Review Stations

I have to admit first and foremost, I DESPISE review games. My kids realize pretty quickly that we don’t ever play Kahoot before a quiz or test in my room. I have tried many types of review games too. We’ve tried ATTACK, I’ve set up games of Grudgeball, this one is a crowd favorite. I’ve played Trash-ket ball, Jeopardy, and all kinds of reviews in between. I’ve also done days where my students get a study-guide and look up answers to review. I am personally not a fan of this one since it puts every one on a different timeline for the activity, and if I review the answers, some students just wait or go REALLY slow so that they can get the answers from me without work. Not a fan of any of this. Most of these are amazing resources, and I have tried them with great sucess, but as I am thinking about preparing my students for high school, career prep, or college, these often become to “playful” and unstructured to help them. They can’t play trash-ket ball by themselves at home to review, they can’t do a Kahoot unless a teacher sets it up to access, etc. I am really attempting to incorporate as many skills into my lessons and activities that will benefit my students in the long term. All while making it engaging and worth everyone’s while.

Before our 4th quarter started, I surveyed my students on my class, something very interesting that really helps me plan instruction. One of the spots was about something they would like to see more of in 4th quarter. An overwhelming large portion of my classes requested some review time in class. I can tell you I CRINGED when I read that. Ugh. What would I do?!

I decided that my issue with all of these review activities wasn’t the actual activity (although the chaos of a review game is exhausting), it was the idea that “one size fits all” hardly ever works for my students. I offer a lot of differentiation in my lessons, so a review game that often distracts more than helps a majority of students was upsetting me. Thus, the Review Stations was born.

This is probably nothing new. Actually, I’m sure it’s not, but I am excited to implement it in my room. We are currently studying Feudal Japan, which is the unit I decided to use for this set of Review Stations. These are the stations I created on the fly this week, and I am looking to add more! Please email me if you have any ideas to add!

Make*up Work

The first station I set up was for make-up work. I’m not sure about your classroom, but this is a huge issue with my students. They are often absent, and do not follow through with my makeup policies. I have a hanging folder for 2 weeks, a tub per quarter, and a poster with major quizzes and tests missed, but somehow, they still don’t get or show me make up work. So this will always be a station where they can get what they need the day before the test to prepare and make up. My hope is that they will want to start participating in the other stations, so they will start doing makeup work before this day!

Pictionary

Oh, Pictionary. I found this one on a website, and thought it would be interesting to try. First off, eighth graders are AWFUL at playing this correctly. I think it’s the “don’t say words” portion that throws them for a loop. BUT it does force them to use and think about the key terms in the chapter, so hey, that’s a small win. It often doesn’t take the whole time allotted, so they have to move on to a more in depth station.

Document Analysis

I love using documents in my history class. I tell the students that the book is a secondary source, and as historians, I expect them to be working with primary sources. In this station I printed out some documents that review material from the chapter. These are usually REALLY easy to find. I just google whatever chapter we’re on with “DBQ” attached. This is the one I am using for Japan.  I tell them they do not have to outline or actually write the DBQ, but they must jot note answers to the documents. This allows them to look through actual information relating to the chapter to review key terms and concepts.

Quizizz

I will say, while I am not a huge fan of Kahoot, I love Quizizz! If you’ve never used this website before, IT IS TEACHER GOLD. I do all of my quizzes on this website now. *I will say that quite a few of my students have their own devices, and I check out 12 tablets to keep in class for apps like this. You can create quizzes OR (this is the best part to me) you can ADD QUESTIONS FROM ALREADY MADE QUIZZES. So I just search the topic, and add whatever applies to my test. For this Japan quizziz, I have 40 questions. I set it to homework mode, so that they can play all day, and at home to review if needed.

Study Buddy

This station is a favorite for my students with friends in class. They pair up in facing desks and use a sticky note to keep score of quizzing each other with information. It is your basic study buddy type of set up, but I will say, this group is the closest to me since this station usually is more open to random chatter, but when done right, is really helpful.

These are all the stations I have so far, but I will be working to add more through the end of this quarter and incorporate them into next year too!