Recent updates
This article was updated in March 2025.
Boom Cards offers a simple digital platform that is highly adaptable to help students work on progressing their skills in many areas.
Since cards are highly adaptable, the tool can work with a wide range of number- and letter-based creations to help challenge students.
Boom Cards are interactive lessons and activities built by educational professionals, and are often self-grading. All that makes it a powerful platform for learning, and particularly targets specials needs, specific subjects, and those who prefer to learn alone.
Read on to find out everything you need to know about Boom Cards.
What's New in Boom Cards?
The Boom Passport is worth a look for educators as this bundle together a lot of the best resources for easy access. That includes more than 75,000 decks, standards-based alignments, data from growth, admin access, and more.
Boom Learning News features regular updates, lessons and activities, and features dedicated to various ways to integrate Boom Cards into your teaching.
What is Boom Cards?
Boom Cards is a free-to-use platform with lessons and activities, featuring paid options for upper levels that cover most subjects and grades. This is a great way to get students engaged in card-based learning while also staying totally paperless.
The platform is purely online so it can be accessed from digital devices, via a web browser. It is also available in app format for both iOS and Android devices. Accordingly, it has been optimized to work on both smartphones and tablets.
Since the cards are self-marking, students can easily submit answers and get feedback right away. This makes it a great resource for self-taught learning during which students work either in the classroom or at home. Since the assessment is shared with teachers, it's possible to keep an eye on progress.
How does Boom Cards work?
Boom Cards is easy to sign up for and begin using right away. As a teacher with a full account, it's possible to create student logins for your class so you can assign work directly. This also makes for easy at-a-glance assessments of progress.
Usefully, Boom Cards lets students use their Google Classroom login to get access, making the setup and access process super simple. Since it's both easy to create your own content or use that of other teachers, it's very straightforward to get up and running right away.
From very simple letter- and number-based learning all the way to subject specific cards and even social-emotional learning, this covers a wide area of subjects, which are easily navigated.
The data is fed back to teachers right away, allowing for assessments of individuals or even as a way to provide feedback to department heads, for example.
This sample Boom Cards lesson plan is designed to implement the tool into instruction.
What are the best Boom Cards features?
Boom Cards, in some cases, uses moveable pieces, so it is ideal for those using a tablet and can work well for students who are better engaged with that kind of interaction.
Since the platform is totally editable, teachers can easily make their own boom decks, comprising boom cards of their own making – ideal for exact targeted testing and learning.
Despite the best options being in the paid-for service, there is the choice to access up to five self-made decks for free. This is a sort of try-before-you-buy situation in which you can then pay for a deck if you like what's on offer.
Since you can send Boom Cards to individual students or groups, it can make for targeted learning and classwide assessments. This service is called Hyperplay and is available on several plan levels including Basic, Power, and PowerPlus.
Boom Cards can be assigned through Google Classroom, making it very easy to use for schools already setup within that system. The option to overlay sound is also available, making for a great way to offer accessible learning but also for guidance to students learning remotely.
How much does Boom Cards cost?
There are four tiers to Boom Cards access: Starter, Basic, Power, and PowerPlus.
Starter gets you free access to decks for a single class, with five students and five self-made decks.
Basic, at $15 per year, offers three classrooms and 50 students, with five self-made decks.
Power, at $25 per year, gets you five classes, 150 students, unlimited self-made decks, and live monitoring.
PowerPlus, at $30 per year, offers seven classes, 150 students, unlimited self-made decks, live monitoring, and the ability to create with sounds.
Boom Cards best tips and tricks
Use stories
Make cards that tell a story, such as how to properly affix safety gear in a science class, for example. This lets students follow along, with audio where available, learning as they go and being assessed so you know they've taken it all in.
Save your cards
Be sure to organize your cards so you can use any again. From students within a class progressing up to cards across year groups, don't let your creations go to waste.
Get feedback
While you'll be able to assess a student's performance, that won't tell you how they found a deck. Get feedback so you can find what works best and how the students engage most effectively.
