I have the privilege of working with so many talented educators, some with their own online presence! One of my friends is Abby Countryman, who has a big following on TikTok and her own TpT store, Set the Stage to Engage. Although much younger than me (she was actually a student at my school when I was teaching!), Abby has become our school’s mentor teacher when it comes to engaging lessons. Be it for review, instruction, or simply for fun, Abby is an expert in gamifying the learning experience.
Abby was kind enough to share materials from a recent PD she led for our faculty, sharing a variety of fun review games you can use in any class. Although she is a social studies teacher, these lessons can be used in any content area and with multiple levels across middle and high school levels. If you enjoy the content, do me a favor and visit Abby’s TpT store or follow her on TikTok!
10 Ways to Make Content Review More Fun
In my first year as a teacher, I would finish teaching a unit and knew that my students should review the content to refresh their brain before taking the test. The extent of the review usually consisted of time to work on the study guide I passed out in class. Now, there is nothing wrong with a study guide, and often, these are great tools to help with individual review, but this format usually fits one type of student learning style and there is no time or space for teacher feedback.
I soon realized that using review games in my classroom was way more effective long term. Not only did they engage almost every student, but they provided a fun way to recap the content learned in class. The purpose of doing review games is more than to have students ace a test. Trying this strategy can help you as a teacher assess where students are at with the content or build cooperation and teamwork. Any time you make something in class a game or competition, you will get more buy-in from the students – and that’s a fact!
Why Review Games?
Review games can also grow student self-confidence or give them a chance to correct mistakes and wrong understandings of a topic. They can help create fun memories for the teacher and students that leads to stronger connections, and thus better classroom management too.
“Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning.” – Diane Ackerman
Using review games in your class does not have to be a hard thing. You can do this in whatever way you want and as long as you want! It could take a whole class, or it could take ten minutes. A review game for you might be a full version of Jeopardy that took you an hour to create, or it might be a five-minute race to complete a fill-in-the-blank worksheet that took you 15 minutes to make. Most likely, you could gamify something you already do!
I have tried various review games over the years and have compiled a top ten list for the best ways to review in the classroom. Check out the following and feel free to steal the idea or add a twist and make it your own!
Jeopardy Rocks
Jeopardy Rocks is a great online resource that provides a fully editable jeopardy board for any topic and even has a “buzzer mode” that allows students to buzz in with a phone to answer the question at hand!
Taboo
This is a simple game you can create with any topic! If you know how to play the original Taboo, then you know how to play this game. You will create small cards with different “topics” on the top of the card that you want students to be able to describe to another classmate and get them to discuss what they are describing! BUT there is a catch! You must also put two to three words on the card under the title that the student is not allowed to say while describing the term. Students can play this in small teams or as partners. It helps them think about how to describe something and really tests whether they understand it enough to do so!
Quizziz
Quizziz is another online game where you can create different individualized review quiz games for students on any topic! I love that this resource also has a way for you to search for pre-created quizzes that you can steal questions from and make your own. The students always have fun using the power ups in the game and there are different question types in addition to multiple choice! There is a lot you can do with this one.
Dice Duel
How about a review strategy that can cover a lot of content in less than ten minutes?! In Dice Duel, you create a worksheet of questions on a different topic and see how many questions students can answer correctly in a certain amount of time. Have students partner up and give each partner pair a pair of dice!
One student will start rolling the dice while the other student is answering as many questions as they can. As soon as the first student rolls doubles, they shout “doubles”, and they switch roles. Now the first student is answering questions while the other rolls for doubles. Set a time limit for the challenge and then go over all the answers with the class and have them score how many they got right. The partner that got the highest score wins!
(Gina here — I tried this with my sophomores and it was AWESOME! They were so focused and the competitive element made dry things, like worksheet reviews, so much more fun!)
Bingo
This is a simple way to review that helps students remember and associate terms to definitions or concepts to descriptions. You can create free bingo boards on any topic with the link provided and print off the boards or have students play online with the virtual link.
Each student will receive a board and listen to you as you define one of the terms on it or give a description of one of the concepts on the board. They must listen to you describing the term and then find it on their board to mark. Once they get five in a row, they call “bingo” and tell you the five terms they marked. You can check from the list that you were writing down as you called to make sure they got it right!
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
This resource, available in my TpT store, is a fun game that all my students get into! It is based on the famous game show and gives every student multiple chances to be in the “hot seat” and answer a multiple-choice question. You will split your class into small teams and have a hot seat for each team. One at a time students will rotate through their team members to take a turn in the hot seat and answer a multiple-choice question on their own without any help!
I use whiteboards and markers and have students write their answer choice on the board and hold them up at the same time. Give a certain amount of “dollars” to the team if they get it right or take away that amount if they get it wrong! You can also add “lifelines” that each team can use once throughout the game when they choose. The “phone a friend” lifeline lets the student ask one person on their team for help, the “poll the audience” life line lets them ask their whole team, and the “50/50” life line lets them have a hint from you where they are choosing between two answers instead of four.
Linked here is a fully editable game power point that can be purchased and changed to fit any subject!
Blooket
Blooket is one of my students favorite online review games to do. Just like Quizziz, you can create a set of multiple-choice questions for students to answer in a variety of different games. I like the feature that creates the game questions directly from an imported Quizlet you already have.
There are games where you can have kids play independently or as a team. You can play the games for a time limit or until someone gets a certain score. There is a lot of variety and variability to the game play. Anytime I do Blooket in class, the students don’t want to quit!
Quizlet Live!
Do you want an awesome review game that takes a short amount of time and makes students work together? Quizlet live is always a great choice! This needs to be done in a 1-to-1 school where each student has their own device. It uses pre-created quizzes and sorts the class into small groups where they are having the find the correct answer to a question, or the correct definition to a term together! Only one member on the team has the correct answer and it is a race to the finish line! The first team that gets 12 correct in a row wins! If you miss one, you go back to 0. This game is always a hit!
Bazinga
Bazinga is another original game I’ve created and it is a personal favorite. I’ve had many students ask me to play this one again after we try it. This game is great because it requires students to be engaged the whole time questions are being asked, but creates some fun moments as well! It also has some chance to it, which I am a fan of because then the “smartest” team doesn’t always win!
All you need is to come up with a set of questions you want to review with the class and print off a bunch of “Bazinga cards” that teams will draw from during the game. To run Bazinga, you must divide students into teams and give one team a question at a time to answer. They have a short time to answer. IF they get it wrong, the same question will go to the next team for a chance to steal the question. If that team gets it wrong, it goes to the next team, and so forth. But if a team gets the question right, they get points, and they get to draw a bazinga card!
These cards can say whatever you want them to say! For example, a card could say “double your points” or “take one point away from another team and give it to your team.” The cards can even have silly challenges on them, like ,“Do five jumping jacks for a bonus point!” Once the bonus points are awarded or taken away based on the reading of the card it is discarded and the game resumes with the next question going to the next team in line! Most points at the end wins! If you want a fully editable version of this review game, I have linked my TpT version here.
Battleship
Every kid loves the game of battleship and trying to guess where their opponent’s enemy ships are! This can be adapted for any class or subject too. If you know the basic rules of the game, they are applied to this review as well. Create your own blank battleship board and distribute a copy to each student. Have them draw their own two ships where they want on the board – one that is three spaces long and one two spaces long. They can be placed horizontally or vertically just like in the real game.
Then you just need to create a set of multiple-choice question cards on the content you want them to review. Type up your own questions and bold or underline the correct answer on the card. Make enough copies to of the question cards to create little decks for a partner pair in your class.
During the game, students will be partnered up and take turns reading a multiple-choice question from the deck to each other. If they get the question right, they can attempt to “hit” one of their opponents’ ships! If they miss, they switch and now they will read their opponent a question and give them a chance to shoot at their hidden ships. First to sink their enemy ships wins! For this game, I also have a WWll review game version on my Tpt shore. Check out the link to see an example of how this could be done!
Wrap-Up
I hope you find one of these ideas useful or you think of your own to try with your students! There is a good chance you can easily adapt something you already do and use it for a review. Try something this next week and your students will thank you!
About the Author – Abby Countryman
I have taught for six years and have had multiple experiences and placements in private school and public school setting, Middle school and high school. Right now I am teaching 9th grade World History, and 11th grade Civics and Economics in Minnesota.
Not one class of mine is the same. I am all about differentiated instruction and engaging students. I believe students remember material better when they are having fun and engaged in class. In class, we like to do a lot of hands on activities and encourage the students to also be responsible for their own learning. To be a good teacher you need to love what you teach and who you teach.
