Review Games

My kids often need a lot of review.

No, that's an understatement.

My kids always need A LOT of review.  A LOT of it.

If they don't review something over and over and over again, then they're not going to learn it. I don't know if that's because they're sped, or because the material is new (and let's face it, they don't have much science instruction in elementary school, so it's almost brand new when they start in middle school), or because of both factors.  Probably both.

So I'm always strangling myself trying to think of brand new ways to present the exact same material so they don't get bored of it.

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Management Skills:

If kids are bored, they start engaging in all sorts of inappropriate behavior that leads to a non-functioning class. 

It's a sad, hard truth. 

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Oh, wait!  You thought you'd actually be teaching when you signed up for this? 
Oh, no, no, no.  
You're there to entertain. 

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At the beginning of the year when my seventh graders were learning the parts of the cell, I created a large concentration game that we played all together one day, and then I used as a fast finisher later on during that unit.  It worked great. (I'll post those cards up another day).

My eight graders are learning about waves right now.  They appeared to know the information pretty well, so I gave them a quiz on it. 

Find quiz here

 

You'll notice that on the actual document I have 4 versions of the same thing.  It helps to eliminate cheating.

Yeah . . . they didn't know it as well as I thought. So I'm now looking for ways to reteach them these things: crest, trough, amplitude, frequency, wavelength, amplitude = volume, frequency = pitch.  

I found this great website that listed a bunch of new review games that I hadn't heard of before.  You check out that website here.  I'm using their Trash Ball game on Monday, because my kids already love throwing crumpled paper across the room (unfortunately).  

Since there aren't very many terms and concepts that we're reviewing, I have multiple presentations of the same idea.  The items have points assigned to them, with recall being 1 point.  Highest points are 5 points.  Is it perfect?  No, but I doubt the kids will care.  They'll just like being able to earn points.  I'm going to have them all cut up and folded so the questions are chosen at random. 

To see my review questions, download here:

All of the questions cut up and ready to choose from. 

I was really proud of my students.  This class did an excellent job of giving honest attempts when answering the questions, and they were all involved.  I really feel like this did the job at reviewing concepts again in a fun way.

The final result. 

My second class that came in and I did this with didn't do as well, but that class has too much middle school drama in it.  Too bad.  They enjoyed it, but it didn't go as well as the first.  It really depends on your students and if they can handle the excitement of throwing a piece of paper into the trash (they act like it's the best thing they've ever been allowed to do!).

All in all, I'd do this game again.  It was easy to make and fun to do.