Five Ways to Make Review Games for Students to Play at Home

We’re getting to the time of the year when I usually get a lot of requests for ideas for making review games for students. This year is not any different except that I’m getting requests for making review games that students can play at home. Here are five options for making review games that I have been recommending lately.

ClassTools

ClassTools.net offers a free service teachers can use to create their own educational games. Games made on ClassTools.net can be shared via email or embedded into a blog or website. (Yet another reason for having a class website or blog). ClassTools.net provides more than a dozen easy-to-use templates with which teachers can make educational games for their students. Take a look at the Fling the Teacher game to get started.

Flippity

Flippity.net offers more than a dozen easy-to-follow templates for making games and other activities through Google Sheets. One activity that I like is the Scavenger Hunt. Flippity calls it a scavenger hunt but it is more like a series of trivia questions that students answer to open digital locks. Try it yourself with this demo game.

TinyTap

TinyTap is a good iPad and Android app for creating your own review games based on pictures and diagrams. You can create games in which students have to identify parts of a picture or diagram. You can also build games in which your students have to assemble a puzzle by dragging and dropping pieces into place (the puzzle does not have to follow the jigsaw puzzle format). Students can play the games you create on their iPads, Android tablets, or on a laptop.

Quizalize

Quizalize is an excellent platform through which you can create and distribute online quiz games. Your students can play the games as a group in your classroom much like Kahoot. You can also have your students play the games at home. In fact, Quizalize offered the “play at home” option long before Kahoot did.

Quizalize lets you give assignments and practice activities to students based upon how they performed during a quiz game. For example, you can specify that any student who answers less than 75% of the questions correctly has to watch a video or read a review sheet. This differentiation feature isn’t limited to just one score trigger. You can specify that students scoring 50-60% receive one type of review activity and students scoring 60-75% receive a different review activity.

Kahoot Challenge Mode

Kahoot is perhaps that best-known quiz game platform available today. Over the years it has steadily added features that make it easy to use in physical and online classrooms. One of those features is the Challenge Mode that you can use to have students play games individually at a time that works for them within a window of time that you choose. Kahoot, like Quizalize above, also offers a Smart Practice mode that gives students an opportunity to focus on the questions that they answered incorrectly during a Kahoot game or challenge. Smart Practice works in three phases. The first phase has students immediately try the missed questions again. The second phase is trying the questions again after 24 hours. And the third phase has students try the questions after 48 hours.

Two other features of Kahoot that I appreciate are the question bank and the ability to duplicate games. The question bank lets you import existing questions into your games. The duplication feature is great when you want to make a copy of a game then add or remove a question or two.

Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp!

Registration for the Practical Ed Tech Virtual Summer Camp opened last week. One third of the early-bird tickets have already been claimed. This online PD event will feature ten live, interactive webinars on a wide array of topics applicable to every classroom. It will be held three times this summer. There is a June session and two July sessions. Register for the session of your choice here.

Free Webinar This Thursday

This Thursday at 3pm ET I’m hosting a free webinar titled A Framework for Using Educational Technology. I held it last week and many people asked if I would hold it again, so I am. Learn more and sign up here.