Are you looking for content review tips? As the world of standardized testing increases its focus on math and science (hello ACTs), teachers invest more class time on test preparation. Review can be one of the most mundane tasks your class engages in, boring both your students and you, the educator.

That’s why many teachers are looking for content review tips that make test prep fun and meaningful. In fact, many teachers use Legends of Learning’s thousands of games and assessment items for test prep. However, students often need more than one tool to help them lock in and review content day after day.

To help you in your efforts, check out these seven articles filled with tips and tools to strengthen your test prep/content review. Links are in the headlines:

1) Reviving Reviews: Refreshing Ideas Students Can’t Resist – Education World

Looking to end indifference this article asks? Then build a game for your classroom, which of course makes this article our favorite! Education World then links to five resources for teachers to download and use for in class content review.

2) Build Confidence – Edutopia

Did you know that teachers spend as much as 20-50 percent of their class time on test preparation? This article focuses on how to mix up your content review to make that time more useful. Our favorite tip is the last one: Using test preparation to build student confidence.

3) Spaced Learning – Harvard Magazine

You know it’s serious when Harvard is touting a technique. This article details how repeating content over an extended period of time significantly improves learning over the traditional “cram and test” model. Studies show an increase in knowledge by up to 50 percent, and strengthen retention for up to two years. It does take planning your test prep over a period of months instead of a week, but you would improve students’ subject mastery.

4) Turn Review into Play – Edutopia

Want to stop boring the snot out of kids with your test prep? Make it fun and turn exercises into play. We might have a few games for that (Sorry, we couldn’t resist).

5) Five Ways to Make Test Prep Meaningful and Fun – Kathleen Kryza

Don’t miss this article. Besides the usual fun exercises, Kathleen has one very unique tip: Examine your own feelings about the test. If you’re not thrilled about the exam or your class’s potential performance, then you are probably broadcasting negative vibes.

6) Fun In-Class Activities – Apperson

This edtech vendor blog has some great ideas to get students interacting in class during content review. From Jeopardy to a friendly game of Jenga, find fun ways to switch up your test prep.

7) Top 12 Ways to Rev Up Classroom Review Strategies – TeachHub

This is another list article filled with fun ways to mix up content review in class. What caught our eye was letting students serve as teachers and graders. How about a little role reversal to get students engaged?

8) Make Test Prep Meaningful! – Corkboard

This blog post has a singular focus: Have students create their own quizzes. This student-centered activity helps kids master their content while engaging in an authentic, meaningful exercise that has real purpose.

Do you have additional content review tips you would suggest? If so, please add them in the comments section.

On November 29, STEM Certified leader Richard White delivered a Legends of Learning test prep webinar. Richard is a teacher leader at Griffin Middle School in Cobb County, Georgia, where he has worked for the past 6 years.

With December quickly approaching, many teachers will enter a review period for end-of-year testing. Richard’s webinar provides helpful tips for Legends of Learning teachers to use games for test prep as well as for enrichment, and offers tactics to deploy science games as an engagement technique for distracted students.

View Richard’s test prep webinar and associated PowerPoint presentation below:

Test Prep Webinar Video

Test Prep PowerPoint Presentation

About Richard White

Richard is passionate about teaching and learning, and believes that there is some way to reach every student that he encounters. He has presented professionally at several local conferences, and is responsible for helping to train new teachers at Griffin. Richard joined the Legends of Learning platform in November of last year as an ambassador, and began testing games with his students as soon as they were rolled out. He has also presented on LoL at local conferences.

We’re just about halfway through the fall term, which means one thing: test preparation. I’m sure you can already hear your students groaning.

There is good news for your students! One of the most popular ways to use Legends of Learning is to review content before a test. Building a playlist of games and assessment questions is like creating an animated study guide: you choose the content for students to review, and they see it in action. Meanwhile, realtime analytics let you evaluate how well they understand the material.

Let’s take a look at an example. Say you’re preparing for an upcoming test on photosynthesis.

Once you’ve started a new playlist draft within the Photosynthesis Learning Objective, click on a game and review its “Game Curriculum” tab before dragging it. That way you can quickly vet which ones best highlight your concepts of focus.

The discussion questions here are great for asking your students, whether for individual or group review. They challenge your students to think critically about the topic by situating games in the proper educational context, leading to a rich, engaging experience in the days before a test. Many teachers who use Legends of Learning love discussing these questions with a group of students. When students collaborate and get excited about learning through games, knowledge retention increases.

Placing assessment questions before and after gameplay give you great insight into how well your students comprehend the material. In this example, Ms. Rose and Photosynthesis! discusses the conditions necessary for photosynthesis to occur in plant cells. By comparing your students’ pre and post game answers, you immediately see how much further review students’ need on this concept.

Assessment question analytics are broken into both individual and class-wide data, so the scale of concept comprehension is apparent. If it appears from the post game questions that the entire class is struggling with the conditions surrounding photosynthesis, you have the ability to pause everyone’s games and discuss points of confusion. Class time is more efficient with your instruction becoming more targeted to the concepts that need more review.

The view below further illustrates this test prep tactic. In this example, only 30% of the students have correctly answered a question about where the energy for life on earth comes from, so you know to emphasize that concept more in future review.

After a playlist ends, all of its question data is automatically saved. Teachers use this feature to examine which topics individual students struggle with and curate upcoming review to meet their individual needs. Completed playlists can easily be cloned and adjusted to build upon past review. For optimizing individualized test preparation, teachers love to create multiple tracks within a playlist.

As an example, if one group of students has a solid grasp on the material, assign them to a track that only contains a couple of games and assessment items and leaves more time for free play of games within the learning objective. For other groups that need additional reinforcement, build tracks that include more directed games and assessments.

Playlists are a powerful, flexible tool for any stage of review. Use Legends of Learning for superpowered test preparation and watch as student performance improves by leaps and bounds.

Log in and take a fresh approach to science reviewing!

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

In this blog post, we’ll explore why personalized test prep is so important. Keep reading to learn more!