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Academic Review Games
educational games for classroom teachingby Tim Chartier
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It's time to review for a test!
Why not play review games with your class? Review games offer an
opportunity for students to enjoy themselves and review for a test.
Engaging a class in enjoyable learning can improve the atmosphere of the
class, reduce students' stress during review, and allow students to
cooperate and relate with each other.
Many of these ideas are adapted from Positive Classroom Discipline
by Jo Lynne Talbott Jones and Fredric
H. Jones, Ph.D. The pages were created by Tim Chartier while he was
a graduate student in the Department of Applied Mathematics and a
Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) Fellow at the University of Colorado at
Boulder. Tim worked on this project of Review Games as part of his
mentorship at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA). His PFF
mentor at USAFA was Beth Schaubroeck, Ph.D.
Review games to play with your class
Obviously, you can create your own review games. You may have even played some review games during
your education. Still, this page offers some online versions that can be played
by a class. If you do not have the capabilities to project computer images in a classroom,
then you are encouraged to make a similar image on the board. All of the images were
modelled after ideas that could work by creating either the game's
structure on the board or on the floor. For example, a baseball field
can be drawn on the board or baes can be set up in the room.
It is best to play such games open book. This allows students on both sides
to dig for the answer as soon as it is asked.
Click the following to view the review game!
- Academic Tangrams
- Academic Baseball
- Academic Football
- Academic Hangman
A question about questions
A question about questions may have entered your mind; "Where are all of those questions
going to come from?" Creating the tests questions
alone can comprise a lot of work for an instructor. First, you need to know
what style of game you are going to play. For example, Academic Baseball and Football
both need four difficulty levels of questions. Academic Hangman only requires one level
of difficulty. Once you have decided on a game, you can engage your students
in review and create a body of questions at the same time!
To learn more, click here
to read the section on Generating Questions.
Choosing Teams
Having equal teams is an important part of playing review games. Like creating review questions, this can also
be a time consuming aspect of preparation. The following can aid you in selecting teams.
- Choose captians for each team. The captains should be of equal scholastic ability. You need not choose the faster
students. In fact, this is an opportunity to honor some of your struggling students.
- Give the captains the class list with the following task:
- Take this class list to a table or group of desks in the back of the room.
- Create equal teams.
- Horse-trade until they are equal because they will be final when you are done.
- If you wish to add further guarantee of fair play, add:
Choose and trade until the teams are equal.
After you give me equal teams, you will draw lots to see which team you will captain.
Now you have teams, questions, and the games themselves. You are ready and set to
review in a fun and educational way with your students!