A few years ago, as a student teacher, I used Jeopardy as a means to review before an exam. My class was reading "The Color of Water" and we had just reached the half way point. I thought a review of the book would help students re-visit some of the key plot points and characters from the novel. This book in particular is a little jarring because it leaps forward and backward in time introducing many characters and places in the process.
When I decided to use the Jeopardy format, the first thing I thought of was integrating a SMART BOARD. It seemed like a natural fit for something like this. My classroom was not outfitted with one unfortunately so I had to improvise. (Even if there was a SMART BOARD, the Jeopardy program I checked out today probably wouldn't have even been available back then.) Anyway, I ended up using a million notecards and hand writing every question and point amount. It was tedious to say the least. Not only that, but I also had to tape each card to the black board for each class. (Other teachers used my room so they had to come down in between periods). The actual game went fine, but the setup and preparation was unnecessarily tedious.
This is where the Jeopardy Template comes into play. You can check it out here.
http://exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=806ef19a-f06f-4143-8828-1f8462070e50e
Everything is laid out for you. Just enter the data (questions, answers and such) and you've got a quick game of Jeopardy. What I love about using this as review (for any subject really) is that its engaging. What I noticed last time I did it was how excited student were to be in competition against one another. A traditional review is flipped on its head and not only do students learn (many exceeded my expectations on the exam) they have fun in the process. It's a good combo.
No comments:
Post a Comment