What are Boom Cards?

With all of the digital learning and remote learning, you may have heard of BOOM cards or Boom Decks… and you might be wondering, what are Boom cards? Should I be using them? Are they user-friendly and will they help me? I have the answers to your questions here!

WHAT ARE BOOM CARDS?

DIGITAL LEARNING INTERFACE

Boom takes traditional paper and pencil practice and brings it to a digital interface! Activities are gamified and kids don’t usually know they are learning! My second graders used to beg for me to get more and more decks for them to try!

On this type of card, students move a check mark, to their answer, click “submit” and get results immediately (along with a fun chime sound or “oops”)!

With this card, students simply click an answer to move on (no hitting submit)

One thing I like is kids don’t have to move an object 100% into the “drop zone” to have it count. BoomLearning had said about 50% works!

SELF-GRADING

Students get automatic feedback on how they did and a chance to try again!

Boom example, student gets answer correct

Here the student sees they got the answer correct once they hit “submit”!

On this card, the student made an error but can try again!

With this sight word practice card, she spelled use “ues” so Boom shows her the u is in the correct spot, but e and s were not, so she needs to try again.

YOU GET TEACHER DATA

You can get reports on all your students at once or just one or a few. You can look at reports on how they did on multiple decks. Boom also shows you how much time they spent on an activity , their score and how many times they have worked on that deck.

Here you see students on the left, and the right column shows how they did on a specific deck. The blank columns are because they have not done the other decks on this report. You can remove decks from a report and focus on just one.

MULTIPLE WAYS to ACCESS

You can have kids go the website or download and use the app which is on Google Play, the Apple App Store, and the Kindle Fire! They can also be used on Google Classroom! See this video to learn how.

POINTS not DOLLARS

Instead of using dollars to get a deck you use points. So for example, you load up your Boom account with $5 and get 400 points. Then, you can grab two 200 point decks or a 300 point deck and save your extra 100 points in your account for next time.

ON BOOMLEARNING OR TPT

You can either purchase Boom Decks from Teachers Pay Teachers (you will get a code to use to redeem your deck) or right On BoomLearning. Your choice!

SO MUCH YOU CAN DO

You can assign decks to your entire class. You can assign a deck to just a few students. I used this to assign challenges and reviews to some of my second graders.

Here you see that you can assign a deck to individual student, get a report on his work, change his password, and more!

You can find and grab free BOOM decks. Sorting your library into folders is a helpful option too. You can hide decks from students or have them visible. You can give them assignments or let them explore.

You can also hide decks or cards from certain students or your whole class.

My Boom Decks:
(On Teachers Pay Teachers)

2D Shapes Geometry
3D Shapes Geometry
Comparing Numbers (Greater than/ Less than)
First Grade Sight/Trick Words
Second Grade Sight / Trick Words
Subtraction Facts Practice -1, -2, -3
Subtraction Facts Practice -4, -5, -6
Subtraction Facts Practice -7, -8, -9

So know you know the answer to what are BOOM cards? With all of the options, there really is no reason not to try BOOM cards! What is your favorite thing about using them?