My Favorite Friday: My Go-To Reviews

Here are a couple of my favorite go-to reviews (not games, really). I use them each maybe 4 times a year. While not particularly original, they definitely should be in everyone's bag o' tricks because they work great every time.

Stations review was one of my very first posts. It takes some time to prep, but the actual implementation couldn't be easier. This is also a great activity to leave for a sub, since you really just have to set the timer and holler "rotate" every five minutes.

Stations Review and Practice

I also love scavenger hunts. The setup is similar to stations, but students get to search the room to find the answer. This has worked great with some of my most active classes. It is also easy to differentiate by pairing students with a helpful partner. Students typically work pretty hard with this activity.

Scavenger Hunt

Happy reviewing!

My Favorite Partner Practice

I am a fan of anything cooperative, as long as it is structured in such a way that everyone participates. I spent a lot of time last year seeking out new cooperative practice ideas and trying them out.

I am an even bigger fan of partner cooperation. There is something about a group of three or four that makes me feel like someone is probably getting lost in the interaction. When you are working with a partner, you are directly accountable to one other person. I even have my students seated as partners.

I learned my favorite partner practice from another teacher in my grad program a few years ago. I found out later that it is a Kagan cooperative learning structure called boss/secretary.

Student 1, Boss:  This student's job is to watch and tell. Student tells how to solve the problem, and describes each step with enough detail that the partner can get it written down. This student should be talking and watching, but not writing.

Student 2, Secretary:  This student's job is to listen and write. Student writes down the solution as the partner describes it. This student should be writing but not talking. The exception is if the partner gets stuck or makes a mistake. Then the student can coach and assist with the solving.

What I like about boss/secretary:  It can be done at any time at the drop of the hat. It can also last for any length of time. I will often stop in the middle of a lesson and check for understanding this way. I will just throw out two problems and tell the person sitting on the right (or wearing the most green, or the biggest feet, or the oldest . . .) to be solver of the first problem and then switch roles. I also just used it for a unit review that lasted a whole class period. We used white boards and I signed off on each section as it was completed.

What I don't like:  Students have to stick to their roles in order for it to be a meaningful interaction. I have seen students who are responsible for listening take charge of the problem, or students who are in charge of talking to take a passive role. It is helpful to have students switch roles with every problem.

Puzzles!

I love love love puzzles! And I forgot all about this fun puzzle (not my original idea, but I cannot remember where it came from) until recently. I made some of these a few years ago, and we just pulled them out for our math strategies classes to review a few of the tested standards for the Kansas 10th grade math assessment.

Here is how it works:  You start with a template that looks like this, or you could make your own by creating a table in word.

Each border between shapes is used for a problem and answer, or two pieces of matching information. This one shows the names of properties and corresponding examples.

I usually tell students which piece goes in the middle, to help them begin.

Then students just have to match the edges like a puzzle.

I've written a few of these, and I have learned there is a ton of potential for varying the difficulty level.  You can write distracting answers along the outer edges to make it more challenging, or not.  You could tell students which piece goes in the middle to help them get started, or not.  You could white out the happy faces and write in different directions so that students don't know which side is "up".  You can repeat answers, or not. I recommend trying to solve the puzzle yourself before you give it to the students, though. The puzzles I wrote ended up having a lot of variation in difficulty without my even realizing.

Here is the template.

Scavenger Hunt

I got the idea for a scavenger hunt from some friends.  They created a proportion activity that I use in my math strategies class. I hadn't tried to use it for anything else, until recently.

The setup is pretty simple, you just make up a bunch of cards with questions on the bottom half and an answer to a different problem on the top half.  Each card has a distinguishing feature like a symbol or something, and you tape them all around the room.

I had students stick with a partner, to help answer each other's questions. Students are supposed to choose one card to start with, and work out the problem on the bottom half of the page.  Then they look around the room for the answer.  When they find it, they record the symbol in the answer key and work out the next problem and so on . . .

Remember my Rock Star intern? I asked him to create a scavenger hunt to review in the middle of my basic trig unit for Algebra 2. The topic was finding sohcahtoa, given different types of information. He wrote all the problems himself, and created a page for students to show their work and record the corresponding symbols.

Rock Star thought about everything! He made sure that the answers to every problem were different, but yet similar enough that it wasn't a dead giveaway. He proofread his solutions carefully and there were no mistakes (well, I had to make two teeny tiny corrections). The number of problems he selected was the perfect amount. Everyone finished, but there wasn't a ton of extra time at the end of the activity. I couldn't have done it better myself.

This was my first time entrusting my intern with the creation of an activity. I will admit that I was fully expecting cautiously preparing for the day to be a disaster. But it couldn't have been more perfect. I loved this activity and I will definitely laminate it and use it again. Students were up and moving around, and they were pretty focused.  Even my class with focus issues worked really hard.

I am thinking of how nice it would be to continue to utilize Rock Star's help, and I have decided:  This kid is not allowed to graduate.

Quick and Dirty Review

Let me set the scene: We have had 7 snow days since the beginning of January (I know we're not alone!). I am more than a week behind schedule. Today's plan: Review the unit so that we can take the test tomorrow. Almost four weeks have passed since the first day of the unit, and student memory is sketchy. To make matters worse, we are on short schedule with a 1:00 release for parent/teacher conferences.

I needed to review in the most efficient way possible.  I had a sheet of review problems ready.  I wanted each student to focus on his/her weakness because there wasn't time to do them all in class.

I ended up instructing the students to skim the review problems and start on the hardest problems. I literally told them to find the problem that scares them the most and start with that. Better to do those in class where they could ask questions and save the easier ones to finish at home. And, since I knew those instructions would result in 10 hands raised simultaneously, I also used my planning period to write out the solutions on post-it notes and put them on the board like this:

Students could raise their hand to get help from me. Or, they could discuss a problem with their partner. Or, they could go grab the sticky note for the problem they were working on. I put the number of the problem under each post-it, so that students could tell at a glance which notes were already in use.

The whole day was less thorough and more chaotic than what I would normally plan. But my goal was accomplished: Everyone left the room having completed the problems they viewed as most challenging. All in under 35 minutes.

And they are going to go home tonight and take a second look at every problem they completed with assistance and try it again without assistance. Okay, probably not, but I did tell them to do that.

Trial Run: Speed Dating

Today I test drove another fantabulous idea from f(t).  I spent the week on rational expressions and complex fractions, so I wanted to review all of that.  I won't go into all the details, because I pretty much followed the activity exactly as Kate describes it.

So here's my reflection . . .

What I liked about speed dating:  At any given moment, all the students were doing math (well, almost).  And they weren't just watching someone do math, they were actively participating by either doing a problem or helping someone else do a problem.  I love empowering the students to coach each other.

What I didn't like:  I must admit, the noise level was a little out of my comfort zone.  But I am trying to stretch myself as a teacher and I can definitely learn to adjust.  I also need to learn how to tell the difference between goofing around noise and the sound of good productive math conversations.  I would say that the noise was 90% productive today, and I think that is pretty good.  Also, the room getting loud was a really good indication that it was time to move on to the next problem.

I think I need to spend some time teaching students what good coaching looks like, but I am doing this activity again for sure.

By the way, I didn't use the term "speed dating" with my students.  However, it took about five minutes in each class before someone says "this is like speed dating".  And then they started being cute and saying "Hello, my name is ____" when they sat down with a new partner and "It was nice to meet you" as they moved on to the next partner.  Oh, I love high school students!

Math Dominoes

Here's another review activity that I like:

To create the dominoes, you set up a table in a word document and then fill in the first box with the word "START".  Put a problem in the next box, followed by the answer in the next box, and so on.  The final box will contain the word "END".  Cut them apart domino-style, and you have a puzzle for students to assemble.

It is self-checking, because students should get to the end without any extra pieces.

What I like about Math Dominoes:  Students can manipulate the pieces as they solve.  You hear things like "Wait a minute, I already used such-and-such answer", followed by students going back to find the mistake and rearrange things accordingly.  Most students like the puzzle-like nature of the activity.

What I don't like:  If students are working in pairs, it is possible for one person to dominate and the other to coast.  I sometimes accompany this with a sheet where both partners have to show calculations.  The biggest problem I have had with this in the past is the huge variation in how much time it takes to finish.  Depending on the complexity and so on, students will finish in anywhere from 5-45 minutes.  So if you are using this for the first time you will want to have something in your back pocket for the kids who finish in five.

Helpful tip:  Make sure each set of dominoes has a distinguishing feature.  Make them in different colors, or put colored dots on the backs of them or something.  That way when you see one laying on the floor after class, you won't be pulling out your hair trying to figure out to which set it belongs.