Explore 11 Daily Life in the Colonies review games designed by a teacher to engage students and reinforce curriculum. Turn Social Studies review into a game and give students a reason to get excited about showing what they know.

• TRASHKETBALL™ gets teams racing to answer correctly, then rewards them with shots at the trash can to score points.
• In BUMP, correct answers earn students shots at the platform, where they can score even more points by bumping off opposing teams.
• SCOOT gets students out of their seats and moving around the classroom as they rotate from desk to desk answering task cards.
• 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.
• 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 keeps the whole class involved as up to eight teams answer together and watch their scores swing above and below zero.

Turning review into a game is one of my favorite ways to get students participating without making practice feel like more work. Once the game starts, students start talking, thinking, and working together, with hands shooting up and everyone waiting to see what happens next. Play review games regularly and students start preparing for them, because just like sports, they know being ready gives them a better chance to win.

There’s research behind the fun too, with studies finding better academic performance and greater student engagement when games are brought into learning. See the research.