I’m sure this idea has probably been around for years, but I’ve never seen it so here’s what I came up the other day as I spied a jenga set in a classroom. This review idea would work well at the end of the course before exams. It might be an idea to give to students to do for themselves at home.
Take a Jenga set and using sticky-labels, write the names of the key studies that you want students to review (see image). Once you’ve done this with all key studies (I’d recommend no more than 50 max!), your students can play a regular game of Jenga – with a few new rules.
Sticky labels are a good idea because they peel off relatively easy so you can update your blocks as you change studies, or even use them for different units.
- Make sure the blocks are stacked with the sticky label facing down.
- If they pull out a block that has the name of a study on it (you might not use all blocks for studies), they have to be able to summarize the results of that study. If they can do this, it’s the next player’s turn.
- If a player is unable to summarize the results of the study, it remains their turn.
One obvious drawback is that it takes a whole Jenga set and while they’re relatively cheap ($10 on amazon), you might not have enough for all students to play. What you could do is set-up some “review stations” during an exam review lesson. One station could play a Jeopardy, another could be using flashcards, playing Jenga, playing a quizizz or Kahoot, etc. When it gets closer to exam time, I should have some more resources to share so you can do this in your own classroom (as I will be trying to do it in mine).
This could also be adapted for any unit or subject. For example, you could have names of key terms on the blocks, or English teachers might put names of characters from novels they’ve studied, History teachers could put dates or names of events and students have to summarize what happened, Math teachers could put a formula or problem, etc.
If you have any other review ideas, or ways to make this one better, please let them in the comments.
Travis Dixon is an IB Psychology teacher, author, workshop leader, examiner and IA moderator.