I’m an AP Lit teacher, but this fun review game can be used with any AP or standardized test that uses multiple choice strategies. All you need is a practice test (usually just one portion of it with 7-10 questions), a whiteboard or slideshow, and some horses!
Disclaimer: This is not my idea, nor do I know the lovely individual who created it. I used it in my classes recently and many people reached out through social media to learn more about it, so I’m sharing.
Why Play It
Horse racing blends the two crucial elements of multiple choice prep for testing: speed and skill. As my students edge closer to the AP Exam, they grow more accurate. However, I’ve also found that they double and triple check their work, so they increasingly risk running out of their allotted time. The horse racing game rewards getting the answers right, but as quickly as possible as well.
What You’ll Need
This activity is fairly low prep. Here’s what you’ll need:
- Multiple choice questions, usually text-based but not necessarily. You can get these from AP Classroom, test prep materials, or released past exams.
- Make enough copies of the text for the MC questions and the questions themselves.
- Cut the multiple choice questions up, so each is on a separate slip of paper. Stack these in front of you
- An answer key for the questions, usually on a clipboard or something only you can access.
- Some form of a grid. I use this slideshow, which a teacher created for this activity, and project it onto my whiteboard. Other teachers simply draw a grid on their boards.
- Susan Gellert Ketcham created an editable Google Slideshow with horse grids and team names. This is what I use!
- Horses, cars, or some other kind of “icon” to mark a student’s or team’s progress.
- A prize or perk for the winning team.
How to Play
Put students into small groups or partners if you’re working with a group of 10 or more. (If you want, you can have students work individually, but it will mean more work for you!) Hand out the text, such as a poem or prose excerpt, but not the questions. Give students enough time to read and annotate the text before passing out the questions.
Pass out the first question to everyone, and ONLY THE FIRST QUESTION. Students should look at their text and select their best answer. When they’ve decided, they should write in their answer and run it up to show you.
Students with a right answer can move their horse or icon forward one space. Pass them the next question and they do it again.
Those that are wrong must return to their desk and try again until they get their answer right.
The first to the end of the race wins!
Variations
- I have found that this activity can sometimes lead to desperate guessing, so I often institute a penalty for getting an answer wrong. I get a small puzzle (10 pieces or so), or print an image and cut it into shapes into my own puzzle, and put it in the back of the classroom. If a student gets their answer wrong, they must go and complete a puzzle before they can guess again. This usually cuts down on frantic guessing, because students will really want to get answers right!
- Christina Leafgreen shared a variation she found on Facebook. She says, “Each team has one roadblock to use. If they got a question right, they could move ahead and then place a road block in front of a team’s horse to slow them down. The team that received the road block then had to get two questions correct in a row before they could remove the road block and move forward. It got really competitive in the end with the teams in 4th and 5th place wanting to slow down the teams in 1st and 2nd. It wasn’t perfect but it was a great first trial run!”
- Another way to deter guessing or penalize wrong answers is to use dice. Have students roll dice back and forth until each member has rolled a double, then they can resume the game.
- Kyri Dannielle shared a Mario Kart version of this game, complete with blue shell and green shell bonuses. Click here to see the document and learn more!
- I have one student who is a bona fide speed reader, and his accuracy is off the charts. My students were frustrated when he won our first round so easily. After getting his prize, he agreed to a “handicap” in our next round. I gave the rest of the class the prose passage and five minutes to read it, but he did not get it. Once they got their first question, he got the passage to read. Believe it or not, he still caught up and earned second place!
My students loved this activity and begged to play it one more time before the exam. Since I have no shortage of multiple-choice practice quizzes, I’m happy to oblige!
For more gamified test review and learning activities, check out these materials on my blog or in my TpT store:
Looking for more test prep help? Check out my AP Lit Test Prep unit, or my resource filled with more than a year’s worth of teaching materials!
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