In
pairs, one person takes a post card and secretly writes down 5 key terms relating to the topic previously studied. Their partner must then talk for a minute on the topic and will receive a mark for each of the key words they say during that minute. Then swap roles and see who gets the highest score.
A variation on this game is to do the opposite. Allocate 5 points to the player. Their partner writes down the 5 key terms as before but this time the player must talk about the topic without mentioning the terms on the card - they are taboo. If they do, they lose a mark for each taboo word. They will have a score out of 5 at the end.
Simple game using post-it notes. In pairs, students take it in turns to guess who they are. One student writes a key person’s name onto a post-it note and sticks it onto their partner’s forehead without them seeing what it says. Their partner must then ask questions which can only be answered with yes or no. They can have upto 10 questions in order to guess who they are. Then students swap roles. Useful for revising facts about key people in a topic.
In pairs, students are asked to write a press release on the topic they have just studied. They should set it out as a newspaper article with a headline, relevant image, and quotes. The article should be short and snappy encouraging students to pick out key information only to write a brief summary of the topic. The finished product could be displayed on the classroom wall as a point of interest.
Create a story using key facts and figures from the topic being studied. The story should have a beginning, middle and end and can incorporate key images to illustrate the content. The aim is to elaborate on the facts by adding detail and description to help the reader learn the topic. Humour helps too! Once complete, host ’storytime’ where students read out their stories to the rest of the class. You might even create a storybook with different students contributing different stories for each topic. The finished product could be wordprocessed and used as a revision booklet.
If the material to be taught has key terms and definitions to learn, produce a sheet of card that has the key terms and a definition for each one. Cut up the cards into key terms and definitions and shuffle them. Give each pair of students one full set of cards and their task is to match up the key term with the appropriate definition. They could record their definitions for their notes once you have checked that their matching is correct.