Classroom review games have the benefit of reviewing content, but they also come with additional advantages you may not know about. In this post, I will outline some of the biggest benefits of review games, in addition to the active learning occurring.
Classroom Review Games Promote Social Skills
Playing games is one of the best ways to promote social skills such as taking turns, communication, and patience.
Through playing games, students are able to get real-world practice with skills that will serve them well their whole lives. I mean, how much better can it get than to practice content and social skills with one activity?
Note: cooperative learning activities also reinforce social skills and encourage their practice. For more on cooperative learning, check out this post.
Games Bring Learning Into the Real World
When you move away from worksheets and repeated review and into the world of gameplay, students are able to practice transferring the skills they have learned into new situations. This practice across situations encourages critical thinking and makes learning more long lasting.
Classroom Review Games Support the Community
Team-building and community-building are inherent components of playing games in the classroom. This is made even more apparent when you include cooperative learning strategies into your classroom review games.
Many classrooms fall into the trap of only completing community building activities at the beginning of the school year. However, in order to keep the community strong, they should be done weekly. To get more bang for your proverbial buck, try these class builders that can be used with any content.
They Provide Novelty
Including games in your classroom allow for a sense of novelty that will excite and engage your students. This means that you can practice for mastery by reviewing the same concepts without boring your students to tears.
For example, you may dedicate a whole week to reviewing fractions, but each day play a different review game. This way the content is consistent, but the game provides novelty.
Classroom Review Games Are a Safe Place to Take Risks
Risk is a funny thing. Without it, there cannot be growth, but it can also be scary to put yourself out there and be wrong.
Games provide a place to safely take risks. It’s okay to be wrong, and you can work with a team to better understand a concept. Unlike an exam where you are penalized for trying something you aren’t sure about, in a game you are encouraged to take a chance and rewarded for your effort.
Motivation and Competition
There is no way around it, for most students, competition provides motivation for most. What may otherwise be a list of review questions can be transformed into a motivating activity with a little gamification.
I don’t know about you, but when something as simple as bragging rights is on the table, it is game on for me!
Classroom Review Games Improve Stamina and Confidence
Finally, classroom review games help to build and improve stamina and confidence. Completing twenty questions about measuring angles on a worksheet can be tedious, but working with a partner or team to solve them with the chance of winning the game is exciting.
By building up stamina and confidence through gameplay, students will be ready to conquer the big test when it comes around. They will have already built up their stamina to work on difficult questions for an extended period of time and feel confident in their abilities.
Classroom Review Games Offer More Than Review
In the end, playing review games in your classroom provide students with so much more than the review. They provide a chance to practice social skills in real-world situations that build the classroom community. They allow students to take risks in a safe, and novel environment. Review games also provide motivation to work hard and build stamina ahead of a standardized test. Most of all, they allow students to feel confident in their learning!