Explore 14 Cultural Diffusion 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.

• In The TERRIBLE Game, teams answer questions to reveal mystery scores, then decide who gets the points as everyone battles to finish closest to zero.
• The BIG TERRIBLE Game gets up to eight teams answering every question while unpredictable positive and negative points keep everyone guessing until the end.
• GRUDGEBALL turns review into a battle where correct answers earn cannon shots to sink opposing teams before they sink you.
• Turn review into a team competition with TRASHKETBALL™, where students answer questions, earn shots, and try to outscore the other teams.
• BUMP gets teams racing to answer correctly, then gives them a chance to score points by knocking other teams off the platform.
• Get students moving with SCOOT, where they travel from desk to desk answering task cards and recording their answers along the way.
• In FRAZZLED, teams answer questions to uncover mystery points, but one wrong answer or unlucky bomb can completely change the game.

Review works a lot better when students actually want to participate, and games give them a reason to jump in. Students get focused, talk through answers with their teammates, and suddenly everyone wants to be the one who gets the next question right. Just like a team practices before a big game, students who know another review game is coming have a reason to prepare, because this time they really want to win.

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.