Wanna know how to make Boom learning cards to engage your students into learning? You’ve come to the right place. Making Boom cards is super easy and really fun and they can enhance your lessons in various ways. I use them all the time in all my five grade levels and they are great for all of them. Let me tell you how to create them!
Wanna try one for free to see what Boom cards even are? Grab this one on Shapes!
What is Boom Learning?
Boom Learning is a platform that hosts decks of digital task cards in any school subject you can think of, and for any topic your students need to master. They are made by teachers such as yourself and shared either for free or for a small fee. A Boom deck can be assigned to a group of students, or to individuals. You can play them in class, or set them as homework.
Such a virtual deck of cards for students is also usually self-checking, so students can see their own progress live and make any adjustments they need to advance to the next card. There are two ways you can assign the cards. You can assign them in Fastplay, which means you can’t see any results when students are done, and students only play them for themselves. In Hyperplay, however, you will be able to see the results afterwards, even for individual students.
How to make Boom cards?
Now let me give you a short Boom tutorial. Boom lets you make cards live on its platform. Once you have gone to Make Decks and selected + New Deck, you can start building. On the template card you can select a background that you’ll then add to all following cards. You can select a picture as a background, or make it a certain color. In the menu bar on the left, you’ll find all the parts you can add to the card: text, an image, a multiple choice answer box, a fill-in-the-blank box, a sound file, and a video. There are other options too, but these are the most basic ones.
Now what is a boom card other than a card with a task on it, a task card? So when you start creating them, you should have a task in mind. I use my Boom cards to ask questions about vocabulary, or about grammar. For vocabulary, I would ask such questions as: ‘What are those flat green things on the branches of trees called? They turn brown in autumn.’ And then I will give students either multiple choice options, or a fill in one, so that they can tell me the answer is ‘leaves’.
Drag and drop options
I’ll drag the Text option in the left blue menu bar into the card and write the question I want to ask in that. I place it near the top of the card, and then I can change the font however I like. Next, I’ll drag the multiple choice option or the fill-in-the-blank option into the card and place it how I want it. I’ll fill in the possible answers as well. For the multiple choice ones, I have to mark the correct answer as ‘correct’ and the wrong ones as ‘wrong’ in the top right corner. For the fill-in-the-blank ones, I have to click the box itself and enter all the possible correct answers.
I can adjust the font on everything, and the color settings too. I’ll do that in the blue menu on the right, and the gray one at the top of the card.
Pictures
One more option I like to use, especially for language teaching, is the multiple choice picture option. It’s the Multi-Picts option in the left blue menu bar, and after I drag it onto the card, I have to choose the pictures from my files. I can upload any pictures I like, or buy them from Boom learning. When I use this option, students will choose what picture matches the prompt I give them in a Text box. You can also just add one picture to the boom card, and ask a question about that. So many options!
Teachers Pay Teachers Boom cards
If you don’t want to make them yourself, you can buy or grab for free many decks of Boom cards from other teachers on Teachers Pay Teachers as well as the Boom Learning platform. They are easy to get and you can use them straight away. Other teachers have saved my lessons more than once.. But I also make them myself when I can’t find what I need. My store on TpT is here, and my Boom Learning store is over here. I’d love for you to check out if you can use anything!
Or grab a free one to check them out!
Other articles on Boom cards:
5 reasons why I love Boom cards for my students
How to use Boom cards to improve your students’ language skills
