I missed this mission way back when it was first posted, but thought it was worth revisiting to see what I was missing out on. I was initially going to re-watch the “International Global Math Department Autumn special” but was sidetracked when I saw this title: “Exam Review That Doesn’t Suck,” and couldn’t resist. My students will start exams next week, and review is always the most stressful part for me as a teacher: my students don’t seem to care, don’t know anything, and don’t care that they don’t know anything. Last year (my first year teaching), I worked myself into a frenzy trying to cram even the most basic facts and procedures they should’ve known months ago down their ungrateful, unruly and uncaring throats. I quickly gave up on games (jeopardy quickly went from fun to horrible), and tried all sorts of partner and review activities, sometimes with mild success, but most of the time only to find out how poorly I must have taught that lesson for everyone to still not know how to set up a proportion using similar triangles (for example). By the end of the class, I was usually yelling and threatening every possible consequence in my arsenal to no avail, and even my good kids had checked out. By the time my students took their exams (and did, predictably, terribly) I felt so little remorse at marking “F’s” on those papers and writing snide, sarcastic comments like “Antonio, if only you had done the review sheet we worked on in class” or “Lataris, maybe next time you won’t sleep during the review.” In short, my review last year did not end well for anyone involved; not for me, and especially not my students.
Anyway, onto the Global Math Department blog/video: Exam Review That Doesn’t Suck
First part of the video was mostly different types of review games, and variations of the team-question-point answer games. The variations, with different emphases on groups, depth, teacher prep, timing, etc., can be tailored to different needs. I like how the presenter emphasized building in “hype” to the games–through shouting, through using “icons” to make it a race, etc.–to make even simple review more exciting.
These games seem better than basic team jeopardy, but I’m still left wondering how to get quality review in for students (and especially whole groups of students) who never truly learned the concepts to begin with. I guess this isn’t as much about reviewing as it is reteaching…but I think that’s probably a different problem than what these teachers are presenting on with their ranges of review “games.”
Since my school is so chaotic, I like to keep my classroom on the calmer side, so maybe I’ll save some of these more chaotic games until the actual end of the year. But I think some of these more “review” type “games” can be modified to end of the class reviews as more fun checks for understanding. Again, Matt’s key point about “hype” making students enjoy the game and “feel good about math” resonated deeply with me–perhaps because this “joy factor” is often so difficult to implement and see in my own classroom, and yet feeling good (or simply better) about math is perhaps the most important thing I can teach my students this year to set them up for more success next year.
The second presenter (Megan) talked about one activity that I like to do as well: stations. One suggestion I really liked of hers was to have a self-checking mechanism in place so students can check their answers. I find giving answer keys to be troublesome because my students will just write down the answer. But I liked her suggestion of putting the answers to the previous station at the next station.
Anyway, a successful introduction to the Global Math Department. And now I’m going to go check out two others that intrigued me: The Autumn “Special” that I mentioned earlier, and “My Favorites: Problem-Based Lessons and Tasks.”
Mr. Paris 