Well it took almost a full school year, but thanks to a professional development I went to, I found a review technique ALL of my 7th graders were on board with.
I call it “True, False, Fix.”
true false fix: a social studies review game
The PD person led us through a variety of strategies, and one was a review where there were 20 statements about the content from the lesson divided into pairs in 10 spots around the room. We each started at a pair of statements, read them, and put the one we thought was correct right side up and the incorrect one upside down. The person leading the PD, checked them, we moved to the next pair of statements, then the next, and we kept going and getting checked until we had done all 10 pairs. I thought it was a neat idea, but it had been designed for 4th graders so I put my own spin on it for my 7th graders.
As the schedule worked out, my girls had a test our 2nd day back from spring break, so I spent our first class getting them back in gear and reviewing. I figured I might as well try this new strategy because it’s getting close to the end of our year and I wanted to shake things up for the girls and do something different.
I typed up 16 statements related to the test material, some true and some false. I divided the girls into pairs and each pair got all 16 pieces of paper in a pile. They divided them into true and false and then I checked them. Once each pair’s true/false separations were correct, the girls took turns explaining why each was false and restated it so it was true (for example: Mexico won the Mexican-American War was corrected to America won the Mexican-American War). Afterwards, in their pairs, they wrote two true and two false statements related to the material that had not already been covered, swapped them with another pair, and they sorted and fixed them one more time.
We also played THIS review game afterwards with some of the larger topics from the semester just to make sure they hadn’t brain dumped *everything* over break, because their final exam is closer than they realize. ***Exciting update, this post has been featured on the TpT Blog!*** Click HERE to read about how I will be playing this on white boards this year!!!
Do you have any new strategies or tips that other teachers would benefit from, especially as it gets close to the end of the year? I’d love to read about them in the comments 🙂
Categories: Teaching
Stephanie's History Store 
This sounds awesome! I will try it with my seventh graders for their next review. I did something similar with my sixth graders in Texas History at the beginning of a unit. I played two truths and a lie. Each student randomly selected one of five Texas heroes of the revolution. Going through the chapter, the student had to write two truths and a lie about the hero onto an index card. Overnight, I checked all the cards to make sure of the statements. The next day, I posted all of the cards around the room grouped by hero. (Since I had 25 students, we had 5 cards for each hero… having multiple cards with some overlapping statements I think was good.) The students had an answer sheet to write which statement was the lie for each card. The top three got a little prize. (So fun that our temporary student from Spain got one of the prizes… he chose a pen with an American flag design,)
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That is such a neat idea Diane! I will try that out with my World History students as a review for our WWI unit. Thanks so much for sharing!
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This is fun and learning for them, it’s great! Thank you for sharing.
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You’re welcome Penny, so glad you like it!
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