Review Strategies to Include ALL Students Learn

Excellence in Education: Review Strategies to Include ALL Students Learn

With midterm exams around the corner, I thought I'd share a couple of review strategies that can be used to ensure all students are participating AND learning. Of course, they can be used at any time of year and distributed practice far outweighs cram sessions. 

Numbered Heads Together

1. Students are placed in heterogeneous/mixed ability groups of 4 with each group member assigned a number 1-4. 
2. Inform students that all group members will need to be able to answer/present the group's answer/response.
3. Provide all students with a question. 
4. Options: allow students time to work individually, write down their answers (on own paper or whiteboard). 
5. Students share their response and confirm their answers. 
6. Call out a number for the team member who will present for the group. At this time they cannot receive help from their group. This could also mean having students clear their whiteboards and write down the answers with 1 member of each group being responsible for holding up the board.
7. Tips/Alternatives: vary the level of questions, keep score, use a radomizer/spinner to determine which group and/or number to call on; provide the questions visually and orally. 

Categories

1. Provide students with cards with names, items, etc. 
2. Ask students to sort the cards into piles based on common characteristics. 
3. Have the students rationalize (written, verbally, using technology) why they grouped the cards as they did. 
4. Often there are multiple ways to categorize the cards, so students can be challenged to re-do this. 
5. Tips/Alternatives: This can be done individually, in partners/groups, or in a combination of both. 

Networking Carousel

1. Prepare a series of prompts or questions and post them on bulletin board paper. Alternatively, this can be done digitally/electronically. 
2. Place students in partner/groups. 
3. Have students work together to write down as much as they can about that topic (either using or not using notes/resources). 
4. After a pre-determined amount of time, ask students to rotate to the next board/question. 
5. Repeat by having students add and edit. 
6. Tips/Alternatives: Provide students with note cards or use their notebooks to write down the information (pre-write and post-write) to use this information to study. 

Last Person Standing

1. Prepare questions in advance. Questions that work best for this are lists or require multiple parts. 
2. Put students into heterogeneous/mixed groups. 
3. Provide students and groups with information that they will be responsible for knowing (time to review). 
4. Working in their groups, students review. 
5. Have all students stand. Randomly call on two groups to face off. For example, groups 1 and 2. 
6. Alternating between groups and individuals between groups, each student is responsible for providing one new piece of information about the topic. 1A-1B-2A-2B-3A. 
7. When someone gets an answer wrong, the last person to correctly gets an the answer right gets to knock out any student in the class. This often means the best students are knocked out early on, but they can still participate in the group review (step 4). 
8. Tips/Alternatives: In stage 4, allow students to write down notes. Allow students to review or even use their notes for stage 5. Another option is to provide a question, allow students to work in groups and then proceed to stage 5. Then give another question/topic and repeat 4 and 5. Use chips or another marker to know which student to start with. 

Donut/Concentric Circles

1. Provide students with review questions. 
2. Students form two concentric circles with equal numbers of students in both the inner and outer circle. 
3. Students stand in concentric circles and with their partner they discuss their answer to one or more questions. 
4. After set period of time, students rotate. Usually, just moving the outer circle. 
5. Tips/Alternatives: You can be strategic with how you put students in the circles. Allow students to review their work with their previous partner so they can add or correct information. 

I think of many review strategies that I used especially games like Jeopardy! or today just using Kahoot! don't require all students to learn and such. What I like about the above is how they engage all students in the learning process and are beneficial to all students. What are some techniques/strategies that you use?  

Tasks, Important Information, Upcoming Events

Midterm Bell Schedule: bit.ly/MontMid 

Wednesday at 4:30 Winter Faculty Social at Timberwood 5th Street 

Ugly Sweater Contest on December 19

Friday: B-Day, Club Day with Club Pictures 

Hour of Code is coming up the week of December 9^th-13^th.

The Learning Technology team will be curating resources for this event. Our goal this year is for students to engage in 5000 hours of code throughout the week. If you pre-register through ACPS for this event we will send swag for your students and the chance to win amazing prizes for your school!
Link for registration 
For more information click here 

Golden Apple Awards: Read more from this post 

Field Trips

Birthdays
12/15: John Skelton

Useful Information

Bell Schedules http://bit.ly/MustangBells 

Seeking volunteers? ACPS is attempting to expand volunteer outreach and help teachers find volunteers. Here’s a form that takes a minute to complete.

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