Effective Review Strategies
One of the major parts of teaching is reviewing. This allows us as teachers to make sure that students are actually learning what we are teaching them. Some say it is also seeing if they are retaining the information, but one could argue if they are not retaining it they never fully learned it in the first place. Below I have created a list of effective review strategies that will help kids prepare for tests and will help you as a teacher know that they have mastered the concepts.
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Effective Review Strategies #1 Reviewing Notes
The first on my list of effective review strategies is reviewing their notes. If students have been taking notes throughout the units, and they should be taking notes then the information that they need to know will be in those notes, and going over them can help them with the tests. If students do not have notes going over their assignments for the units will be helpful for the test and review.
Highlighting Notes
First off students should learn how to effectively highlight their notes. I think that we have all seen the joke where kids just highlight everything in their notes or just highlight the whole book. This is funny but is pretty true as something that kids do if they do not know how to review their notes. You should teach kids how to do this in layers. First, have them go through and highlight any important vocabulary that might be on the test. Then after they are done with that they should highlight in a different color all the key concepts that are in their notes. You can list the key concepts that they should be focusing on. These are the main ideas that are going to be the most important for them to focus on.
Focus on Main Ideas
Overall, you need to tell kids that the most important things for them to master and get from their notes are main ideas and key concepts. Sometimes these are pointed out in textbooks at the beginning of chapters. You can also point out the main concepts to your students and review them to make sure that they know the most important things and section them off in their notes.
Create Study Guides
Lastly, another one of the effective review strategies is to create study guides for your students. They can use these study guides to review their notes and see what the most important items are and what is going to be on the test. Study guides that are closely geared to the test are some of the most important things for students to go over to review.
Effective Review Strategies #2 Always be Checking Students’ Levels
Another one of the effective review strategies that you can bring into your classroom is to be constantly reviewing. If you are constantly checking students’ levels you can see what they understand and what they don’t. You can see if you need to spend more time on a subject or if they are ready to move on. There are several ways to do this but some of my favorites are listed below.
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Boom Cards
First, my favorite way to review is to use boom cards. I have two sets that are perfect for reviewing certain math concepts. The first is an all-year multiplication drills bundle which will have your students reviewing their multiplication drills throughout the year. There are different drills for every holiday and season throughout the year. In total there are 28 different resources in this bundle. Plus with multiplication, constant practice and review are needed to make sure that students have a really good foundation in math.
Another great set of boom card reviews that I have is my build a treat bundle. This bundle will have students reviewing their long division and double-digit multiplication. There are 4 decks total in this bundle two of each concept. There are also brain breaks built-in where students will get to build a tasty treat. This creates a no-pressure math review for your students that will have them excited and will feel like fun to your students.
Exit Tickets
Another way that you can be reviewing with your students constantly which makes it one of the very effective review strategies is to implement exit tickets. These are one or two questions that you will give students at the end of every lesson that you do with them. It will help you see if what you were just talking about sticking with the students. It will let you know if they are understanding and are ready to move on or if you should spend more time on this concept.
In my Ultimate Multiplication toolkit, there are a couple of items that you could use as an exit ticket. One is a times table that students have to fill out and the other is a 100s chart with items missing. Both of these would make good exit tickets for your students after a multiplication unit
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Quizizz and Kahoot
Another great effective review strategy is to foster healthy competition through Quizizz or Kahoot. These are programs online that you can sign up for a use quizzes that have already been made or make quizzes yourself.
One of my students is in online school and on Fridays his teachers will often use Kahoot or Quizizz to review different concepts for the class. My student loves these in fact if his teachers don’t do them on Fridays for some reason he is so disappointed. With these fun quiz competitions, kids will be reviewing, but they won’t feel like they are doing a lot of hard work they will just feel like they are having fun.
Effective Review Strategies #3 Practice Tests
This is probably my favorite way to review for big tests. I think that practice tests are so important for the big standardized tests that kids will come upon in their lives. Practice tests are super important for placement tests, PSAT, SAT, and of course, the test that elementary teachers are concerned about state tests. For many of these tests, I say that it’s more about knowing how the test is written than just the concepts. Kids can be very smart and still fail these tests because they do not know the test well. Taking practice tests helps with that.
State Tests
So state tests because these are the most important tests for elementary schoolers this is something that elementary teachers have to think about quite a bit. The good news is the state releases practice test to help students with these tests. I live in California and the practice tests are available online and teachers can even give kids codes and see their progress on them. There are also paper tests available. Setting time aside around state testing time for review and practice tests is so important. Not only does it help kids do better on the test they also are not as stressed about the test.
Quizzes before big tests
Another type of practice test before unit tests in a class is to make a couple of quizzes before the test that models how the test will be. This for one can serve the students as one effective review strategy because they can use these quizzes and their notes to effectively practice and review for the test.
Effective Review Strategies #4 Escape Rooms
Another one of the great effective review strategies that I use is escape rooms. My students love these and they can really help kids review concepts. They however feel like they are playing a fun game. I love to split students into groups to do escape rooms because then they can work together and if one student doesn’t get it usually another student understands or can see what a clue leads to. One escape room that I use is my hamburger escape room.
In this math escape room, your students will enter into the story of the Hamburger Caper. A fourth-grade class has been working very hard and has won the attendance award for the entire school. This means that they have won a hamburger lunch from the best hamburger joint in town. However, just as they are about to sink their teeth into these amazing burgers they realize that someone or something has ruined their lunch. Several burgers are missing; only their wrappers are left. Others are half-eaten. Who or what could have done this?
Your students will work through a series of digital escape room puzzles in this math escape room where they will show mastering of working with all 4 different operations with whole numbers. It covers all three of the common core standards for 4th-grade math operations with whole numbers. Students will be working with problems that will test their skills in multiplication equations and Multi-step word problems.
Overall, this escape room and others are perfect for review because since kids have already learned the concepts they can go through it without having to be walked through all the steps and they have so much fun with it.
Effective Review Strategies #5 Games
The last in my bucket of effective review strategies are games. I do so many games with my students. With multiplication, I love dice games, computer games, and boom cards. Many of the strategies that I say above can be used as games. I think one of the reasons that I like games so much is because this is one of the ways that I learned when I was younger. I don’t know if anyone remembers these but the jumpstart computer games were the best. They taught me so much about school and the concepts that I needed to learn and to me they were so much fun. Usually, I would come home from school and play these games because they were just the best. The fun nature of games is one of the reasons that they are really effective review strategies.
I hope that these strategies will work for you, that your students will know how to review well to prepare for the test, and that you can truly know that they understand the topic. If you benefited from this post please consider sharing it so others can benefit as well.