Five Review Games to Play with Cheap Dry Erase Cubes

Y’all know I love me some deals, right?  

Well here is the deal for you!

I have seen these dry-erase cubes at Dollar Tree (no, I’m not afraid to give a shout out to the popular destination of broke teachers everywhere!). I have seen them off and on all year and now that we are in the season of Review Games, I thought it might be a great chance to bust them out.

Note: Amazon has ones that are nicer but pricier. Your choice!

Anyway, let’s talk about what to DO with these cheap little toys!

*Pro Tip: for these to work with minimal hassle, you probably want a thin-line dry erase marker AND you want to ask the dice rollers to touch the colorful parts of the dice (not smudging the dry-erase parts)

Here are Five games I came up with that can use the Dry Erase Cubes.  Can you think of any more?

1. 3 Branches Cubes: Write the three branches on the first cube (twice for each branch) and write categories of things kids will need to know about each branch (like “who?”, “one responsibility of the branch”, “term lengths”, “requirements”, “check another branch” and” how do they get the job?” on the six sides of the dice.

Put your kids in teams and give each team a dry erase board, a dry erase marker, and a paper towel. Have a different kid each time roll the dice and have the teams race to answer what the dice combination says, like “legislative term lengths” or “judicial - how do they get the job?”

2. Document Cube: Write the following questions on the cube: “Who wrote it (1pt)” “when was it written (1pt)”, “Why was it written” (2pts), “what’s the main idea” (3pts), “Causes” (2pts) “effects” (2pts).

Now, put an excerpt of a document on the screen or smart board. Have a kid roll the dice and everyone tries to answer as quickly as possible on their paper. Or, have each team have a dice and each team does something different with the document.

*Pro tip: if you’re going to play this game regularly, you might print up a sticker label and put it on the cube so it doesn’t get smudged and you don’t have to keep rewriting these!

3. Full Year Review: Put the name of each of six units on one cube (like Rome, Greece, India, Egypt, Israel, and Mesopotamia). Put a common topic from each unit on the other cube (like, important person, cultural achievements, geographic boundaries, traded with..., inventions, and underrepresented groups). Then, have the kids roll the dice in a small group and say (or find in their notes?) something that addresses both dice -- like “underrepresented groups in Rome were...  the plebians and slaves”.

4. One Cube:  Use one cube to distinguish between several parts of a single topic, like “political parties (with a different political party on each side), or influencing government (with two sides each that say “media”, “individual”, “interest group”.  Or, you could label the one cube with the parts of the florida and US constitutions (preamble, articles, amendments) and have the kids tell what’s the same or different with the US and Florida constitutions about that particular part.

5. Matching: I’m not a huge fan of matching, but it could get fun with four dice. Put the amendment topic/text on one cube and the number on another. Have them roll one dice to start and then keep rolling the other until they get the match.

I freely admit to having a tough week. I’m not sure that these are my best ideas. Can anyone come up with any more great dry-erase cube games? Please share! We all need new ideas at this point in the year!

BTW -- happy May! This is it -- the last month of school! You (and we) can make it! The end is in sight!

Have a great week!

-Tracy

Three Rs

I still remember doing a WHOLE lesson on the difference between slavery and indentured servitude. And then, the long-answer question on the test asked the kids to explain the difference. And THEY ALL BOMBED THAT QUESTION!!!!

WHAT THE HECK??!?!? I TAUGHT MY BUTT OFF!!!!

It can’t be that they’re ALL stupid (although I might have said something along those lines, purely out of frustration!).

And then, the inevitable question of “what do I do now?” arises. Do I review the concept quickly and hope that sticks when the “real” lesson didn’t? Do I go back and reteach the whole thing? Do I say “oh well” and move on with pacing?

Well, first, let’s talk about the difference between Review, Reteaching, and Remediation.

Review is spending a shorter amount of time just looking at the content again (re-view). It’s that study guide before the test, the review packet before the exam. It’s a game where we get to look at content from a while back. It’s where you tackle 3 months of content in one class period. Everyone needs review.

Reteaching is where the majority of kids didn’t get a concept and you need to try to teach it again, another way. Maybe you tried the first time with a reading and now you’re going to try a concept map. Maybe the first lesson was video-centered. This time, try a graphic organizer. Most kids probably need that lesson retaught.

*Note: Reteaching requires teachers to make pacing decisions. You WILL have to determine if you take less time on another topic to reteach this one.

Remediating is where you fix a problem, particularly student-by-student. To remediate is to try to address a problem -- like, if Student A didn’t get Concept B. Remediation is more student-specific and attempts to target a problem with a specific piece of content or a skill.. Remediation isn’t the same as reteaching, although they’re often mixed up together. Remediation is more targeted and more clearly defined.

Let’s look at the difference when we look at a one benchmark.

If I were going to REVIEW Civics Benchmark 2.4 (Bill of Rights), I would go back over the Bill of Rights, maybe including it in a review game or playing a video and asking kids to reflect after the video.

If I were going to RETEACH Civics benchmark 2.4, I might start with teaching the hand signals for each amendment (to engage tactile learners) and help the kids organize slips (with one amendment written per slip) into categories. I think I would finally give kids scenarios that had them applying the amendments to a particular topic.

If I were going to REMEDIATE Civics Benchmark 2.4, I would first check my data to see which kids struggled with that benchmark. Then, I would use formative assessment data from my class (I might need to make one) to see WHAT PART of the benchmark (or which benchmark clarification) the kids missed. Then, I would specifically create a lesson or a mini-lesson to address and fix that deficit. Maybe we would look at just the amendments they did NOT get -- maybe they got the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 10th. So we will work on the others (4, 5, 6, 7, 8)  in a small group, using the hand signals and having the kids illustrate those particular amendments.

So what do we do after the main teaching?

It depends on IF kids bomb, how MANY kids bomb, and HOW they bomb.

We adjust from there.

There’s no silver bullet. But there are plenty of ways to adapt to moments where kids don’t learn what/as much as you want.

Think about using review, reteaching, and/or remediation to help your kids tackle stuf they need to tackle.

As always, let me know how it goes!

Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy

SWAT Team

So, It’s that time of year...  Time for review games!

A reminder -- none of our kids (NOT A SINGLE ONE!!) are going to take a low-level, facts-only, memorization EOC or exam. I can only speak for Social Studies, but I suspect we are not alone on this...

Our EOC and final exams are written on the rough guidelines of 20-60-20. Meaning, ROUGHLY 20% of the test is Level 1 thinking, 60% of the test is Level 2 thinking, and 20% of the test is Level 3 thinking.

Which means 80% (!!) of the test is NOT recall-level content.

So, if most of the test is higher order thinking, how can I use review games -- WITHOUT dumbing the review games down to lower level?

Well, I have a couple for you. Let’s start with the rowdiest one, just for fun.

And, ummmm, you’re going to need two flyswatters and some masking tape.

Higher Order Review: Swat Teams

Prep:

1.      Create/compile a list of vocab terms – and examples or non-examples of each. These examples could be much like the stimuli on their assessment, quotes, excerpts, images, etc. (I wouldn’t use straight definitions because students will memorize them and it won’t be higher order thinking and it won’t help them much on their EOC or final)

2.      Post the words on a wall/bulletin board that kids can access.  (not your SMARTBOARD!). A hallway might be a good option if your room is too small.

3.      Put a tape line on your floor that The Swatters need to be behind, a foot or two away from the wall.

4.      Divide class into two equal groups and line them up behind each other and sit or stand in order.

Play:

5.   Explain to the class that each team will have the first student in line “play” at a time. When they have completed their turn, out of the two teams, the first student to “swat” the correct answer gets the point for his or her team. When the student is done with his or her turn, that student goes to the end of the line.  

6.   All students in line need to listen to the example since they might get a different example for the same word. They will listen better if they know they’re hearing “clues” about a word they might get.

7.   Read the example or non-example to the group. (Be clear if it is a NOT example). The two students with the fly swatters listen to the example.

8.   The first student to swat the correct term gets the point for his or her team.

9.   The team with the most points wins.

Benefits of Swatter Game:

• Students examine multiple facets of a concept or vocab term.
• Students are listening to usage and application of their vocab terms and practicing using and applying those terms.
• Active and engaging activity.
• Fun can increase serotonin, which can improve memory, pride in work well done, and confidence.

Watch Out For:

• Kids struggling to remember terms. Maybe let them use their notes?  
• Kids acting up in line.  Maybe take away points for teams not listening? Or remind students that if the Swatter can’t hear the hint he or she can’t get the point.
• Kids swatting each other.  The child who uses a flyswatter on another child is instantly removed from the game, his team loses points, and you use the discipline consequence for that kid that you would normally use. Please DO NOT punish the entire class for one kid who acts like a fool.

If it were me, I think I might use Civics 3.1 & 3.2 and post the various forms and systems of government and then give examples, descriptions, or connections for the kids to swat.

Are you brave enough to give two kids fly swatters -- and let LEARNING and REVIEW happen? Can you write a few examples and descriptions that use higher-order thinking? Are you BRAVE enough to try this game?

If so, email me and let me know how it goes. You’re welcome to send pix of  the game if it’s as hilarious as it was at a PCSB middle school this week with the Three Branches Tree.... Email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy

Old Dead White Men and Multiple Perspectives

I spend a lot of time teaching/working with middle school US History and Civics. In case you haven’t looked at those benchmarks in a while, I’ll fill you in.:

They are overwhelmingly about old, white men who are now dead. There are very few women or people of color or children or teenagers in those benchmarks, and when they do appear in the benchmarks, they show up all in one benchmark which literally says  “examine the time period from the perspective of historically underrepresented groups (children, indentured servants, Native Americans, slaves, women, working class).”

John Adams has his own benchmark (Hamilton says, “Sit down, John, you --”). So does Thomas Jefferson.

Not to detract from those important men. But there aren’t any benchmarks about specific individuals that aren’t white men.

Look around your middle school or high school classroom.

• It is probably roughly half male and half female (except that one weirdly unbalanced class...).
• You probably have varying diversity depending on your school, but most schools are not as overwhelmingly white as the list of presidents in the back of your textbook.
• And although some of your teen boys might THINK they should be referred to as “men” the rest of us call them all “boys” until they’re 18.  And if they’re in high school, we usually refer to them that way until graduation.

All that to say -- none of us teach a classroom of old, white men in our classrooms. And none of us teach dead ones  And none of our kids dress or live like the 1800s.

It’s hard to help kids feel a connection to someone from so long ago that really doesn’t look like they do.

So how on earth are we going to make a curriculum of old, dead, white men (ODWM) relevant to young, alive, multicultural students?

It’s all about multiple perspectives and humanity-sized issues.

If your benchmarks and resources point you toward the ODWM, please remember that these men did not live in isolation. Some portraits and resources may look like a sea of white, male, powdered-wig-wearing faces ... but really, these men saw and interacted with women and children (and often people of color) all the time.

There is no way that Locke or Montesquieu lived lives free of women. So, let’s bring women into the conversation. What might women have thought about those men’s views? What women might have agreed with them? What women might have disagreed with them? How might that imaginary conversation looked?

There is no way that Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine lived in New England without encountering Native Americans or African Americans. What might each group have thought about the man and his writings? In what ways might they have interacted? How would Patrick Henry have answered an African American or a Native American questioning his “give me liberty or give me death”?

This is a great opportunity for kids to do higher-order thinking. “What-if thinking”, when done well, can be like a hypothesis. One that’s hard to prove, but still one that’s good for learning about context and the relationships between people and ideas.

There’s even a BENCHMARK about multiple perspectives -- in almost every course!

In Middle School US History, the benchmark is SS.8.A.1.6 “Compare interpretations of key events and issues throughout American History.”

In Middle School Civics, the benchmark is SS.7.C.2.13 “Examine multiple perspectives on public and current issues”.

In High School World History, the benchmark is SS.912.W.1.5 “Compare conflicting interpretations or schools of thought about world events and individual contributions to history (historiography)”

In High School US History, the idea of multiple perspectives is laced into a tone of individual benchmarks -- but the most explicit one is LAFS.1112.RH.3.7 “Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in diverse formats and media (e.g., visually, quantitatively, as well as in words) in order to address a question or solve a problem.”

If your child is not an “old, dead, white man” (and ... it would be super-creepy if you taught dead kids), it’s not the FACE a kid needs to connect with. A kid will best connect with the human issues at stake in history. The “Old Dead White Men” grappled with issues of power, understanding, greed, relationships,  survival, culture, change, and obstacles. Our kids may not live in the same times as the people in history, but they can wrestle with the thinking of those ODWM and the others who lived in their time period.

Take a look at the place where your students and your content fail to connect. Then, look for a way for your kids to connect -- can they examine that person’s motives, struggles, purposes? Can they look at the issue from the perspective of another non-ODWM? Can they put a modern spin on the issue?

Multiple perspectives are so important in our personal lives and in our lives as citizens.

How do you make ODWM relevant to live, diverse, modern students? How do you teach multiple perspectives? As always, I love to hear from you -- email me at newmantr@pcsb.org

-Tracy

Washington, Trump, and Clinton

Despite my love of history and civics, I really dislike election season. I love to vote, of course, but I hate all the anger and trash-talk it brings. It’s why I don’t do a lot with social media. My tolerance for inflammatory political statements is pretty low.

We see people trash talk at protests, in political conversations, on social media, and in person. It bothers me more when that trash talk comes from kids. Kids are ugly to each other a lot. It can’t possibly help when, some days,  it seems like the whole country is setting a bad example of discourse.

Most teachers of US History remember George Washington’s Farewell Address. We often reference  it because it warns our country against political parties.

Primary source break!

“sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

“It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.”

Many folks say that this current election is the ugliest since ...  (fill in the blank with your favorite ugly election -- (1800, 1876, 1860, 2000?) There are many, many factors that go into ugliness in an election. I won’t dig into that here.

But we can think about conversation, discourse, and manners.

I would like to think about another George Washington resource I used to use in my classroom -- The Rules of Civility.  Our first president didn’t create these rules; they were a standard booklet that teachers used to make students like GW copy to practice handwriting and teach manners.   

But George Washington was known for referencing, quoting, and using these rules in his speeches, writings, and conversations. Here are a couple that I love:

1. Every Action done in Company, ought to be with Some Sign of Respect, to those that are Present.

47. Mock not nor Jest at anything of Importance break [n]o Jest that are Sharp Biting and if you Deliver anything witty and Pleasant abstain from Laughing thereat yourself.

58. Let your Conversation be without Malice or Envy, for 'tis a Sig[n o]f a Tractable and Commendable Nature: And in all Causes of Passion [ad]mit Reason to Govern.

66. Speak not injurious Words neither in Jest nor Earnest Scoff at none although they give Occasion.

86. In Disputes, be not So Desirous to Overcome as not to give Liberty to each one to deliver his Opinion and Submit to the Judgment of the Major Part especially if they are Judges of the Dispute.

I want to challenge you to think deliberately and carefully about how you teach civility in your social studies classes.

If we don’t teach respectful disagreement and civil discourse in social studies courses -- we are not helping our nation. I’m sure our election CAN -- and MAY -- get uglier. But I’d like to think that we can learn to fight more “cleanly”.

I have two suggestions for improving the quality of our political conversations. They actually go together quite nicely.

1. Debate and/or Thrash Out: The more practice our students have with debate, the better they get. The more academic debates our students participate in, the more they learn how to disagree without name calling, insults, hostility, or manipulation.  Have them debate big, important issues in history, economics, and government -- or let them practice debating smaller issues.

And don’t forget your Thrash Out with your DBQ. This is the best pre-writing strategy we have. It gives kids the chance to practice their claims and evidence in an engaging and competitive way -- while ALSO teaching them polite debate skills. It allows them to argue something multi-faceted with academic evidence.

Has there ever been a time when the lack of these skills were MORE needed in our country than over the past few weeks and months?

2. Historical Talking Tools:  Many of you know them, but it you haven't used these sentence starters to teach your kids what truly academic civil discourse sounds like -- PLEASE use them! This is the poster version of the Historical Talking Tools and here is the bookmark version. These are sentence starters you can use to explicitly teach your students how to speak and debate academically and historically. They are so valuable in helping kids learn to debate.

Our country is based on debate. Our constitution is written to provide healthy avenues for debate. We want our students to learn how do disagree in productive ways.

George Washington warned us about ugly political parties -- and he felt strongly about manners and conversation. How do your students learn about this?

How do you teach civil discourse? I’d love more ideas! As always, email me at newmantr@pcsb.org