Explore 7 Causes of Poverty review games designed by a teacher to engage students and reinforce curriculum. Give students a break from worksheets and bring Social Studies review to life with a classroom game.

• The TERRIBLE Game makes review wonderfully terrible as teams answer questions, uncover unpredictable scores, and use positive and negative points to get closest to zero.
• Turn review into a classroom battle with GRUDGEBALL, where correct answers earn attacks and successful baskets give teams extra shots at their opponents.
• In BUMP, correct answers earn students shots at the platform, where they can score even more points by bumping off opposing teams.
• Keep students on their toes with FRAZZLED, where every answer can reveal points, help the opposing team, or uncover a bomb that resets the score to zero.
• The BIG TERRIBLE Game keeps the whole class involved as up to eight teams answer together and watch their scores swing above and below zero.
• TRASHKETBALL™ gets teams racing to answer correctly, then rewards them with shots at the trash can to score points.
• SCOOT combines review with movement as students rotate between desks and work their way through a set of topic-specific task cards.

When it’s time to review, a little competition can go a long way toward getting students focused, participating, and having fun. Once the game starts, students start talking, thinking, and working together, with hands shooting up and everyone waiting to see what happens next. Over time, that excitement carries beyond the game itself, as students start preparing because they want their team to have a better chance of winning next time.

And it isn’t just something I’ve seen in my own classroom—research has found significant learning benefits from using educational games with students. See the research.