This Strategy Made My High School Class Games a Zillion Times More Effective

Gameshow inspired review games are a staple of secondary education. Students love them. Teachers love them, and technology has made them easier to make and more fun to play than ever. 

But, especially in a big class, (and I teach in a state with ELA classes capped at 40 students) there is a flaw—the downtime between turns. 

When teams take turns answering questions, if there are more than two teams, there are several minutes when a team doesn’t have a question to answer.

If there are several students on each team, there can be even more downtime as students either wait for their turn within the team or try to make their voice heard within a big group.

Because of these issues, I haven’t used these kinds of games as often lately in my practice. 

Then I thought of something—whiteboards, and my class game structure was born.

Now this is how I approach a class review game:

• I give each team a whiteboard and assigned a scribe for the team. 

• The team is required to put the whiteboard flat on their team’s table. 

• Every team answers every question, and I check everyone’s answer.

• If the team that chose the question gets the question wrong, any teams that got the question right splits the points for the question. 

I’m not joking when I say that this strategy transformed my classroom review games. Each student pays attention to each question. Students help each other catch mistakes as they write their responses on their whiteboards.