Beach Ball Docs

Where are we in the summer countdown? Eleven student-days of school left, right? It sure is hard to get kids to review for exams when it feels like beach weather outside!!

Lets see if we can throw a bone (or a ball) to the beachy wanna-bes (um, me included!). Let’s play our next review game with a beach ball, to combine the two. And for fun. And learning.

So, for me, one of the hardest parts of review is getting past the lower-level thinking. Getting past the review guide or review packet or review game that involves a list of terms or concepts.

So, here’s a way to do review with DOCUMENTS!!!

Because, depending on your exam, the EOC/FSA/district final will include roughly about 50% stimulus-based questions (and most of those stimuli are documents).

So how can we review using primary and secondary source documents? Here goes...

Higher Order Review: Beach Ball Docs

Prep:

1.      Select a series of documents such as quotes, passages, images, political cartoons, maps, charts or graphs within a unit or across multiple units.

2.      Print out one set of documents for each group OR prepare a slideshow to project the documents for the students.

3.      In clear writing, write one of the following questions on each colored section of the beach ball (adapt as necessary). Pro tip: deflate the beach ball a little AFTER you write on it, so it lands with less bounce.

a.   When and/or Where?

b.   Causes and/or effects?

c.    Why was it written?

d.   What is the main idea?

e.   Make a connection to another topic in this course.

f.        What perspective does this document represent?

4.   Break students into small groups and give each group a beach ball and a printed set of documents OR project the documents whole class one-by-one.

Play:

5.      Explain to student that they will examine documents based on a variety of document analysis questions/prompts on their beach ball.

6.      Use a timer and select an appropriate amount of time students have to discuss each document.

7.      Instruct groups to roll the beach ball and analyze the document based on the question/prompt rolled. Student should discuss and come up with a group answer.

8.      Groups will record their answer and points on the tracking sheet based on a point system.

                    1 point- When?, Why?                                                                    

                    2 points- Cause(s)?, Effects(s)?                                                      

                    3 points- connection, main idea, perspective

9.      Students will repeat steps for each document.      

10.  The group with the most points based on accurate answers at the end of the allotted time wins!

Benefits of Beach Ball Docs:

• Student collaboration and discussion.  
• Students practice document analysis skills and higher order thinking.
• Students examine documents with a different purpose each time.
• Students have to connect documents with related concepts and terms.

Watch out for:

• Kids getting off task. Circulate and “play” along to keep them on task.
• Kids don’t discuss answers as a group. Encourage teams to come to a consensus before writing their answer on the tracking sheet.
• There isn’t just one right answer. Tell students that it’s OK to have varying answers to each question/prompt on the beach ball for the same document. The idea is to get kids TALKING about the documents!

BTW, I have found beach balls at Walmart, Target, and Party City, and the dollar store. Generally for a dollar per beach ball, so you can buy one and play whole class, or you can buy several and have the kids play in smaller groups.

What do you think? Can you organize kids and documents and a beach ball or two and create meaningful, higher-order review? As always, I love to hear from you! Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org