.

What are Boom Cards?

Boom Cards are digital slides with practice activities. In many ways Boom Cards are very similar to paper task cards. However, Boom Cards are interactive and have a game-like feeling. Most decks have 20-30 cards. They can include multiple choice, drag and drop, or fill-in responses. They also provide instant feedback and offer reports for teachers.

All of the Boom Card activities are hosted on the Boom Learning™ website. There are free and paid account options available (ranging from $15 to $35 per year for one teacher).

You can create your own card decks or purchase decks created by other teachers. There are also plenty of free and paid card decks to choose from.

There are two ways for students to access and play the cards.

You can set up a student username and password for each student in your class. This allows you to access reports about student responses.

Sometimes there are situations where you don’t want your students to worry about remembering another account name and password. For those times, you can create a Fast Pin. This is a 14-day temporary code that will allow anyone with the link to access and play the Boom Card deck. It’s important to note that because students are not logged in with the Fast Pin, it does not create a report with student progress.

Why Use Boom Cards?

Boom Cards are a fun way for students to practice important skills. Practice is highly engaging, yet it can be done independently.

They are easy to set up and assign. You can choose to assign the whole deck, or just part of it. You can select the specific cards you want to include or exclude.

Students love using them and ask for more. They may say, “Can I do more Boom Cards?” But I hear, “Can I please spend more time practicing beginning blends?”

Many card decks include audio instructions and supports. This is great for beginning readers.

Students get instant feedback to know if their answers are correct. They then have a chance to go back and change their answers.

As a teacher, you can get reports about student responses. This helps you monitor progress and adjust your teaching.

Using Boom Cards in the Classroom

You can use Boom Cards for a whole class activity or for individual practice.

To do a whole class activity, simply open the deck that you want to play and project it onto your SmartBoard or interactive screen so that everyone can see and participate. Your students can take turns going to the board to complete the activity. They may need to click a button with the correct answer or drag and drop movable pieces.

Because Boom Cards can be done individually, they are perfect for center time!  Once you teach students how to access their decks, they will be able to work on them on their own. They get engaging practice to build skills while you are able to focus your attention on working with other students.

Using Boom Cards for Distance Learning

As we adapt to distance learning, it’s important to have good tools to make it work well. I’m happy to have discovered Boom Cards because they work very well for distance learning!

They can be used on most devices (computer, laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc.). Your students will simply need to have access to the internet.

You can assign card decks to your students by sending a link using Google Classroom, Seesaw, email, etc. Remember, you can have students log in with a username and password so you get the report, or you can simply share a fast pin link (no report, but anyone can use it without logging in).

You may want to use Boom Cards for a whole class lesson during a virtual morning meeting. To do this you can access the card deck from your computer and share your screen with your students. They can then take turns responding to the questions. 

How Can I Get Started with Boom Cards?

To get started with Boom Cards, visit the Boom Learning website. You can try out any card deck by clicking on the preview. The preview feature allows you to try 4 slides from any card deck.

You can find Boom Cards from Polliwog Place on both Boom Learning and on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Get a complete card deck to try for free. Download my free Counting Cupcakes Boom Card Deck to practice counting with ten frames.

Final Thoughts About Using Boom Cards

Boom cards are a fun and easy way to provide students with meaningful practice for the skills they need. They are perfect for both in class and distance learning.