Explore 7 Silk Road Trade review games designed by a teacher to engage students and reinforce curriculum. When students are having fun, they forget they are reviewing, making games a great way to practice Social Studies.

• In GRUDGEBALL, teams answer questions to fire on their opponents’ ships, then make baskets to earn even more shots.
• TRASHKETBALL™ mixes fast-paced question review with a classroom shooting competition where correct answers earn shots for points.
• BUMP combines fast-paced question review with a competitive challenge where students land shots and knock other teams off the platform.
• SCOOT combines review with movement as students rotate between desks and work their way through a set of topic-specific 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 gets up to eight teams answering every question while unpredictable positive and negative points keep everyone guessing until the end.

Turning review into a game is one of my favorite ways to get students participating without making practice feel like more work. Students get focused, talk through answers with their teammates, and suddenly everyone wants to be the one who gets the next question right. 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.

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.