The end of the school year is high time for review. Make your experience EPIC with the review to end all reviews!
As the school year starts to come to a close, a couple of things are certain.
Student motivation will be soaring high. (Not!)
Reviewing previous content get more and more important.
There are lots of ways to make review engaging, but my students have always responded to review games. They get the competitive juices flowing, and they put a new premium on knowing your stuff inside and out.
With the Olympics coming this summer, I’m reminded of a review game that created excitement in my classroom — in Olympic proportions!
In my classes, we called it the Spanish Class Olympics.
When the end of the year comes around, I love using review games. My students love them, partly because they need a little extra incentive to study.
I figured … why not package several days of those days together in one amazing uber competition?
Here were some of the pieces of that epic experience:
(Note: Remember, you don’t have to use the whole experience as it is here! Customize it, add/remove/change games or even use one individual review game all by itself.)
1. Theme music — This really set the tone. Every day, as students walked in the room, I played the NBC theme music for the Olympics:
Bugler’s Theme by Leo Arnaud.
2. A leaderboard — Gamification is a hot topic in education right now. When we can bring game elements into learning, it can be very motivating for students. I created one in Google Drawings and updated it every day. We used three teams because the math seemed to work well for the class sizes and the arrangement of the games. The winner of each game got five points; second place got three points; and third place got one point. Any of these suggestions can be modified to fit your class best.
Next, I pulled together some of my students’ favorite review games. Some had a tech component … others were paper-based or used lap dry-erase whiteboards. There’s a good chance you’ve heard of one or more of them … but maybe not! I always love seeing what other teachers do in their classrooms, so this is a peek inside mine. Here are some of my favorites (feel free to substitute your own favorite games):
3. Game: Trashketball — That’s a combination of a trash can and basketball. (I’m from Indiana. Basketball is life.) We set up a trash can at one end of the room. Using pieces of string, we created shooting lines for different point values. We split the class into three teams. Working together, they answered questions. If they answered correctly, they got a point and got to choose a line to shoot from … the farther from the trash can, the more points they were worth. Over time, we added lots of new rules (i.e. lifelines like “step” — take a big step forward before shooting — and “reshoot” — shoot a missed shot again).
4. Game: Row wars — This is a fast-paced small-group game that can get the adrenaline pumping!
- If I had a class of 18 or more, I divided each team into two smaller teams (in the chart below, Team 1 became Team 1-1 and Team 1-2).
- If I had a class of 17 or fewer, we just kept the same three teams.
Teams would sit down in columns. Each team needs at least three players, and if there are more than three, they can sit behind the other players on their team and sub in and out during each round (more on that later) …
I distributed a slip of paper face down to the first person from each team (and they wrote their team number on the back). For each round of the row wars game, I picked five words for students to define. (This game works well for basic recall questions … anything that can be done quickly!)
The slip of paper looked something like this … (except I put the vocabulary words in place of “round 1 word 1”, etc.)
When I said “go” …
- the first person on the team flips the sheet over, looks at the questions, answers one (just one!) and passes it back to the second person on the team
- the second person answers one (just one!) question and passes it back to the third person
- third person answers and passes up to second person
- second person answers and passes up to first person
- first person answers the final question and puts the slip of paper on a chair or desk in front of their group (the yellow squares in the diagram above)
Here’s how the scoring works:
- First team done: 6 points. Second team done: 5 points. Third team done: 4 points. (And on and on and on.)
- Each incorrect answer subtracts a point from the total.
- You can’t get a negative score.
Tally the scores and add them to the team’s running total. Play as many rounds as you’d like (we usually play six).
When the game is over, determine a winner:
- With 18 or more students: Add the scores of the both sub-teams together to get the team’s final score. (i.e. If Team 1-1 had 16 points and Team 1-2 had 14 points, add them together for a final Team 1 score of 30.)
- With 17 or fewer students: The team’s final score is the team’s final score.
5. Game: Flyswatters — This is another fun one to practice vocabulary or quick questions. Display a grid of terms on a projector screen (or write them on sticky notes and put them on the board). It looks something like this (fill in your own terms, of course) …
You’ll need two flyswatters. I’ve always kept several in my room just in case one is misplaced or if one breaks during an exceptionally lively game. (It has happened!)
Ideally, this is a two-team game, where a student from each team stands on opposite sides of the projector screen. When you call out a definition, the first player to swat the term gets the point. (In Epic Review Olympics, just rotate the teams at the screen … Team 1 vs. Team 2, Team 2 vs. Team 3, Team 3 vs. Team 1 and on and on and on …)
When a team swats the correct term, it gets a point. I will print a sheet of the terms and use it for two things — to cross off terms as I call them AND to tally score for the teams. (If you want to go through the terms twice, put a line through the word the first time and then put an X through it the second time.)
6. Game: Kahoot! — More and more teachers around the United States and the world are getting to know this great tool. Kahoot! (
getkahoot.com) lets you turn multiple-choice questions into a game show in the classroom, complete with music, a leaderboard and students ringing in with answers.
You can create Kahoot! games with your own questions OR you can search the millions of games created by teachers, students and others. (Hint: If you find one you like but want to change/remove/add content to it, duplicate it to your account and make whatever changes you want.
When I’ve played this with students, each student has played through independently (not grouped into teams). When the game was over, I would figure out what position the top three finishers were for each team by downloading the final results in a spreadsheet (an option at the end of the game).
Example:
- Team 1’s three best finishers were 2nd, 4th and 7th
- Team 2’s three best finishers were 1st, 5th and 6th
- Team 3’s three best finishers were 3rd, 8th and 9th
- Add the places for all three teams (Team 1: 2+4+7=13, Team 2: 1+5+6=12, Team 3: 3+8+9=20).
- The lowest score is first, next lowest is second and highest is third. (In our example, Team 2 is first, Team 1 is second and Team 3 is third.)
If you’re looking for more of a team effort, Kahoot! has a “play by team” option. When you load the Kahoot! game, choose the “team” option and let the group work together from one device per team. This is a great option for classes without one device for each student or, again, for more teamwork.
7. Game: Your ideas — You can play Epic Review Olympics with as many games as you’d like. Feel free to use the four listed above, or remove or add as you’d like!
