Exam Rush and a Brand New Notebook

We’re having midterm exams this week at my school, so it’s been looking over old tests and playing review games in tandem with working on the new unit (we have no time to waste in world history on the block schedule).

I’m a big fan of playing Jeopardy “trivia-style” because it saves time. My students are already seated at tables of 4. I project the Jeopardy “answer,” and they have 30 seconds to bring me the “question” on a scratch sheet of paper with their table number on it. At the end of he game, the table with the most points “wins.”

I also like to play “The Fly Swatter Game” with vocabulary. I write all the vocabulary words on the board, and students face off in pairs, each with a flyswatter. I read the definition or an example, and the first student to “swat” the correct word “wins.”

I find it useful to give students copies of old tests with printouts of answers they missed the first time around (We use clickers to record our test responses, so I just print “student results” from my computer). They use their notebooks and their partners to try to figure out the correct answers.

But one thing has been notably absent from my world history class reviews–the gigantic study guide.

We don’t need it. We have interactive notebooks. The notebook is a complete study guide for the students. Everything they need to be successful on the exam is there, in one place.

I’m not sure exactly why these work so much better than 3-ring binders, dividers, and loose-leaf paper, but they do. Perhaps it’s because it feels more like a dynamic creation to them than a static, “Put this paper behind the unit 3 divider,” or, “This goes with your notes.”

Whatever it is, I’m not questioning it. Here are my students, busy at work on Unit 6: The Age of Exploration (which I’ll reveal here next week):

When you've got exams going on, you need whatever you can get to help students review in engaging ways. I'm sharing some tips on my favorite ways to review with my secondary students, and I share a bit about my new interactive notebook! Click through to read more.

You can get the individual foldables they’re working on here:

Triangular Trade Foldable

A Worksheet to Reinforce the Concept of the Columbian Exchange

Also, take a minute to check out my Unit 5: The Renaissance and Reformation Interactive Notebook:

The Renaissance and Reformation Interactive Notebook

It’s packed with activities, cloze notes, PowerPoints, foldables, and a test.

How do you review for exams? Do you have any amazing games or simple reviews that the students love? Let me know in the comments below!

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