This post originally appeared on the blog Stephanie’s History Store.
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.
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.
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In seven short years, Stephanie has taught 6th-12th grade in 3 states. While Medieval History was captivating and Texas History has been a surprisingly welcome change of pace, her passion is U.S. History and modern World History. She enjoys the challenge of fitting in stories of people and events not included in textbooks, and making history as relevant to her students’ lives as possible. In the little free time teachers tend to have, she loves reading about Ancient Rome, the Tudors, and World War 2, as well as traveling to historic sites. You can read more by visiting her blog, or stop by her TpT store to bring fun, engaging, and rigorous resources into your classroom.
