How to Customize Decks on Boom Learning

Boom Cards from Boom Learning are an excellent tool for teaching a world language! Students can practice with text, vocabulary, and images in a digital flash card format. You can also use decks from other people and customize decks on Boom Learning before giving them to your students! Let’s look at how why you might want to, and how to do it!

Curious about Boom Cards? Check out my other posts on them here!

• What are Boom Cards?
• What can you do with Boom Cards?
• 10 Reasons to try Boom Cards in your Language Classroom
• Using Boom Cards with Google Classroom

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Why customize decks on Boom Learning?

Some decks offer a lot of variety! Because you can do so much with Boom Cards, you might have a set include reading, vocabulary matching, writing, and listening all in one. You could hide all but a certain skill before assigning it to students and make it a listening assignment only.

Several decks are larger than the default 20 card play. You could hide all but 20 cards to create a bank of questions, then unhide them to make a brand new assignment!

You could also use this trick to create a review and assessment! Hide one half of a deck for a review assignment, then swap hidden/unhidden to assign an assessment.

How to Hide Cards in your Deck

1. Sign into your Boom Learning account
2. Go to your Library
3. Find the deck you want to customize
4. Click Action
5. Select Hide Cards from the menu that appears
6. Navigate through the deck, clicking “Hide card” on any cards you would like to hide from student play.
7. To undo, follow the same steps, but select “Unhide Card”

Make Boom Decks Work Harder for You

Here’s the deal. You don’t need ten new resources when you can make one deck do the heavy lifting. Customizing Boom Cards means you’re in control of exactly what students see, and when. Want to focus only on vocabulary? Hide everything else. Teaching listening skills this week? Trim it down to the cards that feature audio. Your deck becomes a laser-focused activity instead of a one-size-fits-none.

And this isn’t just about cutting. You can grow with it too. Start with the basics at the beginning of the week, then unhide more complex cards as your students build confidence. It’s like giving your resources superpowers without adding to your prep time. Teacher win.

Customize for Review, Assessment, or Just a Fresh Twist

Sometimes you want to review. Other times, you want to check what they know. Boom customization makes both easy. Take the same deck and play it two totally different ways. For example, hide half the cards for practice. Then switch it up and assign the other half later for a quick assessment. No need to reinvent the wheel. Just rotate it.

And let’s not forget about those longer decks that seem a bit too much for one sitting. Cut them down to a bite-sized set of five or ten questions and you’ve just created the perfect exit ticket. Quick, effective, and actually fun for students to complete.

You’re not stuck with the deck as-is. You’re the one in charge. That’s what makes Boom Learning so powerful. Flexible tools in the hands of creative teachers? That’s the magic.

Why Customize Number of Cards Played

Some decks have 50-60 cards! The default play is 20 and it draws from the “bank” of cards automatically. If you want to, you can increase or decrease the number of cards played.

This might be nice if you don’t want students to play through 20, or if you wanted to do a quick exit ticket of 5-10 questions.

You could also give students a larger assignment than the default of 20, but something to keep in mind is that they may grow fatigued if the assignment is too long!

How to Customize Decks on Boom Learning

1. Sign into your Boom Learning account
2. Go to your Library
3. Find the deck you want to customize
4. Click Action
5. Select “Custom Play Settings”
6. Select the settings you prefer!

I hope these tips are helpful for you!

I hope these examples give you some great ideas to think about what you can do with Boom Cards. Let me know if you use or will use either of these tricks!

You can also click here to see my digital task cards available in a mega bundle! Remember, a bundle allows you to save 20% off the total price and gives you tons of ready-made options to use with your students.

Like the idea, but you’re not sure? Click here to go to my library of Boom Cards and try out a whole bunch of different sets!