Key Stage 3 Revision from Education Quizzes

Jan. 11, 2011 - PRLog -- This new resource has brought together the knowledge of teachers with the skills of innovative website designers.  The result provides KS3 students with revision that is different, efficient and enjoyable.

Colin King said “We knew from our previous experience developing quiz websites that we could put together a site that students would enjoy using.  At the same time we recognized that the subject matter would have to be carefully chosen by teachers.  The question was how to persuade teachers to come on board.  To test the water we placed advertisements for KS3 teacher/quiz writers and we were delighted when we were overwhelmed with offers of help.   It became evident that the effectiveness of quizzes for revision was well recognized and it has been a real joy working with the enthusiastic teachers we employed”.

High priority within the design brief for the new website was to make it easy to navigate; as another director, Andy Lawson, explained “Eleven to fourteen year olds are not renowned for their patience”!   The development team employed a “Two click” approach – wherever a student is within the site they can access any of the 500 plus quizzes with just two mouse clicks.  A typical list of quizzes (in this case the English section) can be found at http://www.educationquizzes.com/ks3-english/5/title/next-...

Each quiz is prefixed with a short introduction to the ten questions which follow. Teachers were keen to point out that students in years 7 to 9 (the KS3 age group) are often grappling to understand the concepts of the subject matter and a few friendly words of encouragement are all that is required to persuade the students to delve deeper into a quiz.

Every quiz question has four multiple choice answers and a feature of the site is that students are instantly informed whether or not they have chosen the correct answer.  Extensive research has shown that nothing irritates an online quiz player more than having to wait to know whether he/she answered correctly.  At Education Quizzes “Instant gratification” is very much the name of the game.

To address the issue of short attention spans of youngsters, two different methods of playing the quizzes have been developed.  These are best explained by actually playing a quiz the two different ways.  You might like to visit http://www.educationquizzes.com/ks3-science/acids-and-alk...  where you will find the Science – Acids and Alkalis quiz with which you can experiment.  You will see that several questions are augmented by a “Helpful comment” that helps clarify a particular point or offers a brief explanation, all of which helps to consolidate classroom learning.  

For each individual subscriber the website automatically creates and displays a record of the dates when quizzes are played and the scores attained.   In addition, each quiz can be easily and quickly printed for offline use.

Each of the twelve main sections contain quizzes that can be played free of charge.  The remainder of the quizzes can be accessed on payment of an annual subscription costing £10.00 for an individual user or £2.00 per KS3 student when they are subscribed by their school.  Full details can be found at http://www.educationquizzes.com/

Teachers will find that Education Quizzes are readily adopted by industrious KS3 students and at the same time the quizzes provide a way of engaging with those students who display a preference for a computer terminal rather than pen and paper!

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Education Quizzes provide an interactive website that specifically targets learning at the Key Stage 3 level. Quizzes are available in the 12 main curriculum subjects including English, Maths and Science.