Yesterday Class 9 and 10 took a test about the first units of the GCSE topic ‘Conflict and Tension between East and West 1945-1972’. There are a couple of ways I prepare students for tests and review the test content.

For the lower classes, I often use fun digital tools such as Kahoot and Blooket and ask students in the lesson before to prepare questions for it. They love seeing their own questions in the Kahoot/Blooket and the competitiveness, especially in blooket with its mini-games which makes it even better.

My favourite way to prepare students for tests however is ‘offline’ with keyword cards. I prepare sets of keywords concerning the most important people, organisations, events, developments and terms. With the keywords various activities can be done that review knowledge, but also build historical reasoning skills. A couple of these activities are:

-Sorting: Students have to sort the key words according to various relevant categories. For example, with the key words in the picture I asked students to decide which keywords belong to the ‘West’ and which ones to the ‘East’.  

-Making a timeline: Students have to sort the key words chronologically. The challenge is that many words are not related to a specific event or period with a clear date. Therefore, students have to place them where they are most relevant which leads to an interesting discussion.

-Ranking: Students have to make a ranking of the 9 most important keywords in a diamond or pyramid shape. This will spark a discussion between students about which keywords are really defining this particular period or topic.

-Playing ‘taboo’: The favourite game of class 9 and 10. One student picks a card and has to describe it without saying the word. The others guess and the first one to guess it gets the card and scores a point. This forces students to properly understand the word and the competition makes it a lot of fun!

I will explain these activities and other ways of reviewing content in more detail on my website that will go live in a couple of months. 

Originally posted on Instagram on November 19, 2021