My best review game

Though I'm generally pretty averse to review games, I was inspired by a recent post about the effectiveness of Math Basketball. I do have one review that has been remarkably successful. I don't remember where I picked this one up, and I don't have a name for it. I'm open to witty suggestions.

Review cards

The setup

  • Go through the material you want students to review. Come up with several questions that get at that knowledge. Make sure you have at least as many questions as students. It's okay to have more.
  • Throw in a few questions that students will really need to think through the knowledge to get the answer.
  • Throw in a few simple definitions.
  • Throw in a few totally unrelated questions about yourself or anything else.
    • What is Mr. W's favorite slapstick comedy movie?
    • Who is Mr. W's favorite super-hero?
    • What is the greatest baseball team in the history of the  world?
  • Put the first question on the bottom half of a note card. On a second note card, put the answer to the first question on the top of the card. Put a second question on the bottom of that note card. Continue filling out note cards like this until you've used up all your questions.
    • I always write "START" and "END" in big red letters on the first and last cards, just for clarity.

In class

  • Pass out at least one card to each student.
  • As soon as the person with the first card starts reading the question, start a timer. Be sure you're using one that measures down to hundredths of a second. Your students will want that type of accuracy. Trust me.
  • As soon as the person with the last card is finished reading the last answer stop the time.

Regulations & tips

  • The entire question and answer must be read out loud.
  • No reading an answer until the entire question has been read.
  • I only allow students to run through the activity twice with the same cards. After the second time, I collect the cards, shuffle them up, and pass them back out.
  • You'll probably want a list of the questions, in order, sitting in front of you. The first time through there's can be lots of wrong answers read. I just say, "Nope!" when a wrong answer is read.
    • Really devious intelligent classes have been known to purposely try skipping a few cards to improve their times, hoping to catch me off guard. Be on guard.

Modes of play

  • Class vs. class. Classes compete for the lowest overall time. I don't tell my classes the time they have to beat. Instead, at the end of the activity I do a reality show style reveal of the best time so far.
  • Class vs. clock. Set an arbitrary time to beat. Pick low. I've had classes go through sets of cards faster than I would've ever imagined possible. In my wily experience, I generally don't set a time to beat until they've gone through two reshuffles. That way I have a better idea of what will be a good goal for the class.

Compensation

In the past I've given extra credit to classes for having the lowest overall time or besting their goal (depending on the mode of play). However, my first time through it at my new school I tried it out with no other reward than bragging rights, just to see how it would go (I knew once I offered extra-credit, they'd never play for anything less). Results? It went great. Bragging rights proved a big enough motivator this time around.

Ready for day 1

Despite the problems I've been having lately with my new position, I feel (mostly) ready to go for day one. As part of my continuing crusade against my previously poorly designed presentations and handouts, I decided to peruse what my blogosphere (the one in my aggregator) had to say about the matter. I found plenty of great stuff, which is nearly inevitable given the quality of educators out there sharing. Here's my plan:

Getting to know you

I've always felt teachers often spend too much time explaining who they are, or what the course is, or what the rules are right away on the first day. I knew my first day plans would focus first on who my students are, then work my way into expectations and procedures.

I vaguely recalled an old post on dy/dan where a beginning of the year "get to know you" activity was shared that struck me as not being stupid.¹  It took me awhile to re-find it (luckily Google Reader had a pretty good search), but upon finding it I knew I had something. I had to track back to his original post from 8 months earlier in which he posted the original blank document.

Here's my version of the document:

Silly Bus

I really dread going over the syllabus every year. It's boring. It's so not a good indicator of what the course is about. But, we're required to have them, so lucky for me, in the same post where Dan introduced the above activity, he shared his more interesting syllabus. It required student participation, it looked good, and as Dan mentions, is different from the 47² other syllabi they've received that same day. At minimum, I figure a different syllabus will earn a couple cool points with students on the first day of school.

Here's my effort (blank):

And then...

I believe my fellow teachers generally go right into lab safety³, so I figure I'd better follow their lead at this point, since I'm still the relatively ignorant rookie. Instead of just reading each of the rules and making students sign their safety contracts, I figure I'll split them into pairs/threes and have each group design and create a safety poster explaining a rule of the lab. Then each group can come up, explain their poster and the importance of their rule, and we're not all bored to death.

Good reading

A few (other) good reads regarding the first day(s) of school I've found:

  • FirstDay Wiki
    • created by the aforementioned Dan Meyer, it has several good ideas for opening day, and you can add your own if you'd like.
  • An Open Letter to Teachers
    • from Bud the Teacher, a motivational post on getting ready for the new year. Read it.
  • What's matter?
    • Doyle does such a great job of verbalizing (textualizing perhaps) science as a process. Science as not a set of memorize-able facts. This post on something he's done the first day of school regarding how matter isn't all we typically think it is makes me want to use his idea, but I'm not sure I could carry it out in the expert way he's described.
  • Do it the right way, not the Wong way
    • Tom in his typically cynical tone nails problems with the "classic" book The First Days of School by Harry Wong. This post in itself probably contains more valuable information for new teachers than the entire book.

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¹ I guess I'm not a big ice-breaker fan. Perhaps it comes from my somewhat introverted nature. I've always hated ice-breakers.

² 47 may be a slight exaggeration, but you get the idea.

³ Communication between everyone teaching my classes has been pretty slim, so this is based upon my best guesses.