Springtime means review. Whether you are preparing for standardized tests, district testing, or simply benchmark reviews, you will be spending time going over all the amazing things your students have learned this year. Why not make review more fun?
Let’s face it, review can be kind of BORING. For your students. And for you.
But it doesn’t have to be. Try one of these four, easy ways to make review more fun for everyone.
Kahoot!
Kahoot! is a simple classroom game that always makes review more fun! You do need access to technology for this game. But Kahoot! was one of my students’ favorite activities because it’s always so much fun. It was also one of my favorites because it’s easy to set-up and a great way to review content.
At the Kahoot! website, you can either select from a pre-made quiz or create your own. I like to create quizzes from the question in standardized test practice books or my own assessment reviews.
Once the questions are entered into the quiz, you can select how much time your students have to answer the questions. They enter the answer on their device and their choices show up on your shared screen. After each round, points are awarded and leaders announced. It makes for a friendly and lively competition.
You can host live events virtually to help engage distance learners. Questions and answers are displayed on a shared screen and students enter answers from their own devices at home. This kind of competition helps kids feel connected to one another and makes review a lot more fun.
Four Corners
Another way to make review more fun is with Four Corners. This is a great review game for multiple choice questions. Designate each corner of your room with the letter A, B, C, and D.
Project a multiple-choice question on your whiteboard and have students move to correct corner of the room. Students get to move around, and you can easily assess who understands the concepts you are reviewing.
If students appear to be equally divided between two corners, you can give each group one minute to explain why they chose the corner they did and try to convince the other group why they are right. Give students the opportunity to move corners before revealing the correct answer.
If you don’t want to deal with all the moving around, you can modify this game so students play at their seats, while still incorporating body movement. Ask each student to stand at their seat and give them different movements for each answer choice. Raise hands into an A, crouch down into a little ball for B, make a C with their body (YMCA style), and bend down to touch their toes for D. While students won’t be moving throughout the room, they will get the benefit of standing up and moving their bodies and you can still easily see who has the right answer.
Roll the Dice
This is one my favorite games because the element of chance keeps all students invested in the game. Although students do need to get the answer right to earn points, the number of points they earn is random. And it’s possible for them to lose points too! Talk about making review more fun!
Divide the class into teams. Project a question on the board for Team A. If Team A gets the answer right, they get to roll a pair of dice. The team gets the number of points on the dice, unless the dice add up to 5, in which case they lose 5 points, or they get snake-eyes, in which case they go all the way back to zero.
You may want to introduce the game and play a couple of times before introducing the snake eyes option. And some years, you might determine that option won’t work for your students. You know your students best so feel free to modify as necessary.
Play then moves on to the other teams. The winner is the team with the most points. Or the least. It’s up to you!
Escape Rooms
Another fun way to review is with an escape room challenge. Escape rooms are a fresh and exciting way to review as students work together to unlock clues and solve a problem.
Each clue is unlocked by answering review questions tied to your curriculum. The puzzles don’t need to be complicated, but the story needs to be compelling. When students are invested in unlocking the mystery they are engaged in learning.
These escape rooms are super easy to use. They don’t require long supply lists or complicated classroom transformations. You don’t even need locks. Just paper, pencils, and some envelopes to organize the clues.
Or, make these activities no prep with the digital option. Escape rooms are a great way to review concepts in a easy, fun, and immersive way!
2nd Grade Math Time Machine Escape Room
This 2nd Grade Math Escape Room sends your students on an exciting adventure back in time. To celebrate the end of the school year, students jump on a special time machine designed to take them to the future. But when the machine goes haywire, your students are transported back in time instead!! They must solve a number of math clues and puzzles to fix the machine and get back to the future or they’ll be stuck in the 90s forever!
Skills include tally marks, bar graphs, place value, skip counting, addition, subtraction, money, geometry, measurement, and time.
3rd Grade Reading Baseball Escape Room
In the Baseball Escape Room 3rd Grade Reading Test Prep activity students practice a variety of essential reading skills, including context clues, character traits, point of view, cause and effect, main idea, and central message. Your students will accompany Ravi and Nina to Bisons Stadium to help their dad, the teams general manager, prepare for the big game. When they arrive at the stadium they encounter a series of mishaps that threaten the team’s success in the Championship Game.
Each task requires students to read a passage, answer questions, and complete a puzzle to unlock the next clue. When students have successfully reviewed all six topics they will discover who won the World Series.
3rd Grade Math Baseball Escape Room
Our Baseball Escape Room 3rd Grade Math Test Prep is an equally fun review activity. Your students find themselves at a Championship game, but their time isn’t doing so well. They learn that the team’s best hitter is without his favorite bat because they forgot the combination to the safe where it kept.
Students will work together to solve a variety of clues to try and figure out the combination. And they will need to work fast, before the game is over. Students will review addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, place value, time, money, geometry, area, perimeter, estimation, graphing, and fractions. All while having an amazing time trying to unlock the bat and the save game.
4th Grade Math Museum of Natural History Escape Room
This escape room sends your fourth grade students on an exciting excursion through the Museum of Natural History. After a fun field trip to the museum your class is ready to go, but bus driver is missing! Students must solve puzzles and complete math activities using standards-based math skills to uncover the clues leading to their location.
Students will work their way through 7 problems and puzzles practicing area, perimeter, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, money, measurement, geometry, angles, interpreting data, tables, line plots, place value, and more. They will also practice problem-solving strategies, teamwork, and communication skills as they try to decipher the clues to find the driver, hopefully in time for dismissal.
Looking for more fun ways to review? Check out these posts about Fun Math Test Prep Activities and Fun Reading Test Prep Activities. And for my baseball superfans, I also share tons of fun ways to integrate a baseball review into you test prep in this post.
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Have a Not So Wimpy Day,
Will you have 4th grade test prep activities, like you do for 3rd grade?
Right now, I’m so sorry, we only have the test prep for 3rd grade. We are always working on new products to add to our TPT store.
Thanks for the review ideas; I plan to use these after spring break!
P.S. I’d love a 5th grade ELA test prep for reading! ?
Right now, we only have the 3rd grade test prep, but we are always working on new products.