Blog › Quizizz Guides

How Does Quizizz Work? A Complete Guide for Teachers and Students

Quizizz is a quiz and activity platform used mostly in classrooms. A teacher writes a set of questions or picks an existing one, then opens a session. Students go to a join page on their own devices, type a short code, and answer. The teacher watches answers arrive in real time and gets a report showing who understood the material. That is the whole idea; everything else is a variation on it.

The two sides: teacher view and student view

Almost everything about how Quizizz works comes down to two experiences happening at once, connected by a single short code.

The teacher side is an account: a library of quizzes you made or saved, plus controls for starting sessions and reading reports. Our walkthrough of the teacher dashboard and reports covers what you see there.

The student side is deliberately thin. In most classroom setups students need no account: they open the join page, type the projected code, enter a name, and start answering. Some schools have students sign in with a school account so results attach to a roster, but the code is still the entry point.

The code is the bridge. It is generated when the teacher starts a session and points at that session only, so when the session ends the code stops working. That is the most common reason a student says “it says invalid.” Our notes on join code problems and how to fix them cover the usual causes.

The two main ways to run it

There are two broad modes, and choosing the right one matters more than any setting you will fiddle with.

A live class game means everyone plays at once, in the same room, with results projected at the front. It is loud: students react to the leaderboard and groan when they get one wrong. It suits review before a test, a warm-up, or the last ten minutes of a period.

Self-paced or homework mode means you assign the quiz and students work through it at their own speed, possibly at home. There is no shared moment, but what you lose in energy you gain in thinking time and in reaching absent students. It is better for practice, homework, and anything where you want reasoning rather than racing.

How to use Quizizz: step by step for a teacher

1. Sign in. If you had a Quizizz account before the rebrand, the same login works.
2. Get a quiz. Write your own, or search the public library and use something another teacher made; borrowing and editing beats starting blank. Our step-by-step on creating a quiz from scratch covers the build process.
3. Check the questions first. Public quizzes vary wildly in quality, and a wrong answer key in front of thirty students is a bad ten minutes. Our guide to writing a good assessment helps if you write your own.
4. Choose your settings. Before launching you get options controlling things like whether questions are timed, whether the order is shuffled, whether students see correct answers as they go, and how competitive elements behave.
5. Start a live session or assign it. A live session opens immediately; an assignment gets a deadline.
6. Share the code. Project it, write it on the board, or send the link.
7. Watch the live results and see which questions trip people up. Pause and explain rather than pushing through.
8. Read the report afterwards. Most teachers skip this, and it holds the actual value.

Step by step for a student

1. Get the code from your teacher. It is short, usually a handful of digits.
2. Go to the join page: either joinmyquiz.com or wayground.com/join.
3. Enter the code, then your name, or sign in with your school account if your teacher asked you to. Use your real name unless told otherwise, or your score will not count for you.
4. Answer the questions. Depending on the settings you may have a timer per question, and you may or may not see whether each one was right straight away.
5. See your results at the end: a score and, in a live game, your position in the class.

The game elements, and their honest downside

The platform layers game mechanics on top of the questions: points for correct answers, a leaderboard, bonuses for streaks, and timers. No point pretending otherwise, they work, and they are why students ask to play again.

They also have a cost. When speed earns points and a leaderboard is on the wall, some students optimise for speed over accuracy, guessing rather than reading carefully. Slower readers, students working in a second language, and simply careful students get punished.

You can turn the pressure down. The pre-session settings generally let you loosen or remove timing, hide the competitive display, and change whether students see correct answers immediately. For anything you will treat as evidence of understanding, dial the game elements back. Save the full competitive version for review, where the noise is the point.

Reports, and how to actually use them

After a session you get a report. Broadly it shows results per student, results per question, and the class picture overall.

The per-question view is what changes your teaching. If twenty-two of twenty-eight students missed question seven, that is not twenty-two struggling students, it is one thing you taught unclearly or one badly worded question. Look at which wrong answers they chose: if they all picked the same option, there is a misconception you can correct in five minutes tomorrow.

A practical habit: open the report the same day, pick the two worst-performing questions, and plan a short reteach around those. That beats exporting everything into a spreadsheet you never open again.

Practical classroom tips

• Test the whole flow yourself first. Running it once on your phone catches most surprises.
• Assume some devices will fail: dead batteries, a student who forgot theirs. Pairing students up is a fine answer, often a better one.
• Network matters most. Thirty devices hitting weak wifi produces lag that looks like the platform is broken. If your connection is unreliable, favour self-paced work over live games.
• Have a backup on paper. A printout of the same questions costs five minutes and saves the lesson if nothing loads.
• Keep live quizzes short. Ten to fifteen questions is usually enough; enthusiasm drops sharply after that.
• Be clear about whether it counts. Uncertainty about stakes changes how students behave.

What it is not good for

It is not a substitute for teaching. It checks recall and recognition well and is weak at anything requiring extended reasoning, writing, or showing your work. A multiple-choice question cannot tell you whether a student understood or simply guessed well.

It is also a poor fit for high-stakes assessment, where students can see each other’s screens and the mechanics reward speed. Use it as low-stakes formative assessment, which is what it is genuinely good at. And novelty fades: used every lesson it becomes a worksheet with sound effects; once a week it keeps its pull.

A last note: menus, labels and layouts change, and the rebrand shifted some. The structure described here has been stable for years, but do not be surprised if a button sits somewhere new. For more walkthroughs, see our Quizizz guides and quiz resources.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Quizizz still called Quizizz?

Officially no. It rebranded to Wayground in June 2025 and the site is wayground.com. In practice most people still call it Quizizz, accounts and saved quizzes carried over, and joinmyquiz.com still works for joining.

Do students need an account to play?

Usually not. For a standard classroom session a student needs only the join code and a name. Some schools have students sign in with a school account so results link to a roster, but that is a school choice rather than a requirement of joining.

Is it free, and how many students can join?

There is a free tier that covers ordinary classroom use, alongside paid plans with extra features, and participant limits can differ between them. These terms change, so check current details rather than what a colleague told you last year; we track them on our page about whether Quizizz is free and what the player limits are.

Can I use it for homework rather than in class?

Yes. Assign it in self-paced mode with a deadline and students work through it on their own time. Results collect as they finish and you get the same kind of report. This mode beats a live game when you want students to think rather than race.

Why does the join code say it is invalid?

A code is tied to one session, so the usual causes are that the session has not been started yet, it has already ended, or a digit was mistyped. Confirm the session is live and the code on screen matches exactly before assuming something is broken.