Test Review Games and Strategies for High School Teachers
So, you’re a high school teacher and you need some activities to get your students to review for an upcoming test? Well, good because you found the perfect blog post! I’m going to share my best test review games and strategies for high school students. Ready? Here we go!
How to prevent cheating on a take home test:
Take home tests are a great way to get your students exposed to the material that is going to be on their next test. It is an awesome way for both you and them to assess their understanding of the material. But if you give a take home test, and you want to grade it as a test, you don’t want just a few kids doing the work and then sharing out their answers – that defeats the purpose. So instead, this is what you do. You invest a decent amount of time and you create multiples of the test. Then you assign specific versions to specific kids, making sure that the kids with the same version either aren’t friends or don’t know each other. Boom – you have reduced the amount of “cheating” on your take home test. Yes, this is a lot of work. Yes, it will take a long time. I just did this with a test I am giving my students over the upcoming school break. I created a bank of 200 questions. The kids will have 2 weeks (really 18 days) to answer their 100 multiple choice questions. This is how I made my versions:
- The first 100 questions
- The second 100 questions
- All the even questions
- All the odd questions
- The first 50 and the third 50
- The second 50 and the fourth 50
Then I printed these all out, wrote the kids’ names on them, making sure kids with the same version weren’t friends, told my students there were 24 versions and sent them on their way. Maybe that’s mean – but this is how I will get them to actually do their test on their own. It’s a great way for them to review old material too!
Trashketball for Test Review
I guarantee you already have the materials you need for this! You need a PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation with questions, a trash can and balls of garbage. These trashketball review game rules are super easy! Put your students into teams, and have them answer the question on the board. They should write the answer on paper (or whiteboards if you have them). If they get the answer right they get a point, the team gets an opportunity to “shoot the ball” for an additional point. This changes what would have normally been a “really boring” review session into something much more fun. Plus you can get rid of that giant pile of old papers you don’t really need – or maybe that’s just me. If you are interested in this being a more permanent addition to your classroom, you can even get a basketball hoop, like this one that I got from Amazon. The balls are from the Target dollar spot (got them over the summer).
Standardized Testing Practice – Finger Lights Glow Party
This is more of an individual review game for student assessment. You again, do a question set using Powerpoint or Google Slides, but the questions must be multiple choice. This time you turn out the lights and pull down the shades. The darker the room, the better. Each student gets a set of Finger Lights. They come in four colors, Red, Green, Blue and White. The students take some time to answer the question, and when you say “Lights On!” the students turn on the light that matches the color of the answer they are choosing. This is so much fun! If you teach high school kids beware – they will spend some time taking and posting pictures. This is a great way for you to get a glimpse of what the students understand, and how many of them are grasping the concepts. Most of all, this is a perfect game for standardized testing practice or review.
Jeopardy Review Game
Using Jeopardy as a test review game is an age old teacher strategy, but here you have a tiny added twist – you have Eggspert buzzers so that there is a time component. There is nothing worse than having the students scream “Me, me, me!” when playing these types of games. The Eggspert buzzers will let you know who buzzed in first, it will time the students so they don’t have unlimited time to answer the question, and you can also randomly select students using the white egg/teacher buzzer. I love using the Jeopardy Review Game! It is perfect for open ended standardized testing practice. I have even been known to use it to randomly select groups (since I conveniently have six groups of four in my classes) without even adding in the Jeopardy aspect.
Although I haven’t made this template, here is a link to some Google Slides Jeopardy templates you can use in your classroom. I’ve heard it works better in PowerPoint, but I haven’t actually tried that. The main idea here is the adding and subtracting of points. You can either keep the score yourself, or you can have a student do it.
Game Boards
I have a board that I use for board games in my classroom. You can get it here. I have question cards that go with the boards. You could adapt this board for an unlimited number of question cards or topics. You can have students use coins or other small objects as game pieces, but I love these bingo chips. I use them for a lot of other purposes in my classroom, and this is one of them. So many come in a package, that I don’t mind so much when they fall on the floor and get swept up by the custodian. I also laminate these games and cards so they can last forever. You can read more about how I laminate my things here.
Vocabulary Games for High School Chemistry
In my course, students are learning about 400 new vocabulary terms. Some of those words have multiple meanings (like saturated – saturated solution, saturated hydrocarbon). For this reason, I have created some dominoes for the students to review with. They match the words to the definitions and create a long line of terms. I circle the room and remove pieces that are in the wrong spot. This can be done for individual students or you can have teams of them play. I like to race. Sometimes I have teams of students stand in lines and they can only place one domino at a time. Once they’ve placed the domino, they go to the back of their team’s line and the next student gets a chance to place a domino. First team that correctly finishes wins!
Task Cards for Unit Review
I like task cards for things that are a little tougher or require more complex thinking like intermolecular forces. Task cards are kind of like taking a worksheet of free response questions and chopping it up and spreading it around the room. The students can either write their answers on looseleaf, or in a notebook, or on an answer collection sheet. I have kids play games with these too. I usually color code my questions by type. So for instance: bond polarity, molecule polarity, definitions, effects of intermolecular forces. I then tell the students they need to answer X number of each color. They can pick which questions they want to answer, and I can make sure they are getting a little bit of everything.
Quizlet Live
Quizlet Live will only work if your students have devices. Here, the students are organized into teams. There is a question presented to all of the students in the team, but the answers are distributed amongst all members of the team. They need to talk to each other to ensure the correct answer is chosen. If the students pick the wrong answer, they start the question series over. You can project the status of each team on your SmartBoard, as they race against each other. There are plenty of premade question sets, but you can also make your own and tailor it to your student’s specific needs.
Kahoot
Again, your students will need devices for this. Kahoot is one of my students’ favorite review games These are quiz questions, where students compete individually for points. There are lots of premade Kahoots, and you also have the option to make your own. Kahoot is great because at the end of the game, you can collect data on your students’ performance – making it great for data analysis and reteaching.
There is also a newer thing my students and I play a lot for test review. That is Blooket. It’s mostly the same thing, except the questions have been converted into other games, aside from answering multiple choice questions. Now you can answer questions, but also steal gold from classmates and race to the finish line. Along the way students can earn points, and collect avatars to play with. They absolutely LOVE it. It’s a lot like Kahoot in that you can make your own, or borrow from other teachers. Here’s the Blooket question sets I’ve made.
Practice Test in Google Forms
This is another tactic for devices. I like this for the students to do at home. I make a quiz in Google Forms, and I click on the following settings:
- Make a quiz
- Missed questions
- Correct answers
- Point Values
- Release Grade Immediately after each submission
For this, you will need to build a multiple choice quiz, and then plug in the answers. The students can take the quiz multiple times, and will be told their score and what the correct answers are. This is a great way for them to see what they know and what they need to go back and read in their notes.
Those there you have it. My (and my students’) favorite test review games and strategies for your classroom. Make sure to follow me on Instagram to see more of what I’m up to, and how I use these review games and strategies in action!
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